30.9.08

29.9.08

"The residency itself and my artistic concerns there were strongly linked to the re-evaluation of the basic stuff of existence and to the acceptance of open-ended answers. I floated around the emptiness of Farrera, ghost-like, until I realized the unique opportunity that being an alien presented: to experience life at its purest, in the moment. The rugged landscape and its vast solitude brought to the surface the importance of qualities such as surrender and acceptance."
text by the artist Heini Aho in relation to her new exhibition in Helsinki.
I just read this and the line "acceptance of open-ended answers" has strong resonance to my now.




The first loaf of bread from the culture ive been making since I arrived, Ive named the strain of yeasts Lactobacillus Neuköllncensis, haha. This is a brown rice and sunflower loaf, it ended up quite sour but has a lovely strong sweet nutty flavour. Ive been eating it with olive oil and fresh basil.
The time you arrive is important, because it is always perfect, however delayed you may perceive it to be.
I feel like im reverberating into the water im drinking.
listening to the modern things by Bjork (this is an amazing live version)

28.9.08



My friends were doing an improvised movement and musical piece called 'Buzz Cut Crab Stick' at this awesome squat venue, we climbed up a rope ladder and through a trap door perched on a platform to watch the performance, it was very wonderful and exciting.
listening to Po' Lazarus by James Carter & The Prisoners

27.9.08

she's all rad-ta-ly,
and squeaky at the...

and we throw the clanky metal sounds across the street and round cobbled corners.
bouncing through the gaps and uneven surfaces


im moving into the next phase of being here
An inventory of dinner:

black capsicum
small yellow tomatoes
Red curly leaf lettuce
Avocado
Olives
tiny crisp apple
red raddishs
cold pressed olive oil

red skinned potatoes
olive oil
lime juice
burnt sunflower seeds
fresh basil

carrots
zucchini

macrobiotic sea salt
black and red peppercorns
olive oil


I just learnt that lettuce contains Lactucarium (or “Lettuce Opium”) which is a mild opiate-like substance.

25.9.08

listening to the thought for food record by The Books

walking home along night streets listening to the track 'all bad ends all' in earphones and by chance see a kid dancing on their bike, bouncing and wobbling about listening to some other music in their earphones, and it goes so well with what i am listening to. (The Books webpage is really cool you can listen to all of their albums in full with animations)

22.9.08

I have a strong sense of being the same person in another place, it is almost surprising because everything around me if so different and I feel exactly like me. Its strange in itself but I am happy because it means all of me has arrived with this travel.
I do not crave to be somewhere else or feel any sense of loneliness, for I am happy in myself and have a strong sense of being, of being all of me together, all of me here. I have a profound sense of grounding, it feels right to be here and I do not feel like I need to leave.
listening to Mara Tomasa by el hijo de la cumbia
I was eating too fast and then bit hard and sharp into the flesh of my tongue. It bleed and was such a shock that I had to lie down.

21.9.08

Nothing can replace the spontaneity of the moment.

But digitising, documenting and recording possess a potent opportunity to hold things for a few seconds longer - to slow things down just long enough to experience them more fully.
I think the obssession for documentation comes from the (human) world travelling so fast around us that we want to crystallise the moment as it is happening so we may take up a slower dialogue with it. It is a balancing act, being present in midst of a moment and a movement and saving some of it to digest later. To record or really listen?
when the music quietened i remembered that no-one here speaks my language.
(will put up sound drawings soon)
the sounds of birds cut up into tiny pieces and then sewed back together.
I have come here to draw sound and taste night and hear the blur of smoke.
listening to Stork and Owl by Tv on the Radio
I walked and walked and walked, and on the way I found the most succulent and perfect oily antipasta arti-choke in a delicatessen, I found the tattooed wall of berlin engraved with the names and histories of a thousand thousand people I will never meet and the ones standing around me, I walked its length and kept walking, I walked in and out and without looking at a map, I walked through and under, always aware of my vague orientation. I walked all the way back here, and when I stopped my body still felt like it was walking, and my mind run circles around the insides of my eyes. I unzipped my bag unpacked a bottle of olive oil and a can of cherry tomatoes. When I peeled back the tin lid I found some of the tomatoes still had their starred green tops.
listening to fight like the brave by the red hot chili peppers in my head
"this is not america, HERE IS NOT EVERYWHERE" scrawled along the side of a building with paint, above my head and i am thrust further into the present and this place, here is not everywhere. this now is, not, every now.

19.9.08

and i am sounding out sounds that are more primal than language here, surrounded by an influx of dialect I dont understand yet... I have hardly seen anything yet, eyes flicking open for a few seconds and then shut again holding the images to see what was happening
"It takes time...this place doesnt run at you, and if you run for it, it disappears."

The words of a friends friend on the street describing the patience and pace of things, and of connecting into the life of this city, you have to allow it to slowly seep in, and be awake and open to it...And again I think of my mumma's words "if you hold on to something too tightly you dont have your hands open to receive it"
the ground moves so much under me that i barely need to move
the slow seeping in of life into stillness






Red and white striped circus flowers.

Just because its so beautiful, radishes and tahina on sunflower seed, buckwheat and rice bread.


I have already begun making a new culture, I started the day after I arrived, and here you can see it bubbling. The small purple plums are put into the starter to support the yeast activation (plums have yeasts on their skin, known as 'bloom', and yeasts exist all around in the air). Now that I am in europe I wont be flying for awhile and will carry my culture around in a jar. 

The seemingly simply explained, how the horizon works...
I brought with me a very old book of maps with meticulous line drawings and colour plates. It is very beautiful and has wonderful diagrams, but not a lot of relevance to todays understanding of geography. Anyway, I brought with me a very old book of maps, an orienteering compass, wooden cut out letters of the alphabet and a wicker picnic basket to carry around my box of pencils and homemade treats for picnics. Very important items for leading a poetic and semi-impractical life of an artist who has decided to travel. Though semi-practical, the fullness of ones poetry is of great importance to me.


18.9.08

Blankly staring at a map on a white tiled wall. I turn around and am struck immediately with love. The bright yellow train has arrived, with red wooden veneer interior. I feel like something magical has happened. I take a seat and a man sits opposite, dressed completely in the same yellow with a yellow bowler hat and cape/coat around his shoulders, and carrying a very small suitcase. It is too surreal.
The air pierced with the bowing of violin strings in the underground like an instant rush of adrenaline.
reading 'How Language Works' by David Crystal

chapter 66 'How we cope with many languages: Learn Them'
'Language learning... proceeds in a series of transitional stages, as learners acquire more knowledge of the L2 (2nd language). At each stage they are in control of a language system that is equivalent to neither the L1 or L2 - an interlanguage."
sauerkraut juice in a cardboard carton, bittersweet chocolate with rapadura sugar (whole sugar still containing the molasses), apple and carrot juice in a glass bottle, and things i am used to in different packages.

16.9.08