a miniature recreation of the-north-pole-meets-my-mind

Having spent hours taping styrofoam to the floor, I proceeded to spend another couple of hours unsticking the whole thing. I thought the deconstruction remnants of the installation were actually just as interesting as the constructed whole, so here they are.

unmade beds #54 (stitching time)

This was my site specific installation for Art a couple of weeks back. The inspiration theme was 'Never', so I took it in the direction of never growing up or old. It evolved into a white room (white being symbolic for purity and clean slates) with skeleton flowers (these could also be seen as modern, futuristic ones, or as the remnants of a past).

The floor was half styrofoam and flour, half mattresses and scraps of (white) cloth. I wanted to create a space that stood outside of the space of time (this comes from the idea that arose from a discussion I had with a coyear here, about time being another form of space), that could be ageless, as it were. The mattresses and styrofoam were my attempts to landscape the floor, as I wanted the installation to be tactile and comfortable. The flour provided some element of movement in the room, as it changed when people walked over it. It also meant that people could not leave without taking some with them, tying in to the idea of memories and time forever interacting with the present and future.

The title comes from the idea of dreaming being a means through which one can escape what my English teacher calls 'the tyranny of time'. It also links to the saying 'a stitch in time saves nine', which is all about doing things well the first time around. Essentially, I was interested in creating a space through my art, rather than putting my art in a space, and about looking at the idea of time.

Any queries, comments or things in general? Email me or leave a comment :)

on a good day you can see the end from here

(A Sunday tea party in honour of my long-since surpassed birthday. I like the blurriness of motion, it captures the warmth of the lighting best.)

So, procrastination seems to be the word of the day. It is the reason for the lack of more pictures (hello Belgian coyear with an elusive streak), the lack of free time (hello English assignment, Hindi test, Chemistry lab and just life in general) and the lack of any actual message beyond this lovely thing I found a while back:

"Okay so you’re out the gates and in the race and you get an education and a job and a wife and a kid and you drink and you eat and you make love when you can sometimes more than you can and you consume things like your lover and a cigarette and a drink and a bite to eat before you go to sleep and then wake up and do it again because you can and you will and that’s what’s expected of you just like they expected it of your father and his father before him and one day they’ll expect it from your kids too and then their kids will follow your over trodden footsteps into the office and get a cup of coffee and talk by the water cooler about what movies they saw last night."

You need to slow down. There is more than this.

(I Wrote This For You blogspot)

light squares and bodies are all you see.

(Laura Marling, High Spirits Cafe, Pune, last November/December?)

Het is weer een tijdje geleden sinds ik in het nederlands heb geschreven. Dat komt waarschijnlijk door de lack of Dutch spoken on campus, en mijn incapability om de juiste lidwoorden te gebruiken (een duidelijke hint dat ik niet helemaal door en door nederlands ben, helaas). Thuis gebruikte ik altijd engelse woorden in mijn nederlands (and also the other way around, it must be said), en dat is alleen maar erger geworden.

Maar goed. Taalkundig fail aside, ik heb dit weekend niet veel uitgevoerd. Het was Pasen, the end of mocks for second years, and I hosted a tea party for a rather late celebration of my birthday.

My art exhibition has been up for about a week and a half now, and I really ought to get pictures of it. Work is starting to build up and pile around me (my room is now full of paper. I feel like I'm in the Science of Sleep.)

I saw the destruction the fire wrecked in the biodiversity on Saturday, it is incredible. The land goes from green to ash grey, and there is almost nothing left. It is strangely beautiful in its dead state.

En even terug naar nederlands. Lenn en ik hebben dit weekend gehoord dat we first years hebben! Tot nu toe nog maar een, maar hopelijk verandert dat deze week.

Het wordt hier een beetje vreemd, want we hebben nog maar veertig dagen met onze tweede jaars en huidige kamergenoten. The suspense of who is rooming with who is building up, en iedereen bereidt zich voor om naar universiteit te gaan, gedag te zeggen en naar huis te gaan.

I think this about captures the spirit:

(http://breaths.tumblr.com/)

and in five years time you might just prove me wrong

PUSHKAR, MARCH 11TH

My birthday and the end of my photographic journaling of project week. We arrived at about four in the morning, after a very uncomfortable bus ride. Wandering around the streets, we managed to find a hotel, just about stumble in and collapse on some beds. The 'next' morning meant an attempt to find breakfast, which was quite an interesting thing.

We'd headed off down the road optimistically, but were soon hampered by the large bulk of traffic and noise. Slowly picking our way through it, we found a street with several rooftop restaurants. All we had to do was choose one.

Simple, you'd think, but no.

Pushkar is known for its drugs, and, in particular, a special little drink called bhang lassi. Lassi is a thick yoghurt drink, which one can find over most of India. It does not affect one to any great extent, unless you are very prone to sugar rushes.

Bhang, on the other hand, is a form of cannabis. Enough said on that, I guess.

The place was thus, understandably, filled with hippies.

Back to the breakfast issue, however.

Thinking we had too much choice, we decided to just pick the first rooftop place we saw. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be rather awful.

We made our way up the narrow grey concrete stairs, hemmed in by weirdly pastel pink walls. When we got to the top, it was completely deserted. Having already woken up the guy behind the counter by this point, we felt obliged to take a seat in the awkward-looking wicker chairs and admire the view. The little man stumbled over awkwardly and handed us the menus.

We chose, we ordered, we waited.

We continued to wait for about an hour, occasionally checking downstairs to see whether the cook was even still alive. We'd only ordered pancakes, and it wasn't rocket science.

Turns out the guy had had to go to the market, buy fruit, come back, walk upstairs, pick up plate, walk back down, turn on the gas, build a house, write a novel and serve us some food, all at the same time.

We tried to enjoy the view and each other's company, but what with my 'on my birthday' addition to the end of every sentence (admittedly, I was still feeling solidly sixteen), the fact that we'd spent a long time together already and it may have been wearing and our hunger, it was not the most fun hour.

When the food finally arrived, it was suspicious, substandard and not worth the build-up. I hope the novel and house building worked out better.

The rest of the day, after avoiding the fake priests and stomaching the disappointment that the lake in the centre of the city was drained, went a little better. The place was infused with some sort of happy, calm atmosphere, and we passed the time spotting the coolest hippies, shopping and enjoying the city.

That evening, we got to Jaipur, where we spent the last day of travel week. It was stunning, and if I do eventually get the pictures my co-travellers took, I'll put them up. On the train back, we met a crazy American yoga-teaching hippie, but that's a tale for a rainy day.