Paesaggio (Frog issue)

Paesaggio Antonio Gagliano q Dan Perjovschi q Dora GarcĂ­a Fiona Tan q Guido van der Werve q Henk de Velde Irene Kopelman q Lara Almarcegui q Marcelline Delbecq Mircea Nicolae q Raqs Media Collective Saskia Holmkvist q Yoko Ono

edited by

Blauer Hase

Acknowledgements Blauer Hase would like to acknowledge all the artists that have accepted to contribute to this international issue of Paesaggio.

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Yoko Ono..........................................................................................................

Henk de Velde ..................................................................................................

Antonio Gagliano .............................................................................................

Dora GarcĂ­a ......................................................................................................

Irene Kopelman ................................................................................................

Fiona Tan ..........................................................................................................

Raqs Media Collective ......................................................................................

Dan Perjovschi ..................................................................................................

Saskia Holmkvist ..............................................................................................

Mircea Nicolae .................................................................................................

Marcelline Delbecq ............................................................................................

Lara Almarcegui ................................................................................................

Guido van der Werve .........................................................................................

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7 8 10 15 16 25 26 28 30 40 44 45 51

Have you seen the horizon lately?

Landscapes in Prussian blue Vadim and I came from the mountain following the path which is not there. All was covered in icy snow. I followed him. He was faster than me because he knew where to put his steps. Looking around me I saw nothing more than the horizon reaching towards the far north. What do we see, what do we feel, what do we hear? Nothing but colours. Imagining the colours a blind man sees. Trying to explain how a certain colour looks. He cannot feel it, he cannot hear it. But it’s all about colours. There are parts of the world (or places in the world) where you don’t see what you actually see. This has to do with reflections and radiation. Be it from the rays of sun through the different layers of the atmosphere. You see a big bird that is nothing more than a normal seagull sitting on the edge of a new water stream after the thawing of the winter ice. Or as you walk you encounter a huge monument that is nothing more than a small wooden pole sticking out of the snow.

Thousand shades of blue.

Out there on the ocean where the sea colours according to the sky.

I have been standing there under the sails of a sailing boat and wondering about the endless waveless blue towards the horizon. But the next day that blue can be life threatening and dark or almost black. In the night you wish for daylight and in the day you wish for the darkness so you can’t see the waves towering above you.

The sky above and a deep deep crevasse below.

Where am I? Life or death. Here or there.

A beach of sand or a beach of gravel.

I looked out of a window and had to guess where I was.

I see a shade of dark blue. That’s the land on the other side. From me to that shade of dark blue the colours change from whitish blue through all the other shades in between. It’s daytime but it’s almost dark. Lighter colours of the sky can only be seen towards the other side of the dark blue land where the sun hides behind the mountains.

I see a shade of lighter blue. But not a constant colour. The blue has shades and is changing.

It’s the ocean. It’s the sea behind the horizon. And I am on my way to round the world. The blue turns dark and lighter again. The waves are higher than before. The sky gets dark. The sun hides behind the clouds until there is no sun anymore. That’s the storm. The storm is dark and threatens my life. There is no fear because I navigate my boat and try to keep her safe. I reduce the sails, once and then again. Night is coming, the wind is howling. The sound of the winds starts above a certain wind speed. Between the howling I hear the breaking sea.

Not much later the blue on the other side of the bay is invisible because of the night. Only one colour exists. Black. But when you look into the black for a while, you see surroundings and still in the black you find the darker shades of dark blue. No sound. Nothing. Not even a whisper of wind. The only sound you hear is the beating of your own heart. How can it be? The roaring thunder of the vast ocean suddenly changed into the ultimate silence in a country without colours. I touch my hand, I touch my forehead. Yes I am and I speak, I speak aloud and hear my own voice. There is no one here and no one will hear it, whatever I say.

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It’s the complete difference between one and something different. Still the same earth. An expedition. A discovery. To the most isolated places on this planet or of the soul … the darkness, the silence, words into thin air. How can I find out where I am or what I am? Or am I here to accept?

When I entered the vehicle I did not know what to expect. No windows. Just a steel cage.

No roads, not even a path, only frozen rivers. Some 300 km further there was a boat frozen in and it needed some work. There would be a Polar station near. The driver is armed. Polar bears, he says. After an hour we stop. To drink vodka and to pee. I feel sick but I don’t talk about it.

The cage stinks of diesel fuel. It’s dark and the vehicle shudders. We stop 8 times. To pee. Only the driver drinks vodka. To stay alert, he says. When we arrive it’s the next day. The frozen boat looks lost in the crystal white surroundings of a frozen river in an estuary far north of the Polar circle. The buildings of the Polar station at a short distance. Above the white landscape I see black ravens.

Stepping ashore I walk in the mud. The tide is low. The shore is green. High trees are standing on the waterfront. A bit of yellow grass. Old and new driftwood. The new wood still has leaves on the branches. The old wood has a dark colour. Green becomes blue. Stones, rocks and barnacles.

Difficult to walk. Yes, I tell myself, yes this is the present. Here I am. I know when I arrived and why I am here. But I did not come to stay. Its too late in the season. I had days of rain. Everything wet. Then the frost came and the snow but now it is raining again. The mud is always there. The mud is there when the water flows back to the sea. Ebb tide.

Next moment I wake up. How long I have been sleeping? 5 minutes? One hour?

Then I hear it again. It’s the sea, the waves, the cruel sea and the angry waves banging against the boat. It shudders. It moves. It moves a way she should not move. The sails flaps. The auto-pilot shrieks. It’s night. I go outside and it takes some minutes for my eyes to get used to the blueish black mass which is the darkness around me. I pull the ropes. I tie the flapping sails. I adjust the auto-pilot. The sea is rough. Too rough. These latitudes are called the Roaring Forties and further south the Furious Fifties or Screaming Sixties. 40 to 60 degrees latitude. The boat gets a hammering. Almost too much. How long can she stand it? How long can I bear it? The sound of the fast moving breakers. It’s mad … it’s mad ! Inside the boat I manage to make some hot coffee.

Even the dark coffee has a blue colour. I can even feel the darkness. It feels cold. I am not here.

Nothing is wrong. I am not here. All is well. I am dreaming. I sleep and dream. It must have been long ago. Or yesterday.

But when I wake up, it is now … the present and the sun shines on a blue coast from a blue sea.

Port Hardy – BC – Canada - January 18 2011

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-The arch of neutrality-

-1Saparmurat Niyazov was the President of Turkmenistán, a small country that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet bloc and now known as a gas provider in much of Europe. During the nineties Niyazov became obsessed with reshaping Turkmenistan’s national identity and wrote a messianic book in which he outlined a new national morality. The Ruhnama soon became the cornerstone of the state apparatus and required reading to bid for public office, study or work in the academic sector or even obtain a driver’s license.

He soon established the text as the only reading material available in libraries throughout the country. In 2005, a year before Niyazov’s death, a rocket containing a copy of the book was sent into orbit.

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-2In 1977 Carl Sagan, the renowned American science commentator, was hired by NASA to curate the contents of a gramophone record that would travel outside the solar system with the idea of contacting other intelligent life forms. This record, constructed of solid gold, would contain a selection of the finest cultural products in the world. A scientific committee was convened and chaired by Sagan to develop this dizzying 90-minute archive, which included songs, pictures, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter.

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-3The golden watch is a chapter in Pulp Fiction, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The first scene, narrates the story of Butch, the role played by Bruce Willis. Butch receives the gold watch that his dead father had hidden in his ass during his years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He listens to the monologue of his father’s friend and then embraces the watch as a precious legacy.

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-4General Per贸n also designed his own time capsule. A chest containing a handwritten manuscript in which he openly addressed the people of the future was interred in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires in 1948. Buried eighty centimetres deep, it was covered in concrete with a marble plaque placed on the surface which specified that the capsule should be opened more than half a century later, sometime in 2006. Soon, however, amid a landscape of political turbulence, the package was disinterred and the message destroyed.

- 13 -

-EpilogueIn addition to editing the Ruhnama and dramatically decreasing the national reading rate, Saparmurat Niyazof made other memorable gestures. He also designed an extensive range of monuments in his honor. The best known one, located at the top of the tallest tower in the country, is a monumental model of his body, covered with pure gold and filled with small fragments of a meteorite that had previously crashed in the region. The Arch of Neutrality has an automatic timer that turns the statue so that it is always facing the sun and no shadow falls on his face.

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Windy morning in Brussels. We have started to retry the system for an exhibition at the ICA, London, called Secret Agent. And everything seems to function correctly, in spite of the enormous amount of text this aplication is currently carrying. AND everything?

All right then, but should it work as well with a large block of text? I seem to remember now that the maximum was four lines.

