As part of my residency in Krasnodar, I was invited to give a lecture and sculpture workshop at the University's art faculty. The lecture and workshop was about stones, inspired by my recent project 'When you sell the stuff you're fixing' presented at the Zoldermuseum, Lawrence Weiner, Jasper Coppes' work about the art of looking at stones and the wall drawings at Gorjachi Kluch.
Starting of the workshop, I asked the students to bring a single object, which formed the starting point for their stone sculptures and would finally buried inside. One girl listened to her Ipod inside, while another lost her silver ring. The students will be working towards their first public exhibition.
Evening Talk – How sculpture can support us? 03/07
Setting foot in florence for a field trip, which I planned to make a leather apron I got lost in a city people call Florence. Not truly lost, since as an artist I trained myself to do so and educated myself with a odd sense of orientation. One that at least keeps me occupied. And I remembered a phrase my mother uttered when she lost something in the house. Sint Antonius goede vrind maak dat ik mijn schoen weer vindt. Or: St Anthony my old friend, make my find my shoes again. For every single thing she lost, she'd call this divine providence to aid her in her search. I made myself to look for him, since I was suspicious of his strength. Every time I lost myself I would look for the presence of his image which was plentiful in the city and once I found him, I took a picture. Anthony I've been told, is the guardian of lost objects and I don't think lost souls.
Anthony comes in many forms. But in most cases I found him he looked away from us. Not the kind of looking away like the great heroins of the past, nor a gaze of humility or desperation But of a strange and almost amorphous kind. That is how I recognized him. Looking out for someone who, when I found him turned his look down, but his eyes up. A little autistic looking, asking for compassion with his situation but refusing to give a lot of insight in what that situation may be. With this strange unwanted unreachability he became the patron of (I read) many things, the poor, the baker, the traveller, the wedded and the feverish. And another thing I found was that he was always holding something. Unlike like many other sculptures which object they'd be holding signified their function, status or predicament. Anthony was always holding something else, making him much harder to identify. Sometimes it was baby jesus, sometimes a pendant, sometimes a plant and it was as though for everything he's holding, he's holding something back as well. This is how, I believe he quickly became the patron of lost things. [...]
ENSCHEDE – From being to becoming. About an act of necessity. About poverty and boredom but most of all about myself and what I don't understand. That one little less lonely day I purposefully vandalized the garage doors of my neighbours. On five of seven doors, which ungracious letters I had written my name since I could not find another word with meaning.
What while writing on every single door something in me changed. The very first letters being drawn were a little small but in a few strokes became bigger, abitious, blind and wild. Till I reached the fith and not the last door and atopped. When out of breath and with pain in my chest I realized the irrversibillity of my actions.
The meaning of my name is the consequence of my name. Thats why the neighbours hadn't take long to approve someone guilty. But see also that I was the first expression where I had shown myself five times larger than myself.
It was as if I had given away my name, for it to become something vulgar and hard and it resembled creases more than sings. And so I was confronted for the very first time with the temporality and value of art when my parents received the bill for repainting the garage doors.
And I do not now if I held myself responsible because I was convinced I was totally alone. Strangely capable of looking at myself with the nakedness of an object. That is my name.
