Fit in 01/The movement

Water.
The river.
The beginning.
The tree that is strong enough to hold me quietly.
The tree that is as silent as it’s loud.
The tree whose silence screams.
Stability of the movement without obvious progress as the progress is hidden inside.
My body that is slowly sliding down makes no movement.
It’s like a movement of the Earth – it’s moving so fast but we barely ever notice it.
If I was lying on that tree for a hundred years, I would have slide all the way down but no one else could have notice it but me.
Because there is so much action within the stillness.
‘Don’t just do something, sit there.’
‘Don’t just sit there, do something’.
Action and reaction. Good and bad. One is the opposite of the other – we think. As we like to put things in order. Place them in boxes and name tag them. Organize them in catalogues and sort them from the most important to meaningless.
We play gods in our little universes. We celebrate sameness even though we are not all the same. We create a world of juxtapositions. Meaningless acts we celebrate and the important ones put under the label ‘undefined’.
And sooner or later, these idiocratic utopias will start to fall apart. One day…

CXXX exhibition

Veronika Pristoupilova ‘They are all the Same but Have Nothing in Common’ film installation with rice/mint/mirror and me

THE TIME WHEN YOU HAVE JUST WOKEN UP
THE MOMENT WHEN YOU FEEL YOUR BODY AGAIN
THE SECOND WHEN NIGHTMARES ARE NOT FRIGHTENING
THE MINUTE WHEN SWEET DREAMS BECOME BITTER

SOME DAYDREAM AND SOME SLEEPLESSLY WONDER AT NIGHT
BALANCE IS WHAT THEY ALL SEARCH FOR

THEY ARE ALL DOUBLE
THEY ARE HERE AND ELSEWHERE

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For the interim show that I was part of I created a space. A cushion to lie/sit on and a projection on the ceiling of myself, filmed from above while stretching.

The feedback of the audience was quite unified. ‘It is relaxing.’ ‘Makes me focus on breathing.’ ‘It makes me want to copy her and stretch with her.”Meditative.”Preparation for something, for life.’

While creating this piece I kept in mind private spaces and what makes them private. One important thing about private space is, that it is connected with the feeling of being safe. We are trying to create our own space everywhere. By realizing this I acknowledge another aspect of private space – it isn’t an actual physical space, the private space is part of us, it is hidden within each of us. When feeling uncomfortable, we create a space around us, a story, a mind set, that will protect us from the ‘other’, from the ‘unknown’, from the ‘dangerous’.

There is a lot of things that we feel we need to protect ourselves from. But instead of hiding, we might rather ask ‘What do I need to protect myself from?’ ‘What makes me uncomfortable?’ ‘What am I really scared of?’

My biggest fear is my past and my future. But instead of getting eaten by it, I decided to fight it in the way some might not expect. Rather than being scared of the future, I chose to live now, to be here. It is quite difficult to achieve it, but worth it.

Every morning when I wake up, I feel like my body belongs somewhere else. My mind sometimes feels like it has been split open over night and someone else was playing with it. I take a moment and try to reflect on it. Why do I feel the way I feel? Sometimes it is a bad dream, sometimes a bad day behind me. I stretch and think. I feel my body becoming mine. I feel my mind sawing the pieces back on the right place. I become me again. I am back in my private space. I am in myself.

Live Art in Process

As I started to draw with my fingers on cold paper covering cold window on very sunny day, I knew something wasn’t right.

As I was drawing with my fingers with beautiful colours, people were stopping by to watch me.

As I was drawing with my fingers, my friends and people I know were coming in and out and it all seemed as they were there for a second.

As I was drawing with my fingers, trying to catch the movement of the video that was projected onto the paper, I saw less and less images.

As I was drawing with my fingers, the picture itself became unimportant.

As I was drawing with my fingers, I wanted to continue forever.

As I was drawing with my fingers, the more I did, the more needed to be done.

As I was drawing with my fingers, they all got wet and cold and shrank.

My hands were no longer my hands.

My body was no longer my body.

It was an art tool and it needed to finish the process it begun.

I couldn’t stop, I had to finish it.

I didn’t want to stop and then it was finished.

The paper was not empty anymore.

My body was mine again, but not in the way it used to be.

It felt like I spent an infinity in a different space.

When I got home I knew what wasn’t right.

I fell ill for three weeks, not entirely sure if by nostalgia for my infinite space or by flu.

Probably the second.

Photo by Lindsay Milne

Photo by Sid Scott

Photo by Sid Scott

Photo by Sid Scott