However, this might have changed. It is important to take into account as well the time the system needs to transport the text from one screen to the other. all riiiiiight. we are trying now from the ICA. and here we are the three of us checking it out. we are trying now this with all performers. a group of people waiting to type something and wearing different clothes. Someone else may enter in a moment. Or not? seven figures, 6 women, one man, standing around quite shily still. unsure they clasp their things in front of their bodies keeping to themselves still stillness slow pacing low voicing what to do when you go to the toilet? take it with you. go! a group of people sit down with arms folded and legs crossed. a young woman stands next to the desk talking quietly white walls. grey. eight people. is there anything left to say? two watching the screen trying the computer seems fine yes just trying to explain again and again and it is never the same but though it captures slightly the essence of th now. that’s it and silvia is back as well so what can now go wrong at all? cable, computer, and tripping over your laces of course Opening day, press coming soon. Today first day of performance here in London. the shadow woman is throwing off her high heels onto the floor. clackclack.you can’t see her. yet. but, she says, she will be sitting there fore threeandahalf hours. there, in that corner. reality as fiction. that’s what she says she’s wondering about. she wants the real experience, trouble and truth. dangerously her left big toe is stepping over the edge. rocking back and forth she is irritatingly, the reaction to where the artworld has pidgeonholed her today? the shadow woman sits still now she says, her name is saskia. tall man enters. a coffee in hand which does not transpire yet it’s aroma throughout the space. it will surely taste better than... the shadow woman is pacing. she is a tiger, she is a fish. gently swirling in the auditorium. she’s in her aquarium. she’s being watched. she enjoys to be watched. she says she’s the artist, what will the evening be like? she’s here now. not the shadow woman. she’s real! clickclack did the shadow woman’s boots when she threw them onto floor. clickclick made the real woman’s camera. later, she will talk she said. like the shadow woman. the shadow woman whose name was saskia she said. should a shadow woman have a name? which one is fiction then, the shadow or the name? doors closed. empty space. barred space. dramatic scores from farther out. the sky cleared up above the river about twenty minutes ago. white sky, blue sky. no sky in here. but a lamp. the shadow woman is whispering she is nervous. her voice becoming more energetic she ponders why she put herself into this space: the door has openend now. welcome to the vivarium. viva el aquarium. there’s a big fish in the aquarium today: the queen of fake documentary. she is whispering in too loud a voice because she’s nervous. welcome to el vivarium! the shadow woman is waiting. the real woman sits in suspense and wears black. what we see is not what we get. saskia is being asked a question. unintelligible dutch. and laughter dora esta checkando. leyendo. parando. andandose ya.hay que continuar jugar con el video. espacio vacio tridimensional.espacio vivando en pantalla. la ficcion como la realidad? que no rias!what you get is not always what you see man entering. scepticism written all over the forehead. perhaps saskia can rub it off? let her do the talking. clickclack clack. paso triple.three steps. and reading again. is it too early for dancing? roaming the papers will give away everything. fiction becomes reality. you can do what you want. yesterday he asked her: what could go wrong? the cable, the computer, and tripping over your laces. the man’s laces are yellow with thin orange lines. the unravel over the floor like 4 tired snakes. one entered and hissed and snapped his fingers and left already. the real woman is back now. saskia just said good night. reading and finding out. clickclackclack. three steps again to the side. will she dance? the man’s snake-laces wound there way out of here. soon she will follow. waiting in the corner she would be, saskia the shadow woman said. the real woman is now in the corner too. writing about writing about writing? control? mending spiderwebs and handwriting and laces. a ball in the corner. let’s dance. reality as fiction, saskia says, over and over again. she seems like a record player where the needle got stuck. your dance will be the break. everything that happened occurred against saskia’s will she says. this urging, this pidgeonholing. she wants to hide behind her black curtain and yet she remains visible for all of us and explains what she thinks and whatshe does. saskia says everything that happened to her occurred without her will. this urging, this pidgeonholing, this conincidence.el azar.she wants to hide behind her black curtain and yet, she explains without pause what it is that she thinks and what it is that she does. a box has been put in the space by the entry way. do not leave any luggage unattended. any unattended luggage may be removed or destroyed without warning. the laces have come back. orange and yellow and fine thread and fine lines. can you write some words with them on the floor? black jacket, black trousers and snakes tied in the shoes. the real woman, the shadow woman and this man came in black. but the sky has cleared over the river. don’t leave any luggage unattended. they are being carried away. two pieces of luggage now it seems. clickclackclack. out of reach but still audible the locks are being snapped open and saskia on my left screams. dramatic music again. perhaps this is not at all an event for dancing in the end? have you ever thought about masks? does her shadow cast her away? clickclackclack.a film is being snapped in and turned the small wheel to settle the roll in its chamber. pacing in and out of vision.the scepticism still written all over the forehead but rather directed to the mechanical piece round the neck. flashflashclack. the sky cleared up over the river now there is lightning in here and saskia’s cough. he is staying close to the wall now as if to take shelter from the white, colourless erruption. approaching now backing up again and a red light point joining the lightening.

STANDING.feet slightly pointing apart from each other. WORKING.with images not with words. only saskia is talking. continuous, endless talking in her two-dimensional space of her screen: the queen of fake documentary in her reign.laces and reigns.control?la realidad como ficcion.que va no! la ficcion como la realidad. die wirklichkeit auf einem foto gefangen. der moment eingefroren. das maedchen im schein der lampe.the girl in the shine of her lamp. in the shine like her shrine scheint der schein. der schein truegt. la aparicion.appearance.no appearance without light. or?and the shadow woman is still sitting on her wooden box behind her black curtain. bent over in that corner she is whispering her text. rehearsing for the moment yet to come. yes saskia must step out and is wondering already what kind of people she will meet tonight and what they will tell her.trouble, truth, the real experience.the loop. clickclackclack.the lightening now from behind and seems done: people

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50 Metres Distance Or More Day 1 – Leaving Ushuaia

Day 2

It is a relief to feel the desire to draw as soon as I get onto the boat. It is raining; I feel tired. I decided to wait until tomorrow before I begin drawing.

Perhaps I will start after crossing Drake Passage, an infamous stretch of open sea. I remember now that I had already planned to write on board, to reflect on the act of drawing while drawing, to contemplate its specificity. Fortunately, I am eager to do both.

Establishing a system is the most difficult — what to draw and how. Should I think in terms of lines, or in terms of chiaroscuro?

How to frame the mountain on a page?

What to do with all the details that, however marvellous to the eye, get lost in the general view once they are represented as part of a whole? Even if I wind up making the same drawings as when I was 23, I still like to think that I don’t know how to approach this, how to confront the blank sheet, how to represent this landscape.

For what other reason, if not drawing, would one decide to keep one’s eyes on the same mountain for more than three seconds?

I doubt anyone would do so for a different reason. Surveying the mountain with your eyes is already a way of drawing, a process of scanning, fixing it in sight while imagining it on paper.

Does one see things as one wishes to draw them?

The good thing is that once you find your “subject matter”, everything else falls into place.

There have been places where I had to search for it, summon it up from the landscape. Here, I don’t need to—it’s everywhere I look. Once I’m in front of something I want to draw, I can’t help but draw. Even when I’m tired.

When I’m in front of a mountain, I want to survey its contours in an almost sensual exercise of scrutinizing the shapes with the gaze.

The first day is for outlining the system.

Factors to take into account: the movement of the boat. What will I be able to draw when the boat is in motion? How long will it take to pass a mountain? How much can be done in that lapse of time to convert the image into lines? A potential for a parallel series: drawings in motion / drawings in stillness. Or: outlines of the snow accumulated on the mountain ridges, along with its material tensions.

My understanding of drawing, of the landscape, has it changed over the years? Do I position myself differently in front of the paper and the mountain than ten years ago in Córdoba?

The understanding is more or less the same; the appreciation of being here in front of this landscape, however, is not. The hills are no longer three hours away from home. You need to search for them, plan for them, long for them. Now that I am here, I become conscious of the singularity of the moment.

What I desire for is right here in front of me, and I can hardly believe it’s real.

At the top of a mountain draped in snow is a dark horizontal line. This narrow snowless border stands out against the sky, forming a waferthin line, the barest of lines. The direction of the snow on the rocks, the tensions. The centrifugal and centripetal movements of the mountains’ folds, convergent and divergent, amassing snow—or none at all, according to the shapes. The variations of light blue and the blue of the mountains, one behind the other, like a monochromatic rainbow. The peaks, cut out, wedged between other peaks. The shifting, mountainous horizon, beyond which another appears, wanting to become a form.

Another thing is the way of filtering representation I have developed over the years. My way of looking coincides with multiple layers of looking at representations of nature throughout history.

When I see the mountains, I also see those drawings; I remember old plates, ways of resolving the image, the shapes, the planes, the distances.

I can already imagine a very simple painting.

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It’s as if different stretches of time are overlapping. First, the time in Córdoba, when I felt for the first time that drawing the mountains was like apprehending them. I remember the forms of those first mountains as if they were mine. For years, I used to ramble through the countryside, all the time sitting down to draw. Then I moved to Europe.

The landscape I knew vanished; it became a mental space, a utopia, a landscape of longing. During my time in Amsterdam, I was thrown back on representations of nature in old books and a desire to be in those far-away places.

There are eight of us altogether. Three of us had to stay awake for three hours, the others five, and we had to continue doing this until the boat completed the crossing. It took us somewhere between two and three days. When you’re awake, you’re outside on the boat, “on watch” — watching for things that might harm the boat: giant cruise ships, icebergs, and the like. When you are not on watch, you’re asleep. There is quite simply no energy left for anything else. Everything is moving, sometimes the boat is at a sixty to seventy degree incline. You cannot even get to the toilet or out of “bed” without falling.

