This is a collaborative project between Veronika Pristoupilova and Andrew Langfield based on enjoyment of walking, talking and coffee drinking.
Andrew is a music producer based in Glasgow also known as Wireman.
Veronika is a visual artist based in Prague.
For more tunes check out Andrew’s Soundcloud on https://soundcloud.com/wireman
She was so desperate to find out what’s happening in both – her white and dark universe that she kept questioning the wolf. Making up questions that didn‘t make much sense, backed up by opinions that weren’t even hers. She knew that what she was telling him was mostly nonsense. But she was determined to confuse him even if it meant she would confuse herself as well. By confusing him, she thought, he is going to loose a plot and accidentally give me answers that I need to get to understand. He is just a wolf, after all, I must be smarter than him, she thought. Oh, how deep the human arrogance and ignorance is rooted! She found out after a few questioning sessions that her companion is not that easy to crack. She might be smart, yes, but he is wise.
She was called many names by the wolf. Sometimes Caterpillar, sometimes Wind echo, sometimes Fox and other times simply Tornado or Wind. He used names for her according to her mood and appearance as if he could not grasp the concept of name. He knew what it means and everything, but he just thought it was way too simple, too silly to call one soul by one name. It doesn’t work like that. People are far more difficult.
She, on the other hand, had never call him a Wolf or any other name. She didn’t feel like she should make up a name for him and she was not sure if he really was a wolf. He looked like one to her, but she didn’t know if that’s his permanent appearance. Perhaps to others, he seems like an old guy or a cow or a teaspoon. How could she know? She only knows her own point of view, her one perspective. And she believed, like Jews who don’t have names for the entity that Christians call God, that naming the sacred would destroy its mystery.
He would usually do what she said, but not that time in the park under the safety of the theatre roof. That time something urged him to do something bad. Well, according to the law, it was bad, but according to his nature, it was the right decision. Anyway, after that incident they didn’t want to get into any more trouble.
…to be continued…
Mind (noun): the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
Body (noun): the physical structure of a person or an animal, including the bones, flesh, and organs.
Space (noun): a continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied.
Mind – body – space.
Three important components of contemporary understanding of world.
The connection and reconnection is compulsory.
Finding and loosing balance is more important than staying in one position and pretend that everything is fine.
I lay on a branch and contemplated on existence.
Interaction and understanding of a space. A space that remained unaltered, what had changed is the mind.
One cannot understand everything but will always try.
Losing fears through getting closer to nature. Acknowledging the origin of fear, understanding its remodeling into a phobia.
Looking into space of someone else, seeing yourself in reflection of someone else; through understanding others, understand yourself. Through understanding yourself, understand everything around you.
Some fall in their dreams, others call it flying.
Who are we? What a human kind is? How will we survive if we destroy everything around us?
I found the answer in the mind. I found the answer in the body. I found the answer in the space.
There is a woman planting trees in a desert. There is a man living without money. There is a woman making no waste. There is a man being a pirate to fight for the sea. There is a woman establishing water as a human right. There is a man taking care of the last white rhinoceros on Earth. There is a hope.
The Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth.
Everything is living and everything is linked.
I flew while lying on the branch.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
For my Degree Show in June 2015 I created a space. An interactive space filled with objects and projections.
As you enter the space, on your left side are three white fabric tubes, on the right side is one long tube and behind branches with some kind of pillows on them and a projection above it.
If you come closer to the three tubes (that I call ‘Tunnels’), you can see through transparent fabric, that something is moving inside. If you ‘open the curtain’, you can see moving image inside. In each tube is a different video, the middle one has a sound.
You turn around and naturally look what is inside the long white tube. You got disappointed because there is nothing. The magic happens when someone stands on the other end of the tube so I named it ‘Communication Tunnel’.
Then the sound of the video that is projected over your head grabs your attention, so you want to sit on the branch, on the pillow that feels like little bean bag. Look up, listen.
What did you just see? What did you just hear? What did you experience?
I gave you everything I had for a simple fee – your time.
Thank you all who came and talked to me on the opening night and during the show, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Love, V.
