iuliana varodi p o e t r y p h o t o g r a p h y a r t p r o j e c t s
| I was here too / on my way, residency, Z33 center in Hasselt, Belgium, 2010 Bridging a homeless gap between two addresses in Antwerp, I spent a week at Z33 in Hasselt, serendipitously invited by bolwerK for a residency in the program "nepotists opportunists freaks friends and strangers intersecting in the grey zone". I reached there with no specific plans. Aiming at understanding the context, I interacted with both ongoing exhibitions, leaving designed by performance personal traces, elements that I made inside one exhibition and added within a set of interventions as a new layer in the other exhibition. The installation aimed at linking the two exhibitions while at the same time is a self-reference to my performative passing by. Some fragments from the >blog here bellow: Day One. Keys. Room. Nothing. Map. I had an address, then I had none. I will soon have another one, actually I already have it, on a contract that hasn't reach me yet. Part of my stuff is stored at the new address in ten boxes, part of it is at the old address in a box, a suitcase and a bag, and another small bag is at the place of W, who kindly hosted me yesterday night as I stopped a day in Antwerp, on my way from north of France to Hasselt. Recognisable, R would say. The residency room is just fine: a bed, a cupboard, a table and enough place filled with free space. The shower is on the other side of the building. The exhibitions invite to interaction. Think first. Ah but I did it already. Candle juice on my fingers: one layer, two layers, three, four or maybe five.     Day three. Easter. Sunday. Kebab and frietjes with mayonnaise. It took me quite a while this morning to go for a shower. The weather is playing a joke, I thought; each time the sun seemed to take over the clouds, by the time I got ready to get out, it started showering again. There was an ironic link between the rhythm of the weather and that of the wireless connection. I like to use slogans here and there. It challenges the fixed images they promote when you put them in an inappropriate context. I won’t do it now. (...)    Philosophy is never about dialogue, even less about “communication”; far from being a harmonious discussion aiming at rational consensus, philosophy is more akin to a violent encounter between heterogeneous forces that might open up the possibility of thinking the New". - Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy? Day four. Monday. Wax fingers. Beer and links. I woke up later than I wished I did today. I forgot all my cables at W’s place in Antwerp, so my mobile phone (anyhow only operating as an alarm) is out of order. My body follows it’s own night dreams and rhythms. No details about the morning, as nothing really happened. Grey in its full plenitude. The day is dry and sunny and a second person has suggested the Japanese garden, so there I go. First a proper lunch in the café that J introduced me to yesterday: broccoli pure with salad and a far too large pot of meat with dark souse, tasty but still keeping my stomach busy, ten hours later. Describing the garden would require far too many, too specific words and nuances. Thinking got instantly melted in a mesmerizing mix of sensations that the garden bestows on whoever walks through it. The one feeling I’d like to mention is the one that invaded me when inserting my nose in the territory of one of the white bloomed cherry tree, a travel back in time in the age of my grandmother’s village, again, the euphoric lost in sensation trip that one experiences when allowing that smell to take over the imagery of the mind. Whatever I’d add to its description, it would only spoil the authenticity of that moment. Find a cherry tree and stick your nose into it, it’s the only thing I can say, apologising for the imperative way of putting it.  Day five. Sun. New guest. Interventions. Sun. Hot, liquid, viscous. Cold, solid, soft. Same place, same technique, five new three dimensional fingerprints. White on white. White on wood. White next to green and white. I may have a story to tell you. “I may have a story to tell you”. I was here too. In residence. Free hand. Free materials. In between too many official addresses, in between several imaginary homes. A stranger in another city. A stranger on a fake monastic retreat. Contaminating the hosting exhibition with the other one across the yard. Invisible glue. Connecting what you will decide to connect with what is here already. Going by, leaving traces. Anonymity undone. A name card somewhere in the shadow zone of the grey zone. A zone still to be defined. A name card to be found later. A later that is named on a label. A label to be named later, by another. Day six. Label. Announcement. Departure. I stick a label on the one empty wall of the exhibition hall in which I left most traces, label on which I wrote with a pen: I was here too / On my way (2010) Intervention / Installation Interventions, traces / wax, label, name card / Iuliana Varodi  Under the label, on the floor, I place the candle I used to glue the fingerprints. Marking a transitory presence and interference in the exhibition. I asked the label from one of the curators of Z33, revealing my past day interventions to her. She had already noticed the wax fingers. On the small table with the artist leaflets at the entrance of the exhibition hall, I add my name card; I stick it on the table. Later I remove it and place it back again, without gluing it. I invite some of the present artists and curators to visit the exhibition with me, and I capture their reactions on the traces I added. Packing now, leaving in a few hours. M, who has invited me for the residency, will be back here tomorrow. |