And now this. It feels like a re-enactment of an old forgotten practice, something I never expected to find its way back into my practice. It seems to me the idea of “apprehension by drawing” is not utopian. Far from it. Drawing is a way of embedding shapes into the nervous system.

I got seasick. Very exhausting. For some reason I went on doing the watches and couldn’t bring myself to lie down. Yet lying down is the only position in which one doesn’t feel sick; I was genuinely relieved every time I did so. I guess it was the desire to see the ocean that dragged me out of bed, each time hoping I’d feel better.

Just now I started drawing on and with the movement of the boat. I try to capture things that disappear just before I can grasp them. The limits are the seconds they take to cross the view. I want to continue drawing, but the landscape I’m looking for has already disappeared. It is receding into the distance.

Luckily, the second day I did feel slightly better — still weak and unsteady, but at least in one piece.

However unpleasant, the experience was especially interesting for its cyclical rhythm, which makes you lose yourself and any sense of time. You lose count of the hours and days, which is only accentuated by the fact that there is hardly any darkness. Sometime between midnight and 2:00 a.m. it gets slightly darker — that’s it.

Day 5 – Deception Island Hard to tell the exact date. During the last days I thought I’d have a lot to write about, but now that it’s over, it has become quite difficult to summon it all up again. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful experience to cross the open ocean. I was really sick, which has blurred my thought process and memory.

Now that we’re in quiet waters again, sitting in the sunshine, it all seems very easy.

Everyone keeps telling you to look at the horizon to recover your balance, but as hard as you search for the horizon, it is never there; just a wavy line against the sky. It never stops; it refuses to stop. Even so, it is very impressive to feel the power of the water. Luckily I didn’t feel afraid, luckily I didn’t feel claustrophobic.

I mean that as pure luck, by having some chance genetic disposition, the same disposition that determines whether you fall sick or not.

We crossed Drake Passage, a stretch of open ocean between the southernmost parts of Argentina and Chile, and the Antarctic. It’s where the Atlantic and the Pacific merge. Cold currents meet warm currents with a clash. The entire way you can feel the boat swaying — it is just 18 metres long by 3,5 metres wide.

Anyway, it’s over now and I finally have a chance to sift through the thoughts I had in the midst of that experience. We are anchored in a beautiful bay, a former whaling settlement. Remnants of metal structures contrast with the stunning landscape, like on a movie set.

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On the open ocean, I was reminded of the accounts of early explorers. I realised that, to me, this was already close to being unbearable — even knowing that, statistically, accidents rarely happen, knowing that it will be over in 48 to 56 hours, knowing which winds are expected, knowing what we will find at the end of this trip. Despite all these certainties, we still feel left to our own devices. I couldn’t stop thinking about those people, centuries ago, who couldn’t rely on those certainties and still plunged ahead, onto the ocean.

The timing with which the boat stays at the site and veers off again, the wind, the cold, the gloves — all of this, these restrictions, are part of the project. That I know. But I’m still not sure whether I should piece together a system or, rather, continue making a strategy every day based on the conditions, monitor how that evolves and allow my thoughts to be led by the process.

I’m worried about the discomfort of using the camera lucida and the Lorrain mirror.

Another thing I remembered was the representation of monsters encountered at sea, Aldrovandi XV, and the understanding of those monsters as a product of delirium and fear. I can say from my own experience that one easily imagines three-headed animals rising up from those fathomless waters. The sea is pounding mercilessly, ceaselessly, and it feels so powerful, so massive; it is very hard to describe. The boat just keeps on going, along with the cadence of the water, a tiny vessel in the midst of it all, carrying us, not even fearful, just wrapped up in all of this.

Day 8 Art history, fourth year at university. The aesthetic understanding of the landscape. Looking at the landscape in terms of beauty is not a given. It hasn’t always been this way. It is a legacy of the 18th century.

My experience is an extreme case of perceiving the landscape as something pictorial. I see painting after painting. White on black. Black on white. Whitish whites, yellowish whites. Minimal landscapes, duotonal. At times there are spots of light. It is hard to identify the source of the light; all is grey, then suddenly you see a puddle of light somewhere.

Suddenly a mountain flares up, as if belonging to another landscape. As I’m trying to take it all in, I am as yet unsure what will come out of this. I do know that this is the most beautiful sight I have seen up to this point — the most radical. White on petrol blue. Black on petrol blue. That’s it.

Day 7 – Teflon Bay, Deception Island Yesterday I had a small revelation about the specificity of drawing. Photographs don’t do the trick for me. Why not? Simply because it doesn’t allow me to choose any frame other than a rectangle. As simple as that. If that which I want to draw is behind a mountain, then what do I do to erase the mountain in front? How do I get the image I want, without all the rest? When drawing, I can make disappear what I do not want, and bring closer what is too far away.

We’ve been on the move the entire day; I’ve been trying to draw while the boat was afloat. The difficulty is that your “subject matter” passes by before you can manage to draw it. In the end I tackled it to some extent. When I think about it, I hope it will be the precise quality of these drawings: that they have registered the tension of the moment, the cold, the movement — the attempt coordinated by the eye and the hand to grasp at least a few shreds of the landscape while passing in front of the mountains.

I don’t know yet how I’ll handle other weather conditions. Yesterday was sunny; I had no problems. Today is icy cold and windy. I will draw what is visible from the deck of the boat, using the transparent shelter, where it’s cold, but bearable.

Now that the boat is at anchor, it started rotating. It continually obstructs my view. I have to wait until it spins all the way round before I am offered the same view again.

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Day 9 – Tied to a wreck, Enterprise Bay

entails for me being around people all the time.

Each drawing is what it has to be and what it can be.

Today’s drawings resulted from an increasing desire throughout the day, a desire for the snowing to end. It was a compressed and accumulated longing, leading up to one hour — or less — in which it was possible to go out, between one snowfall and the next, before the fingers froze.

The engine is silent. Things hardly ever remain still. Either the boat is moving, or it snows, or the fog comes in, only to dissipate again. I need to take full advantage of the intervals I am permitted to work in. I decided to set up the camera lucida. It is difficult to get the pencil to coincide with the image projected onto the paper. After a few hours I have managed to get that part to work — to some degree, at least. The trick is to see the projection of the landscape and the pencil drawing at once. But the device only projects a very small portion of the landscape, and then you have to shift the camera just a tiny bit to get to see the next portion. I still don’t know how to work my way to the laterals of the image once I’ve traced the portion that was visible. By that time, I’ve lost my sense of the totality.

Three swift drawings with a perceptible urgency to represent what is possible, knowing that the time I am granted will soon have elapsed. When concentration ends, the drawing ends too. The time when the anxiety of the day reaches its height: one hour, one hand, the narrow slot of snowlessness — what remains is a small drawing in which all those elements are condensed.

Perhaps I should abandon the idea of a system.

Perhaps every day will have its own system, defined by weather, whether or not the boat shifts place, where it anchors and which view is there.

The restrictions are manifold, almost too many. I realise I’ve started feeling anxious about not being able to establish a working system. But then, it is impossible for me to devise such a system, since I never know what I will be faced with the next day, or how, or where; how much time until the boat veers off, or the wind starts blowing. All the while, the beauty of this place is indescribable, hallucinatory — in the strict sense of the word. The density of the snow, the amount of accumulated matter, the light haloes that appear in the mountains beyond.

The sense of perspective emanating from the many icebergs floating around — innumerably many.

The filters of fog on the slopes behind the halo.

Day 10 The time factor starts to become frustrating every now and then. I wish I could stand still for a prolonged time in front of each form. All of them are marvellous and distinct, and they multiply incessantly. I wish I could sit with every form that appears whenever the boat moves. There is not enough time. I just hope to take it all in, if only unconsciously; that the images will stick on the retina.

There is something strangely peculiar about my spatial perception of the mountains. They look like cutouts, almost as if stenciled. It might be because of the light — maybe that is why I haven’t had any sculptural ideas so far. It doesn’t feel like a “quiet” landscape. That might be due to the mounting pressures in the ice, which can break at any given time. There’s this sense of impending disintegration, a slumbering force that will inevitably alter the landscape.

Day 11 – Presidente Gabriel González Videla Base (Waterboat Point) and Paradise Harbour My first two or three hours of solitude in nine days.

I am definitely not used to such intense company.

Eight people on a boat of sixty square metres: it feels like a camping trip with strangers. The space one occupies shrinks after a few days. In the beginning I thought I wouldn’t survive with so little of it, but after a very short time I got used to compressing myself into it. Now that I’m alone for a while, I become aware of the degree of disorientation it

Yesterday I let Darrel have a peek at what I was doing. Until then I have sort of kept quiet about what I’m doing. The others have very different

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reasons for being here; they’re fond of sailing, adventure, travelling. It’s a very different way of engaging with the landscape. Darrel instinctively realised that I needed motionlessness and solitude.

We agreed to start watching for suitable spots, so he or Cath can bring me ashore with the Zodiac, our inflatable motorboat, and leave me there for a few hours. Today, we found a spot in front of a huge glacier. Darrel dropped me here along with my drawing tools and a radio.