03
These days she usually wakes up at seven, Greenwich time, and lies in the bed for about an hour, motionless. Just after the wolf appeared in her life she started to have nightmares.
She wakes up in the middle of the night with fast beating heart in a terrible fright. It usually takes minutes before she realizes it was just a nightmare. She doesn’t know why it’s all happening again. But this time she can‘t remember any of her nightmares. She falls asleep again and again a nightmare, but a different type. Like there are different types of fears, there are naturally different types of nightmares. She can’t remember anything from them, but she remembers the fear they contained – different fears, different nightmares. And so when she wakes up at seven, Greenwich time, she lies in bed, relieved that the fear is no longer real, that the night is finally over.
She rests, coming back into realization who she is, where she is, how she looks and that her body is living, breathing, her heart is pounding, muscles stretching.
This wasn’t totally new of course, she had nightmares before, but it was so long ago. Last time she had nightmares she was just a kid. No, that is not accurate – she had a nightmare, singular – one nightmare that repeated every night. She still remembers it.
There was a big owl sitting on a green grid fence, warning her not to come closer. But she did and so she started to fall from a hill covered with insects – mainly spiders, centipedes and ants. There was a dark forest on that hill with trees without branches or leaves, just trunks. She wanted to catch one of the tree trunks to stop from falling. But she never even touched one and she never fell on the ground. She was just falling and falling and falling and falling into darkness. But she had never woken up in the middle of the fall, no. It wasn’t one of those moments when you dream about something and suddenly fall from the bike or stairs and wake up by twitch. No, when she woke up from this fall, it was natural. Like if the fall, the transition between standing and lying, got into the point that she couldn’t go any further. Or perhaps she woken up when she reached the maximum darkness, the darkness one can possibly be in. In a state of absolute nothingness loosing her body and mind to the darkness that swallowed her all. Perhaps… Well, she could not recollect those memories anymore, but it was something like that.
She remembers this dream, after almost twenty years, still very vividly. Sometimes some of her relatives appeared in that nightmare, sometimes the owl was acting mean, sometimes kind. The owl was a guardian of the nightmare. What is good and what is evil anyway? The owl was just looking after the dream and wasn’t interested in anything else but making sure the dream appears in her head during the night. As if making sure that she won’t forget things that happened in her other, waking life, keeping her night, dreamy world in a certain order of fright. One fear, one nightmare.
But these current nightmares, they missed that guardian. There was neither owl nor other animal. Like if the guardian left and the nightmares could run free in her mind, doing all sorts of weird things. And that’s why she couldn’t remember any of them. Or at least she thought that this is the case.
She considered that the wolf might be the lost guardian, but then – the nightmares appeared after he was already a visible part of her white life. It didn’t make any sense what so ever.
…to be continued on 11/07/2015…
She wasn’t sure when he joined her life or where did he come from but she knew she would be lost without him. She kind of knew he was coming to appear at some point. She also acknowledged that he was in her life for a very, very, very long time before he made his visible presence. She sensed him, but didn’t know what that means until he appeared.
She was a bit scared of him, but she knew it‘s for her own good and if she wasn’t scared of him, she wouldn’t respect him as she disrespect everyone else. She was in a certain tense with him all the time. Pushing the boundaries between what she can allow herself to do to him and what he tolerates.
So they walked together through cold and unwelcoming streets, not looking at anyone, not wanting to get into troubles. One time a day was enough, they thought.
Earlier this day as they walked through a park, the drops of water started to fall from the sky. He loved the rain and wanted to run around, but she stopped him. She knew he was a wolf, but still was afraid that he might get ill if he gets too wet – and how the hell could she take care of him – he was twice as big as her. No, better keep him dry and warm, she thought.
She decided to sit on a porch of an old theatre. There was a bench, probably dragged in by someone who sought shelter like her now.
„Come here, I need to write something down.“ she said.
Swallowed by thoughts about inner universes, she sat down and wrote. A bunch of fifteen year olds came around – five boys and one girl.
