I was invited to participate in the group exhibition LONELY ALLEGIANCE curated by Kristina Lindemann. Before and parallel to the exhibition I got the opportunity to take up the intimate walks again in the frame of a two-week residency at Residency Botkyrka and MDT in Stockholm.
I arrived in Stockholm on Monday. Today is Wednesday. I must say that my thinking and writing capacity and my ability to take in, process and digest information is rather slow at the moment. I see myself in a recovery process from an overload of responsability, stuck emotion, sexual frustration, alienation and insecurity which has accumulated during my last project SWEET&TENDER FOR THE END OF THE WORLD in Bern. It was a month-long residency project with 20 artists which I coordinated and co-organized. I'm not going to try and analyze the details and reasons for this overwhelming sense of failure and confusion right now. Paradoxically to my own perception the project was deemed a success and great gift by most people involved. It was mainly my own 'movie playing in my head' that threw me so completely off balance. I did have a short, less than a week's break before coming to Stockholm during which I walked in the Swiss Alps with my friend Catalina. This little Swiss holiday didn't restore my equilibrium though and I still found myself in a state of mild depression until this morning. My friend Roger wrote to me in response to an 'intimate' email: What is THE ORGANIZER? in capital letters? Is it a role you were supposed to play? Or is more the role where you find yourself stuck in? The image of yourself? Walking is nice. Depression is ok. Right now I feel is something to deal with, only that, that's it. So don't worry, give yourself the chance to feel that too.
Luckily Kristina had arranged for me to arrive a few days early to acclimatize and get to know the context in which we are operating. I'm only officially conducting 'intimate walks' from tomorrow on.
I didn't manage to do a lot these three first days. On Monday I went shopping and bought mainly fruit and vegetables for my green smoothies and raw food diet - during Sweet&Tender for the End of the World I gave up my diet principles and slipped into old habits of drinking too much coffee and sweets to counteract a blurry mind and tired body.
So I told myself I'll use this time in Stockholm to recover a sense of intimacy and care. A regular yoga routine is also on my list of things to get back to. So far I haven't been able to find a good rhythm though and indulged in sleeping in late which I apparently needed. Fine. I promised myself not to be hard on myself for a change this time.
On Tuesday I went and had lunch with Erik and Kristina at the Mangkulturellt Centrum. Erik studied fashion design and works now as an outreach coordinator at the Botkyrka Konsthall and Mangkulturellt centrum. He made a dynamic and relaxedly efficient impression on me with his hip (self-tailored I imagine) clothing style and sleepy out of bed look. He works with adolescents and school kids in the neighborhood trying to make art and culture more accessible to them. I also met Tatiana, a native Bolivian who works at the Mangkulturellt Centrum at the exhibition hall and in the office. I perceived her as a tough girl, but very nice. Proud of her origins. I talked to her in Spanish when she said she was from Oruro, Bolivia. It's the city with the famous carnival.
After lunch I walked with Kristina around Fittja, the neighborhood where the residency and the multicultural center are located. I couldn't help but see in her the person who invited me and therefore had certain expectations of me. The group exhibition LONELY ALLEGIANCE is her final project for her master studies in curatorship. I felt already a bit guilty because the communication by email and some skype meetings in preparation for this residency had sometimes been a bit much for me. Kristina tends to give A LOT of information and since I had for the past month been immersed in the overpowering End of the World project I often found myself unable to filter out the truly important info from the less important. So I guess upon meeting her in person I was already a bit prejudiced and worried that I wouldn't be able to fulfill her expectations and keep up a professional dialogue with her. During the walk in Fittja she was mainly the one talking and I became aware that she was actually very accommodating and nice trying to provide me with all the information and knowledge about the neighborhood I might possibly need. She noticed when my focus drifted a bit and started to talk about the object upon which my gaze had apparently come to rest. This impressed me very much.
Eventually her pace of speech slowed down a bit and there were more pauses and silences which I appreciated. I went with her to the neighborhood library to distribute flyers and in the evening we went together to the MDT theater's season opening. Throughout this time spent together I could see that she was making a great effort to be polite and nice to people in a genuine and unobtrusive way. There had been some misunderstanding with MDT about the content and format of my 'research presentation' there. While I was already dreading problems and hard feelings, Kristina stayed patient and let me know that she wants them to be happy with the collaboration and finds it important to establish a sustainable relationship.