Day 12 Does an artist ever go on holiday?

Not that I have a choice. An atrocious wind is keeping everything from view, making it impossible to go outdoors. The first part of the day we navigated through blizzards with zero visibility.

After we anchored, we had no choice but to stay inside. Like a Sunday in winter.

I find myself on a small stone island of about ten by twenty metres, surrounded by icy water and in front of an awe-inspiring glacier. There’s a small bird pecking at something — my sole companion.

Sitting here, I’m again faced with the question what I should draw when every speck deserves to be represented. For now, I opt for the upper part of the glacier, which is shaped extraordinarily. Masses of snow are packed together, solidified. They produce a constant noise, coagulating, breaking, falling.

That thing is definitely alive.

Day 13 – Port Lockroy, overnight at Damoy Point Hut There are times, surely, when I wish I were on a holiday…

By now I have grown tired of so many restrictions.

Or rather, I’m losing my taste for the poetics of restriction. I was told there’s a beautiful mountain here somewhere, but the fog doesn’t allow me to see it. Anchored in front of a glacier, I attempted to capture it, but the boat started rotating again, obstructing the view every five minutes. So I positioned myself on the highest part of the boat, where the spinning around doesn’t affect the view, but then it started to snow, and that part isn’t sheltered, and so on and so forth. It is getting close to impossible to do anything.

It is a fulfilment to notice that the eye “opens up” when you wait long enough. It seems that everything in this task has to do with anticipation: waiting for a usable view, waiting for something that could potentially become a sculpture, waiting, as I am now, for the snowing to stop so I can bring the paper out and draw. It’s all about finding a way to wait, long enough to figure out how to go about it. It turns out the proper way to wait is, in fact, to keep drawing. The process only unfolds itself through working.

Then there are my own shortcomings. It is genuinely difficult to draw a glacier. I’m reminded of an exercise from my first year in art school: to draw a piece of cloth with its endless amount of folds and creases. In trying, the eye adjusts, and starts seeing a bit more.

It almost feels as if frustration has become my veritable subject matter: frustration at not being able to grasp the beauty, at having neither the capacity nor the conditions at my disposal. But most of all it is my own lack of skill — or anyone else’s, for that matter — to get this down on a piece of paper. For this place is more than what anyone could possibly record.

Another interesting issue is that of scale. At which scale, and on which paper size, should I represent what I see? Cut-out pieces or small fragments: small paper. When there’s more distance: mediumsize paper. When the landscape is very near: larger paper.

At the very least, a drawing made on weathered rock while hearing the sound of the living ice is definitively a different drawing than one made in my studio.

Watercolour seems suitable for representing this.

It’s an issue of gradients, rather than lines.

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I wonder how to improve the method in projects of this kind. Maybe the only option would be to travel on my own, or with a group of other artists.

Or, to just accept working with the restrictions as my subject matter.

lines seem to be too coarse for the delicacy of these places.

It finally feels like the landscape has entered the eye. Every day I see smaller and more subtle details; minuscule lines, minute differences between figure and background. As I write this, I realise that “figure and background” are very nearly nonexistent — it’s all figure. The cloud, which ought to behave like the mountain’s background, is in fact as animate as the mountain itself. The white snowy mountainside, which could be an anchor for the eye, is instead receiving isolated light beams that render the surface a lively figure. This place is truly dramatic, unimaginable, something which has its own power. The strangest thing is that it’s a quiet force; contained, calm, but intense.

Day 14 – Port Lockroy To return, and stay on land for a month — or two, or three…

For the next round, I will need a device to protect the paper from getting wet. It could be a drawing board with an acrylic protection on top. Maybe the height of this “roof ” could be adjustable. I’d like to have one of those telescope devices as well — the one that’s a mix of a telescope and a camera lucida.

Not to be forgotten: fingerless gloves, patches for warming hands and feet (‘hotties’), an outdoor chair like the one they have on the boat.

As I try to imagine my next step, the only thing I can think of is to return here. Having to move has proven to be the most distressing part. All I wish for is to be able to stay, to be present in every corner — or in one spot, long enough to see it change.

For the landscape is constantly transforming: the light fluctuates dramatically, the clouds tighten and clear out, particles of ice and snow rain down, it all happens at once when you’re sitting in front of your “object of study”.

There’s an image I like a lot. I’ve seen it quite a few times these days. It is when the mountains appear between the clouds. A very sparse image, delicate. Delicacy is the noun most applicable to this landscape. I have never seen anything of such magnificence. Everything is teeming with marvellous detail, any patch you observe. It’s simply impossible to stop thinking in terms of aesthetics; everything is like looking at a painting. Yesterday I even felt visually fatigued from being presented with so many images, that is, from my own reflex to perceive them as drawings or paintings. There are moments when I would like to take a leave of absence from my aesthetic gaze, but it doesn’t seem like I will ever be granted some time off.

The idea of returning with a stack of drawings after a trip like this is something to look forward to, but at the same time it scares me. The scale of the project is too grand in comparison with the thirty to forty drawings that will remain. The experience is epic, the outcome anything but. Maybe that is just something I need to come to terms with. In any case, I don’t consider any of the sculptural ideas I have had to be worthwhile. I have been unable to find a system, and I don’t suppose I will still find one. It is much rather like a daily negotiation with the given conditions: the weather, the time I am granted on site. It sounds obvious when you sum it up, but when it comes to working it is radical.

Day 15 Yesterday I decided to focus on the splashes of mountain emerging between the clouds — small scraps intermittently visible and invisible within the white current. It led to the most minimalist watercolours of the entire expedition. Watercolour feels like the method of choice these past days, as

I’ve barely had a chance to use the devices I brought. I am so anxious about achieving at least a small number of drawings each day that I’m

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inclined to start drawing from the naked eye, only to finish because of rainfall, leaving, or exhaustion.

Next time when I’m on solid ground I will practice with it.

to take some beautiful photographs. I fantasised about documenting the forms for the purpose of reconstructing them later in my studio. Cath was patient enough to circle around several icebergs at an equal distance, occasionally stopping so I could take photographs from every angle. It was beautiful.

The light the icebergs absorb and reflect is simply enchanting. They seem to be from another world, unearthly. And yet, I don’t think they would work as sculptures; to imagine them as such feels like creating a caricature. They are perfect the way they are. I really wouldn’t know what to add, or how to make sense of them.

In the past days, the collective effort invested in my endeavour was a true help. The guys built me a shelter against the wind, allowing me to work outside the hut we slept in. The wind was hideous, the cold almost unbearable. How a bunch of wooden planks can make such a difference. It was like the day before, when I was fed up with the rotation of the boat, and Darrel simply dropped a second anchor to keep it still. They are making sure I can do my work. I’m infinitely grateful for that. Maybe artists are the most useless people in the world.

The restrictions don’t feel like a challenge any longer, but rather like an obstacle, an impenetrable block. The only thing to make me happy is the drive I have been having: there hasn’t been a single day that I did not wish to work. What’s more, I didn’t feel so insecure any more about the places being too beautiful for my hand. The drawings are what they are — and that goes for my hands as well.

Day 16 – Hougaard Island Yesterday has simply wrecked me. It kept pouring and pouring… First, while we traversed from one spot to another, the clouds completely blanked out the view. Cath and Darrel kept assuring us of the sheer beauty of whatever was behind the clouds.

Here we could have seen this, and over there you’d have the highest peak — but to us, all was blank.

I like the idea of seeing less in order to see more; that I can actually see some things more concentratedly by staying where I am and not going out to explore. No hiking, no kayaking, none of those things; just sit in front of one view for hours on end.

From the moving ship, I tried to draw fragments of glaciers. I often do that exercise; it is a fulfilling way to engage with, and submit to, the things passing in front of my eyes. As the boat advances, the object of study rapidly disappears, changes its angle, and finally recedes from view.

A few thoughts.

When we arrived, the boat dropped anchor.

Clouds obliterated all the views. It was raining hard, so the prospect of being dropped ashore for a good view turned out to be a deception.

Two. The one thing you need to decide on when working with landscape is scale. How are you going to make that vastness fit onto your piece of paper?

One. Is method only possible when there is repetition? Here, where the landscape and conditions are different each day, I am not able to create a system for working.

Three. I find myself wondering again and again about travel accounts from the 19th century. I have come to realise that it’s all about time. Just time.

No devices. No tricks. It’s purely a different notion of time. You’ve got to be capable of waiting for ten rainy days to have one proper working day, and then more rain may still come. It is similar to climbing: you’re bound to wait for the right moment.

Cath took Taryn and me for a cruise in the Zodiac. We went to see a site called the “iceberg graveyard”. Even though it was raining quite hard, it was a thrill to be outside among those forms.

Taryn had brought her camera, and managed

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Surveyors of old used to have a different notion of time; furthermore, their work was needed.

Drawing was one of the grounds for embarking on an expedition; their production was incorporated in the entire plan, and as a consequence everything was organised around it.

when one of these ice monsters disintegrates. The tensions cease and the masses fall, sink, spin—but only mildly, without forcing the panorama. The elements simply get reorganised. They move away, or get closer, all of the time very gracefully.