„Who’s sitting there?“ „Who is it?“ „She’s on our porch.“ Even though they whispered, she could hear them clearly. She shook a little. Even though she was much older than them, she despised them. Those boys are exactly at that age – that violent, shameless age of curiosity. She had a few memories of boys like them when she was a kid and even later as a teenager. She didn’t like those memories.
She said to the wolf: „Lets go!“
„No!“ he said through clenched teeth „Let them try!“ he said, pronouncing each word slowly, with impact on every syllable. He looked at them violently. One of the boys saw that look and quickly turned away.
„Ok.“ she said with a voice that cracked into a small laugh.
… to be continued on 04/07 2015…
Theatricality of the space.
Building a relationship between the space and the audience.
A safe space where there is nothing to fear except your own mind.
Vulnerable position that feels so comfortable that one wants to stay in forever.
Symbiosis between body and outside environment.
A chair that is more of a sofa except it is not.
A tool that helps a body to be itself.
It is a different way of placing the body in a space.
It might seem awkward, but the kind of awkward that helps to grow the body into a person.
Urge to find something new.
Growing space.
Growing state of mind.
Growing position.
Acupuncture.
Lava stones’ massage.
Relaxation.
Healing.
Understanding the physicality of our bodies by placing alien object on it.
Feeling the weight of an object to find out where it hurts.
Why it hurts?
Connection between mental and physical health.
Everything in our body is connected, why are we reluctant to accept that physical illness might have something to do with our mental state?
What you see in the mirror is not the truth, what you feel inside is.
Befriend your body, the landscape of your mind.
Body is a scenery of truthtelling – if you find enough courage to look at it with your eyes shut.
„PAIN IS INEVITABLE, SUFFERING OPTIONAL.“ – Haruki Murakami
01
„Imagine that someone penetrates your mind and your body.“ she said and looked back at him.
„What’s wrong with that, if that ‘someone‘ had a permission to do so?“ he asked.
„Well maybe that someone had the permission, but what if you were giving the permission without knowing what it really means?“ she replied and fastened her walk. They were walking home, or at least a flat where she was living. She would not call it a home, as she never believed in such a thing.
„You mean like when Faust was signing the devil’s contract?“ he looked at her inquiringly.
„Perhaps… But Faust had a pretty good idea what he’s signing, he just didn’t know how hard it would be at the end.“ she continued walking. „No, what I’m trying to say is, that penetrating someone else’s mind or body or both is inexcusable. Even with permission you can’t, you should not do it. It’s out of bounds.“
„Oh, come on, now you are talking like a little kid. You are just calling it a wrong word – it’s not penetration per se, but becoming a part of. Of someone else, of something else and you know very well, that we are all part of someone else, part of something else.“ he was getting angry and she knew it.
They continued walking in a silence. People were staring at her. It wasn’t because she was walking with a giant wolf behind her, but because of the fierce look on her face. She learned that facial expression from him. She was tough. Tough to herself and even more to others – especially people who were weak. Not physically, no, but mentally, psychologically, emotionally. People who couldn’t handle themselves, their feelings, people who weren’t smart enough, people who were lazy and let the weakness overwhelmed them. She could be very harsh to them, even cruel, but without a joy of cruelty. Just looking at them like they were nothing. Looking down on them and not willing to have anything to do with them.
He on the other hand was not like her. He didn’t have any particularly strong opinions, just common sense. The only thing he loathed was injustice. He didn’t have a particularly good relationship with her, but because they were bonded very deeply to each other, he respected certain parts of her personality. Even though they were not one, his mind was occupied so much by her thoughts at the times that he kept forgetting his callings, his missions.
to be continued… next part on 27 June 2015…
I never say I miss you
I never say I like you
I never say You look handsome
I never say I hate the way you treat me
I never say I’m falling apart
I never say Help me
I never ask Do you miss me?
I never ask Do you like me?
I never ask How do I look?
I never ask Did you like it?
I never ask Am I good to you?
I never ask Are you really ok?
I never ask Can I help you?
I never asked, you never told me
You never asked, I never told you
No questions, no answers, no truth, no lies
Nothing
Did it even happen I say
Was it just a dream that each of us lived separately You wonder
I only ask Do I miss you?
And the answer is yes, yes I do.
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