I arrived in Stockholm on Monday. Today is Wednesday. I must say that my thinking and writing capacity and my ability to take in, process and digest information is rather slow at the moment. I see myself in a recovery process from an overload of responsability, stuck emotion, sexual frustration, alienation and insecurity which has accumulated during my last project SWEET&TENDER FOR THE END OF THE WORLD in Bern. It was a month-long residency project with 20 artists which I coordinated and co-organized. I'm not going to try and analyze the details and reasons for this overwhelming sense of failure and confusion right now. Paradoxically to my own perception the project was deemed a success and great gift by most people involved. It was mainly my own 'movie playing in my head' that threw me so completely off balance. I did have a short, less than a week's break before coming to Stockholm during which I walked in the Swiss Alps with my friend Catalina. This little Swiss holiday didn't restore my equilibrium though and I still found myself in a state of mild depression until this morning. My friend Roger wrote to me in response to an 'intimate' email: What is THE ORGANIZER? in capital letters? Is it a role you were supposed to play? Or is more the role where you find yourself stuck in? The image of yourself? Walking is nice. Depression is ok. Right now I feel is something to deal with, only that, that's it. So don't worry, give yourself the chance to feel that too.
Yesterday I also wrote an email to my mother apologizing for my stressed-out and consequently impolite behavior when I was at home in the village shortly before leaving again for Sweden. She replied: I hope you will slowly find yourself again during these two weeks in Stockholm. I always sense very well if you are doing well or suffering. I think you have been too ambitious with this big project. I hope that this will teach you a lesson not to bite off more than you can chew. You're not an organizer after all. Try to be content with more simple things. Don't you think you could choose a much happier and more relaxed life teaching yoga?
Luckily Kristina had arranged for me to arrive a few days early to acclimatize and get to know the context in which we are operating. I'm only officially conducting 'intimate walks' from tomorrow on.
I didn't manage to do a lot these three first days. On Monday I went shopping and bought mainly fruit and vegetables for my green smoothies and raw food diet - during Sweet&Tender for the End of the World I gave up my diet principles and slipped into old habits of drinking too much coffee and sweets to counteract a blurry mind and tired body.
So I told myself I'll use this time in Stockholm to recover a sense of intimacy and care. A regular yoga routine is also on my list of things to get back to. So far I haven't been able to find a good rhythm though and indulged in sleeping in late which I apparently needed. Fine. I promised myself not to be hard on myself for a change this time.
On Tuesday I went and had lunch with Erik and Kristina at the Mangkulturellt Centrum. Erik studied fashion design and works now as an outreach coordinator at the Botkyrka Konsthall and Mangkulturellt centrum. He made a dynamic and relaxedly efficient impression on me with his hip (self-tailored I imagine) clothing style and sleepy out of bed look. He works with adolescents and school kids in the neighborhood trying to make art and culture more accessible to them. I also met Tatiana, a native Bolivian who works at the Mangkulturellt Centrum at the exhibition hall and in the office. I perceived her as a tough girl, but very nice. Proud of her origins. I talked to her in Spanish when she said she was from Oruro, Bolivia. It's the city with the famous carnival.
After lunch I walked with Kristina around Fittja, the neighborhood where the residency and the multicultural center are located. I couldn't help but see in her the person who invited me and therefore had certain expectations of me. The group exhibition LONELY ALLEGIANCE is her final project for her master studies in curatorship. I felt already a bit guilty because the communication by email and some skype meetings in preparation for this residency had sometimes been a bit much for me. Kristina tends to give A LOT of information and since I had for the past month been immersed in the overpowering End of the World project I often found myself unable to filter out the truly important info from the less important. So I guess upon meeting her in person I was already a bit prejudiced and worried that I wouldn't be able to fulfill her expectations and keep up a professional dialogue with her. During the walk in Fittja she was mainly the one talking and I became aware that she was actually very accommodating and nice trying to provide me with all the information and knowledge about the neighborhood I might possibly need. She noticed when my focus drifted a bit and started to talk about the object upon which my gaze had apparently come to rest. This impressed me very much.
Eventually her pace of speech slowed down a bit and there were more pauses and silences which I appreciated. I went with her to the neighborhood library to distribute flyers and in the evening we went together to the MDT theater's season opening. Throughout this time spent together I could see that she was making a great effort to be polite and nice to people in a genuine and unobtrusive way. There had been some misunderstanding with MDT about the content and format of my 'research presentation' there. While I was already dreading problems and hard feelings, Kristina stayed patient and let me know that she wants them to be happy with the collaboration and finds it important to establish a sustainable relationship.
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