At the same time, this is a highly pictorial landscape. I cannot discover any sculptures.

Everything I represent, I represent in planes, I think because of the dimensions and the distances. The distances are huge, incredibly huge, and you always observe things from the water, as if from the outside.

That is why it becomes bi-dimensional and, indeed, pictorial. It’s as if there are only two materials: snow and stone. Consequently, there is only one pair of base colours — in an infinite number of gradations.

Day 17 – Vernadsky Base My object of study is highly animated… too animated, almost. I’ve spent four hours drawing, and the view must have changed dramatically at least ten times. An iceberg was rotating all by itself — it caused the perspective of the drawing to change continuously as I was making it. At first I thought my observation was failing; my brain wouldn’t admit that the iceberg was spinning. I had to verify it three times before I could accept that it was happening.

It is very difficult to think about other subjects to work on after this. Will landscape be my only subject matter? The objects in the wild, and their enclosed counterparts brought together in the museum: they somehow overlap. On the one hand, here it is in a “natural” state; on the other, there’s the studied version, classified for research purposes, or yet to be classified. It all comes together; one does not sit and look at a landscape any more without being conscious of all the landscapes seen before in history, as well as all the mental concepts of landscape — aesthetically, scientifically, with the knowledge of what was discovered when. That which I’ve learned in museums and that which I am seeing here now: it offers me another glance at what I saw when I was drawing the hills in Córdoba.

Twice, entire ice structures got submerged; on both occasions, they formed the background of my drawing. It is really estranging to draw a view which is, literally, in flux. Technically, one would begin by setting up the “whole”, then focus on detail.

That method is useless here. Once you’ve finished representing the whole, the parts have already changed position. The arrangement of the icebergs is changing minute by minute. It is puzzling to imagine that such masses can be modified with such speed. It’s even a little scary to be here alone in the middle of the nothingness with those creatures in constant motion. Whenever the water level rises, a fear creeps up on me that it might bury my small stone island. I cannot predict how high the level of the water would rise if one of the icebergs were to sink. I guess some drawings were made with a bit of adrenaline.

Day 19 For two days now, a shade of pink appeared on the horizon at sunset. It is bewildering, almost shocking, as the eye has grown so accustomed to the monochrome. Yesterday was sunny. Blue also set in, almost flattening the sky. Strange. I’ve seen many whitish blues these days, but yesterday it was a flat blue of a different intensity. It altered the landscape. That shook me, too: to realise that the landscape could be so different from what I took it to be.

The inability to put into words the liveliness of this place is not only a figure of speech, but a very concrete reality. It is equally indiscribable and hallucinating. The constant shifting, the light appearing and disappearing in different areas, the sound produced by the tension within the ice, the dimensions. This place is a living organism, but it is slumbering. There is no violence to it, not even

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I am working towards the end now. I am left with today and tomorrow for working, then comes the return voyage. Who knows what that will be like. I should make an attempt at using the devices today, at least for one day, or half a day. Thus far, it has been easier for me to work from the naked eye — due to habit, perhaps.

and can warm your hand. A miracle of technology.

I chose the pencil for this last afternoon. The maddening cold leads me to produce the most frozen drawings of the expedition. The line is different, without a doubt. I guess you need to believe unconditionally in the concept of “experience” to be sitting here today.

The familiar “problem” — what to represent if everything is like a painting — has become particularly tiresome. It cost me a fair amount of concentration. I wish I were able to stop thinking about it. Beauty, in a way, is tiring; too much of it can leave you overwhelmed. What always manages to captivate me is the distance of the landscape from the boat. It is like being outside the place and being part of it at the same time.

How do you cut out the landscape?

How do you mark it on the paper?

Two questions that have to be answered every time I sit like this.

Now that I have come to realise the need for coming back, I feel a bit more at rest. In any case, I have no choice but to surrender to the fact that the result is what it is. It will be like this anyhow; no matter how stubborn I get about it. I return with fragments of things, attempts at some unfinished watercolours, thoughts about how I should draw this or that. This has been more like fieldwork than a project in itself; only now I’ve learned what I need to do. The ideal point of departure would be to stay at a base, any base. One with geologists would be best. Or on my own, as Darrel suggests. But then I think the immobility would be too intense, maybe even counterproductive.

Day 20 – Palmer Station The coldness passes and the drawings remain.

Yesterday’s concluding thought. This morning, though, I received a present: another hour and a half of working before our final departure. It’s feels like a chance to properly say goodbye. This place has anchored itself in my mind as cloudy and twocoloured. It’s strange to think that other people have a different image of it.

I depart with disjointed fragments.

It is the way it is.

One of the weirdest things about being here is that it feels as if everything is the present. You never think about the past, and it is hard to think about the future. Everything is now. It might be due to the intensity of the place and the experience. Or because you are rarely alone.

Final afternoon of working. It might be the coldest day since arriving here. I’m sitting on a little hill with a beautiful glacier in front of me, still, immobile, as if it is going to stay there forever. By now, I know it will not stay, in fact, it may collapse at any moment.

But it feels immobile nonetheless.

They lent me these things called “hotties”: small squares that warm up when they’re exposed to air

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A Fool’s Paradise Excerpt from Part IV

Contemporary sounds of the heath, bees buzzing, breeze, distant aeroplane in the sky.

Footsteps come closer.

Architect: ‘Let’s walk a while down this path. Just like elephants, our legs are designed to regularly walk long distances.

There is an ancient Chinese saying: It is useless to ask a wandering man how to build a house. It will never be finished.’

Rich and varied sounds of a Tropical rainforest. Gibbons calling.

Architect: ‘Come quickly.You’re in luck; I want to show you something. See here behind that bush - that is the strangest, most frightening flower in the world. I think it is also the sexiest plant that I know of. It is certainly the largest and the smelliest flower on earth. The locals from round here call it the corpse flower, but her official name is Amorphophallus titanum. That’s Latin for ‘giant crooked penis’.

‘Let’s move in closer. It is best to cover your nose now.

What is that smell, you ask? This sickly, slightly sweet, nauseating rotting stank? It’s the flower’s perfume! It stinks of rotting flesh; that’s to attract flies and carrion-eating beetles for pollination.’

‘It stands now a good head taller than you or I, almost three metres I’d say. Something like a giant amarillis, but without a stalk, protruding straight up out of the ground. An inverted skirt of dark red crushed velvet, and rising phallicly out of the secret centre, a huge sturdy lime-green spear! I can tell you I would give my right arm to be able to design architecture as incomprehensible and shocking as this monstrous and fantastic flower.’

Tropical rainforest sounds fade out. Sounds of the heath return.

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Catchment Area When the water rises we will see how far it will rise.

Maybe we have to wait it out. And if they come for us, then we will have to wait for them too.

But if the water rises they won’t bother. They will forget.

They never forget. They may not come, but that has nothing to do with forgetting.

I have heard that they say that they have dug enough. There is a big hole in the ground where they did the digging. Deep enough for a mountain to die in.

They wear hard hats.

And boots.

Have you seen how big their boots are? Their footprints are all across the hillside. Like the trace of a stampede of ghosts.

Will they come this way again? Will it be like that again?

Do we have enough to keep us going for now?

There are boats tethered on the far bank. And men carry things on to the boats.

Big ghosts in big boats.

No, just big boats.

I have heard the roar of an airplane at night.

That is not an airplane. Distant trucks sometimes sound like planes.

No, airplanes sound like distant trucks.

They are building.

A road.

A wall.

A road and a wall.

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A road for them, a wall for us.

A wall as high as the hole is deep, as broad as a fortress, curved like a wave.

That is what it looks like.

The wall climbs. And the road skirts its edges.

Can you see it yet?

Not yet, but you will in a few months.

Have you seen the plans?

I’ve never seen a plan. Have you?

I know what a plan looks like.

Can you see a road on a plan?

You can if you figure out how to read it.

And you can see how far the water will spread.

Can you see the hole in the ground?

I don’t know.

Will the water rise if it rains hard?

It has nothing to do with rain. Nothing to do with rain.

When the water rises we will see how far it will rise.

Maybe we have to wait it out. And if they come for us, then we will have to wait for them too.

But if the water rises they won’t bother. They will forget. Let us hope that they forget.

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BLIND UNDERSTANDING

The words we use to communicate our thoughts and understand those of others are like codes in mathematical formulae. Arbitrary and systematic, they were invented by people who lived in the past; preserved thanks to their authority and seen as meaningful because most of us have agreed to use them.

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Blackbirds were able to survive in the new 19th Century industrial cities because they were able to adapt their singing. This was decisive because the sound was significantly higher than in the countryside. It is believed that another advantageous characteristic was their ability to imitate sounds. When blackbirds compose their calls, they take other birds’ calls and then further develop whilst those in the cities would base them on city sounds, such as sirens and church bells. Due to the loud volume in the cities, the males keep a much smaller territory than in the countryside. This holds true despite the fact that they sing at a significantly higher pitch, and during the city’s most quiet periods, to be heard more easily. In addition, they have increased the number of their mating calls from 1 to 6, depending on the nature of their territory. The songs are also completely unique from male to male, as they are competing for females within the territory and need to attract as many as possible due to their reduced sphere of audibility. The blackbirds that moved into the cities didn’t think about the fact that they had changed their language so completely that they were no longer able to communicate with their countryside counterparts. Apparently, this did not hamper their survival efforts.

Nor did t h e y s u f fer inner turmoil for having to change language.

them,

To change one language for another is very difďŹ cult for human beings. If I were to learn a new language, I would translate my mother tongue to new words. It is a technical process that does not necessarily mean I will get any closer to the corresponding culture of the new language. First and foremost, I want to communicate my own thoughts and needs. Language is a window to culture. But the glass forms a formidable barrier.

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One industrial change witnessed in the beginning of the industrial age was that the working pace was beginning to be taken on by machines, instead of people. Workers in some of the first factories in England did although bring the tradition of singing work songs with them, despite the fact that, in the fields, they were mainly used for maintaining the working pace. Perhaps it comforted them to hold on to tradition within the new environment. Or maybe the songs created a feeling of solidarity and collective determination that were gradually lost with the new factory labour tasks. The volume in the factories was so loud that the singing was difficult and the opportunities for singing shifted to social moments after work. The songs evolved from wellknown melodies, adapting texts based on the new experie n c e s . The factory songs described how the work was carr i e d out, as well as how it made people feel. By this the songs took on a political character that had been previously lacking and, without any conscious intent, what could be the first protest songs in modern times were created. There was a natural polarization between the workers and factory owners and it became a difficult balancing act for them to maintain their goodwill in the face of the workers’ solidarity. At the beginning of the 20th Century, a new form of song was introduced by General Motors and Ford.

These were industrial songs commissioned by factory management for the workers and intended to instil corporate culture.

Renowned Hollywood songwriters were hired to compose these songs that were only used internally and described the comp a n y ’s profits and benefits.

From the beginning of the century, a n d especially since t h e great depression, t h e workers’ standa r d s of livi n g h a d i n creased substantially, leading to them being more well disposed to company owners. A kind of symbiosis had begun to take shape between companies and their workers. This song trend intensified significantly on the part of the companies when the great upswing came in the 1950s and 1960s, as they understood the opportunity had arrived to bond the workers to them.

All self-respecting companies had at least one song. The songs used wellknown melodies and the lyrics praised company solidarity and loyalty to the management, with clear ties to hymns, national anthems and patriotism.

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We usually think we understand things when they seem familiar.

But, what seems familiar can be completely unknown. It can arrive with some recognisable material, whilst the majority is new.

The unknown provokes us and sets a mood of uncertainty to our journeys.

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T h e 1 9 t h Century saw an awaken- ing in Finland of a romantic nationalist nature. The nation-state was built on the basis that certain criteria were ‘naturally’ grouped, such as language, ethnicity and religion, which meant that most, if not all, countries had to undergo adaptations to fit the model. It was about understanding something new. Finland had been governed by Sweden and Russia alternately and had only been independent for very short periods during several centuries.

Sweden had ruled for over 700 years, which led to Swedish becoming a national language. Finland’s constitution was largely influenced by Sweden’s on issues such as religion, governance and the law rather than Russia’s. For a long time, all research, administration and political operations took place exclusively in Swedish. Suddenly, it was seen as remarkable that a country was run in a language that 90% of the population did not know. A powerful movement began to elevate Finnish to a language that could be used in further education, research and the civil service. This movement was mainly led by the Swedish ruling class. This can seem odd but they were inspired by the period’s romantic nationalist craze and it played a logical part in creating a sense of a homeland. It was modern to belong to a people, that is, the Finnish people. They no longer wanted to set themselves apart as a minority, even if it was privileged. Thus, many influential Swedish-speaking families learnt Finnish, adapted their names to sound Finnish and changed their daily language to Finnish. A list of possible or suitable names was produced by the government. For example, the surname Lindgren could be adapted to Liistamo.

It was important that the name contained typical Finnish letter combinations, such as double vowels.

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When a new word arises, something new has been deďŹ ned. However, the same word has also restricted something. Words comes with structures and spheres of inuence that have been predetermined for us by someone else.

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How do we know what we think we know? My thoughts are based on what I have seen, heard, felt, read, spoken and dreamt about, and how I relate to what I have seen, heard, felt, read spoken and dreamt about.

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For a long time, when taking the driving theory test in Switzerland, one could choose from a variety of languages. It was a way of making it possible for the large group of foreigners living and working in the country to get their driver’s licences. Eventually, it was discovered that many of the young men who arrived in the 1990’s after the war in Yugoslavia caused, or were involved in, a series of traffic accidents. This caused sensational headlines about how this victimised innocent motorists who drove in a more “Swiss manner”. It is said to be one of the reasons behind the change in the law that meant those wishing to get their driver’s licence nowadays have to take the theory test in one of Switzerland’s official languages. The idea was to motivate or force people wanting to get their driver’s licence to learn preferably German or French. Maybe this could affect a certain group of foreigners to drive in a more civilised manner.

That knowledge of language would result in a Swiss mentality.

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What builds up a story is language, not history. What you have just read are things I have seen, heard, read, spoken and dreamt about; and have since seen certain relationships between.

THIS TEXT IS THE VOICE-OVER FROM SASKIA HOLMKVIST, BLIND UNDERSTANDING(2009), CONTINUOUS HD PROJECTION WITH SOUND, 12 MINUTES.

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Bucharest: the city as raw material and role model

1. The context Eastern Europe is no longer exotic. The Soviet Union collapsed twenty years ago. In the last two decades contemporary artists coming from this region made their works and became known on the international art scene, or promoted their already existing oeuvre.

However, totalitarianism and dissidence, absurd urban realities created by forced modernization and the resulting cultural backwardness are no longer news to anyone.

This mix of issues created a visual discourse that sold well for a while, then became slightly out-dated because of new art coming from places like China.

Nevertheless, on the street, inside post-Communist reality so to speak, this kind of attitude is hard to find. The Soviet Union and its local dealership, the Romanian Communist Party, still make their presences felt in the most tangible of ways.

Whether it is the buildings (70% of the city’s population lives in Communist-built blocks of flats), mass culture (conveniently and exhaustively appropriated by advertising after it had been created by propaganda), or even person-to-person interaction, it seems that The Golden Era which started over sixty years ago is still shaping the present, or it is at least supporting it, as any good old foundation would do.

For instance, the House of the People built by Nicolae Ceausescu is still the role model for the villas of nouveau-riche politicians and businessmen who made their appearance after the Revolution of 1989. The same mix of plaster pillars, neo-classicist kitsch and pure nonsense can be seen in the centre of the city, but also in the gated communities on the northern limit, even if a later taste for architectural minimalism adds some diversity to this brew.

A new modernization campaign under the banner of the EU is paradoxically materializing some very old Communist plans. Ceausescu was expecting to start building 25-storey apartment buildings in the ‘90s, and that is exactly what the City Hall started doing around the year 2000, lagging just a little behind the five-year plan.

It does not matter if Bucharest is not suitable for tall constructions because of its humid, soft underground. Nor does it matter that historically it was a garden city made up of low-rise privately-owned houses.

And speaking of those old houses still standing around the central area of the city, they are being demolished, just as they were before 1989. Nowadays it is not the Communist Civic Centre that is taking their place, but high-rise office buildings.

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A very low interest in the built heritage prevails. It is irrelevant if the patrimony is civilian, military, or industrial in nature. Buildings are destroyed, the land is cleared and then the long wait begins.

During the economic crisis nobody is building anymore, but land is still an important asset.

Investors and landowners both dream of residential areas crammed between the existing buildings of the city. They would be happy to sell it to anyone at a high price.

On the level of the administration, it is not dreams but actions that prevail. At a time when other European cities regulate automobile traffic in order to drastically reduce it, and also demolish large-scale traffic infrastructure such as highway bridges within the city, the City Hall of Bucharest spends tens of million Euros on brand new projects of the same type.

Not only do they do that, but they are also investing 2 billion Euros in the building of a new boulevard, named Buzesti-Uranus. This enormous project entails the demolition of a series of historical monuments, as well as the destruction of a large area of the city and its transformation into a highway zone.

Traffic in the city will be better in the future. This is the only message of the project. At the same time, poor people are evicted overnight with small or no compensation, even if it is wintertime.

Architects and city planners alike, awoken a little too late from their sleep, testify to the futility of the project and to its social and cultural, if not financial costs.

They point to similarities with the totalitarian urbanism of Ceausescu, who destroyed half of the city to build a new, unusable and ugly city centre, in utter disregard of contemporary developments and needs.

And then the road building goes on.

To wrap it up, citizens are still looking towards one another in fear and anger under the pressure of money. Nowadays it is not the secret police or the burden of ideology, but the sheer force of the market that drives people away from each other.

They go back to the isolation of their home, to the intimacy of their car or of their restaurant table at the mall.

2. The city as raw material Why should one want to live here? This is a question that usually comes up after you get to know the city. The answer is simple, for businessmen at least: there is big money to be made.

The same applies for the administration of the city.

Even for artists, the city is an incredible resource. You just go out in the street and something happens. A building is demolished, expensive cars drive by in very poor surroundings, a

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bridge is being built, but it takes longer than expected and double the money. All injustice is there to be observed, out in the open.

On the aesthetic level, one can delight himself with visions of interwar Modernism contrasted with post-war functionalistic doom embodied in Communist apartment blocks.

Moreover, for someone interested in working on the street, there is such an abundance of material that one starts to wonder what to start with. The former Communist factory awaits its visitors. Maybe it just sits around the corner. The same goes for the old, redbrick mill from the 1900s. One has to go there now, before it gets completely covered with graffiti, before people who recuperate metal make it fall to the ground.

And there is always that friendly, smiling, laughing, hole in the pavement. Lots of sand and granite blocks to do things with.

Only in Kiev and Kishinev did I find such a fertile confusion. By comparison, Western European cities seem too neat and a bit sterile to work with. In Bucharest you always feel that you are shopping for free, whether it is materials, striking images or subjects you are looking for.

The city is very generous with its misery and its resources. They are all wasted on compassionate and indifferent onlookers alike.

3. The city and its role models Before the Second World War we used to look upon the examples of Germany and France.

Then the Soviet Union became the ultimate template for future development. Nowadays the model seems to be Las Vegas.

Looking back, Western models and modes were implemented in such a manner that once materialized they seemed substantially transformed, either via a different social structure (a sort of pre-modern, feudal aristocracy before the second war) or via a lack of economic resources (which made Communist apartment buildings have very few formal variations based on a very small number of basic models).

For instance, if we consider Romanian Modernism before the war one is sometimes tempted to ask if there is any connection whatsoever to its European counterpart. There seems to be no social theory behind it and the whole thing is downgraded to an architectural style. Even the radical views on composition were sometimes made a little bit sweeter by the use of slanted roofs or faรงade decoration, both more appropriate for the local climate and mood.

However, the connection is undoubtedly there. Even in this distorted state, the final product does not fail to cast a lasting charm on the onlooker. The sheer number of interwar Modernist buildings in Bucharest is still able to provide the citizen with a sizable heritage one can be quite proud of.

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Nevertheless, this translation process can never be entirely neglected. It always mutilates and adapts the international discourse to very local needs. Its main feature is the possibility of endless negotiation, with utter disregard for any criteria that might otherwise seem as fundamental, or essential. Ecology, legal aspects as well as historical continuity become easy targets. Radical views in the field of aesthetics or theory fall in the same area of compromise.

The underlying assumption is that nothing matters too much and that everything is temporary – an interesting philosophy, if one is able to take its products positively.

In the end, this translation process becomes the general attitude towards anything existing in the city. This does not only imply the adaptation of foreign models, which in itself is not a wrong thing to do. It implies the absolute instability of any such pre-defined template, which then becomes the rule.

On the negative side, the irritating gaps between thinking, saying and doing are always there to be observed, and even experienced intimately. Mistakes are so obvious, that one is always tempted to either laugh or cry.

In a land where any norm exists only to be slightly or largely adapted or even ignored in a given case, things like legislation, buildings or day-to-day behaviour become either the object of ridicule or of tragedy.

Sometimes it makes sense to try to be intensely indifferent, but there is always something keeping you awake anyway. Being critical is part of being a citizen, although civic, collective action and coherent discourse are lacking in public space.

You stumble in the street. A metal stump stands only several centimetres above the asphalt.

Absurd contraptions are everywhere; prosthetic-like objects just the same. Broken chairs, broken windows, broken doors are still working because they have just been repaired in a very fast and cheap manner.

Everything seems to come together, or come apart, under the rule of the same convulsive algorhythm: the landscape changes every five minutes, what is modern looks very old, the shantytown has a contemporary appearance, precarious things seem durable and what is durable is always temporary.

In the end, certainty fails to certify anything.

The ancient, the modern and the hyper-modern are mixed, and together they look either too old, too scrappy or too boring altogether. However, they never stop being revealing of the people who either built them or use them in some manner.

The city is in fact so transparent, deviant and curious in its workings that it calls for an enormous, engorging need for analysis and observation, as well as for an infinite series of practical solutions, whether they are cultural or pragmatic in nature.

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DemolitionAsbestos of Building SFF Removing Strijp-S, Eindhoven Fences are placed around the building, at a distance of about forty meters.

A consultant investigates the presence of asbestos in the building.

Removing Asbestos

The asbestos is removed.

Fences are placed around the building, at a distance of about forty meters.

A consultant investigates the presence of asbestos in the building.

The asbestos is removed.

30th November 2009 – 8th January 2010

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Pre-demolition The interior is stripped. Everything which is not made of stone – plumbing, carpets, shelves, timber, internal walls, ceilings – is removed by 10 demolishers floor by floor, with sledgehammers and two bobcats.

They start at the ground floor. Next, a hole is made between the ground floor and the first floor. Afterwards the first floor is stripped and the rubbish is thrown downstairs through the hole in the floor. Then a hole is made between the first floor and the second floor. This way, they move up from floor to floor and all the rubbish ends up on the ground floor.

The stripping takes one and a half weeks per floor. After that the rubbish is removed from the ground floor and taken away.

11th January – 14th May 2010

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Dismantling Dismantlingthe theBridge Bridge The connecting bridge Hoge De RugHoge building The connecting bridgewith withDe building Rugisisdiscondisconnected with nected with aa cutting cuttingtorch torchand andprocessed processedwith witha acrawler crawlercrane crane with scissors. with Hydraulic hydraulic scissors.

The rubbish is collected in containers containersand andtaken takenaway. away The rubbish is collected in

17th May – 21st May 2010

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Demolition For the actual demolition a large demolition crane and two small cranes are used. The large demolition crane has an arm of 55 meters and is equipped with a scissor mechanism.

The demolition follows a pattern: Each time a part of the building is cut loose from left to right and removed. Each column is taken apart from top to bottom. A crawler crane sorts out the rubbish and levels the area.

During this stage, the process alternates between one day of demolition and two days of rubbish removal. The removal of a column takes two days in total.

During the rubbish removal, the iron is separated from the concrete. The iron is removed and the concrete stays in the area.

24th May – 2nd July 2010

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Breaking Up the Rubble All the left-over concrete is collected on a large pile and is broken down with a mobile breaker to 0/40 granulate: small pieces with a diameter of about 4 centimeters.

The granulate will be used by KWS Infra for the construction of roads and stays in the area until that time.

5th July – 23rd July 2010

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Leveling the Basement Groundwater is pumped away until it is below the level of the basement. The pumping continues during removal of the basement.

The walls of the basement are crushed using two or three cranes and removed. The concrete floor is demolished with a sledge hammer and removed.

The rubble is broken down in the mobile breaker.

The hole is filled with sand and the pump is switched off so that the groundwater rises again.

26 July – 1 October 2010

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Breathtaking Climbing Mount Aconcagua in Argentina (6962 meters) It’s somewhere between the 17th and the 18th of January 2011. I’m staring through the darkness at the roof of the inside of my tent. It’s dark but there’s a full moon out so I can make out the roof of the tent. It’s being violently shaken by the wind raging outside. I can hear it roaring through the mountains before it hits the tent, sometimes blowing it flat on my face. I wonder how much the tent can handle before it’s shred to pieces. On our way up to high camp I overheard a guide from another group telling our guide that there was no way he was going to camp at high camp in a storm because he had already lost his tents two times there.

I have tugged all my essential things and warm clothes around me in my sleeping bag in case the tent will break. I wonder what to do if it should happen and decide it’s probably best to hide deep inside the sleeping bag until help arrives. It’s hard to sleep with these violent conditions and it has been hard to sleep the last few days anyway because my body is having problems with the lack of oxygen. We are now at 6000 meters and there’s about 40% of the amount of oxygen in the air that’s available at sea level.Your body has to work very hard even when you’re trying to rest. I measure my pulse, it’s 120 at rest and I can feel my heart pounding hard in my chest. I have to breathe much faster and when I try to turn around in my mummy sleeping bag, I already get out of breath.

I wake up, feeling that I’m suffocating. I must have fallen asleep. In sleep your body can slow down to the point where you don’t get enough air. I’m breathing in deep and slowly manage to calm myself down. I’m stressed that I can’t get much sleep because in the morning we have to wake up at 5 and try to push for the summit.

I feel I have to pee but there’s no way I’m going outside. The wind can easily knock you over and it’s very cold at night.The breath from me and my two tent mates is frozen against the top of the tent. They are sleeping or lying with their eyes closed opposite to me. I’m sleeping in the middle, they have their heads on the other side of the tent, otherwise we don’t all fit. I’ve been told the middle is the warmest place.

I open the tent to get my pee bottle from the vestibule.When I open it, I can see, in the bright full moon light, that one of the tent zippers has been broken by the wind and the wind is freely blowing through our stuff. I try to fix it and hope nothing essential has been blown away. I sit up in my sleeping bag and take a few deep breaths, even the smallest actions exhaust you at these heights. I pee, close up the bottle and my sleeping bag and try to fall asleep again.

We arrived here at high camp after a ten-day hike and the thin air has become an increasingly big problem. We walk short distances in the day but with our speeds we take a very long time. When we get to our camp, we pitch our tents with our last energy and then collapse in there. Because it’s hard to sleep, I try to lie as much as I can and rest a bit.

I never leave the tent to go for a walk or look around. The environment here is hostile and the tent is a safe haven. Before going out, you have to put on a lot of clothes and the strong winds can be dangerous. Besides that, the thin air makes walking a task in itself and the things we have to do – getting water, eating, organizing our gear for the next day, taking care of the tents and going to the toilet – already take more energy than I have.

Headaches are very normal at this height, the lack of oxygen can cause your brain to swell up. The first night at camp one, I had a tremendous migraine.Your brain can swell up because of the lack of air and push against the back of your eyes. This can cause blurry vision and even temporary blindness. I got a flash in both of my eyes with every heartbeat. I took some painkillers and luckily it was gone in the morning.

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I wake up because I hear voices outside, a headlamp shines into the tent and from the light a voice appears and tells us that we have to get ready to go soon. The wind has calmed down but it’s freezing cold and still dark. I try to find everything I have to wear, which is a lot for the summit day. Most of my things are in my sleeping bag. It seems to take forever to find my things and to put them on. Being with three people in a dark small tent doesn’t make things easier. I crawl out of the tent and walk very slowly to the guides’ tent.

Somehow I woke up too late for breakfast and they are screaming that we are leaving in 15 minutes. I think I will need more time and start to get stressed and hurry. I give one of the guides my two water bottles and they fill it with water that they made by melting snow. I put in five drops of iodine to avoid getting sick, I can’t stand the taste anymore. We have been walking up the mountain for two weeks now and I have the feeling that I have been drinking from a swimming pool for that time. I hurry back to the tent and have to regain my breath when I get there. I sit down and for a minute all I can do is breathe. I put on my big double mountaineering boots, first the inside boots and then I have to use all my strength to push them into the outside shoes. Together they weigh more than 5 kilos. One of the guides helps me put the crampons on. One part of our group has started walking already and I wanted to join the first group. I throw some energy bars, some hand warmers, my camera and random things I think I need in my backpack and try to rush to catch up with the group. My heart is pounding from stress and when I finally join them, I have to concentrate on breathing to be able to keep going.

I’m staring at the back of the double mountaineering boots of the guy in front of me. He takes one step, I take one step. We stretch our back leg at roughly the same time to take the tension off our support leg and try to breathe and rest. I breathe in two times between each step and then shift my weight and throw my other leg forward at the same pace as the guy in front of me.We straighten our other leg, which functions now as our support leg. And breathe again. I have been staring at his shoes for over an hour now and at other people’s shoes the days before. They similarly plough through the snow and the loose rocks. I never look up or around me, because the distance from the top of the mountain is very de-motivating. Staring at the ground makes you feel like you’re covering more distance. I don’t allow myself to look up when I’m walking, only at the breaks do I peek at the summit. I just stare at the ground and at the double mountaineering boots of the person in front of me. Their boots are made of hard plastic and are very colourful, very ugly and uncomfortable. I wonder why all these mountaineering clothes are so ugly. It reminds me of the top of Mt Everest, which is called “rainbow hill”. This is because of the large amount of dead mountaineers lying there in their colourful clothes. At high altitudes helicopters can’t fly and when something happens, basically you can only use your own strength to get down.

The guide finally announces a break. I collapse onto a stone and just breathe for a few minutes until I have enough energy to take my backpack off. I drink my ice-cold water.

I’m not hungry nor thirsty, haven’t been for many days but you have to keep eating and most importantly drinking. The lack of air makes you feel nauseous. I don’t look around me but focus on the things I have to do before we start moving again. I drink, apply sunscreen and grab a muesli bar out of my backpack. We shouldn’t stop too long otherwise we get to the summit too late, and the longer you stop the harder it is to start again. At this altitude everything is hard. I can’t open my muesli bar and try with my teeth. When it finally opens, I have to breathe for about a minute to catch my breath. I take a bite, have to breathe a few times again before I can chew. I chew, take a few more breaths and then swallow. I look up to the summit, the scale of it is still too large to be understood by a human, which must mean we are still very far away. I remember my camera but I can’t get myself to take any pictures. The sun comes up and gives a bit of warmth, which is very welcome; my feet were getting cold and my socks started to slide down in my boots. The next break I use all the time and energy I have to take them off and I tape my socks to my pants to stop them from falling, I don’t have

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a chance to get any water, because the guide tells us to get ready.

We are about half way towards the summit and I’m totally exhausted. More than I have ever been in my life.These two weeks have been tough, it started out bad with food poisoning and mountaineering just drains you little by little. The one who manages to collapse most slowly will make it to the summit.

I’m still staring at the boots in front of me and at the path, I have completely stopped looking around me, the ground consists mostly of rocks, scree they call it. It’s hard to walk up on it, because you slide down. Every step feels like a punch in the face, I have started to breathe four times between every step. The hours pass and my consciousness turns into a blur, I’m only busy with trying to walk. We stop every hour for about ten minutes in which I robotically perform my duties – first drink, apply sunscreen, eat something and most importantly try to catch my breath.The last break I couldn’t bring myself to take off my backpack anymore and I had to ask a fellow climber behind me if he could give me a muesli bar from the top pocket. I look up at the summit and still don’t understand the scale but it looks like we are close. Some climbers from other groups pass us on the way down and tell us comfortingly that we are getting there; they look relieved. The wind has picked up again. I’m wearing my face mask. It makes my goggles fog up but there’s enough clear surface left to see where I’m going. I don’t have the energy to try to clean them, neither do I want to take my gloves off. I’m terrified of frostbite. I divert my face from the wind, because it’s impossible to breathe otherwise. It feels like the wind blows all the oxygen away, leaving only a vacuum around your head.

Our group has fallen apart, two people out of ten have decided to go back and everybody else is following their own pace. I just focus on each step and tell myself I can catch my breath after every 27 steps. I finally reach the small steep path to the summit and it’s just ten meters long. I have to sit down first to catch some air. I force myself to stand up and walk the last few meters. I arrive at the summit and three members of our expedition group are already there.

We hug, I sit down on a rock and try to breathe. I don’t really know what to do. There’s a small cross. One of our guides comes towards us and asks us for a group picture. I stand up and walk very slowly to the cross. The picture is taken. I walk to the edge of the summit plateau and I have to stop in the middle to breathe. I take a few pictures and a panorama movie and sit down again. I wonder when we are going back down, it’s already three and I guess it takes us four hours to get down.

I was looking forward to reaching the summit, mostly because people had told me that that’s the moment you realize it’s all worth it. I look at my fellow climbers sitting down trying to catch their breath and taking pictures. I don’t feel anything besides being completely exhausted.

One of our team members asks the guides when we are going down and I’m happy to hear we are leaving the summit.While I walk down I feel relieved that I made it and that I didn’t spend two weeks and a lot of money without reaching this clear goal, otherwise I don’t feel anything.

Back in the tent I collapse with all my clothes on, the wind is picking up and we should get ready for another stormy night.Tomorrow we will again leave early and walk all the way back to base camp and there’s a big storm approaching. I realize I forgot to have a good look at the view from the summit. I turn on my camera and look at the pictures and the movie I took randomly from the summit, most look impressive, unreal and hard to grasp. I realize I ended up taking a lot of pictures of the sky.

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Credits page 7

Yoko Ono © Yoko Ono 2011

page 8 Henk de Velde Landscapes in Prussian blue

© Henk de Velde page 10 Antonio Gagliano The Arch of Neutrality © Antonio Gagliano page 15

Dora García Windy Morning In Brussels, 2007

Fragment of the text file resulting from the performance work “Instant Narrative”, presented at the ICA London, Double Agent exhibition, 14 Feb - 6 Apr 2008. © Dora García

page 16

Irene Kopelman 50 Metres Distance Or More

The material in this contribution

was gathered during a journey to the Antarctic

from January 6th to 25th, 2010.

Nickel Van Duijvenboden: text editing Billy Nolan: copy editing (English)

© Irene Kopelman page 25 Fiona Tan

A Fool’s Paradise Excerpt from Part IV

sound piece (site specific), 2010

an artwork commissioned for De Hoge Rielen, Belgium

by the Vlaams Bouwmeester, Vlaamse Overheid. © Fiona Tan

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page 26 Raqs Media Collective Catchment Area

© Raqs Media Collective page 28

Dan Perjovschi © Dan Perjovschi

page 11 Saskia Holmkvist Blind Understanding, 2009 The text is the Voice-over from Saskia Holmkvist, Blind Understanding

(2009), continuos HD projection with sound, 12 minutes.

© Saskia Holmkvist page 40 Mircea Nicolae Bucharest: the city as raw material and role model © Mircea Nicolae Marcelline Delbecq page 44 Ghost

© Marcelline Delbecq page 45 Lara Almarcegui

Demolition of Building SFF Strijp-S, Eindhoven, 2009

A project by Lara Almarcegui for Flux-S in co-operation with the Van

Abbemuseum, Eindhoven Information: M Heezen B.V., text (in Dutch): Vinken en Van Kampen, translation: Rene Miesen Chao Design: Floor Koomen, September 2009. © Lara Almarcegui page 51 Guido van der Werve Breathtaking - Climbing Mount Aconcagua in Argentina (6962 meters)

© Guido van der Werve

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