Stuck outside the border

Outside Border, part 2: the objects.

1. All that lost potential

Even without violence, time slowly shuts you down. It deposits layers of leftovers from the borders you couldn’t cross. Rust spreads, corrodes and buries you, makes you useless. Not crossing means you are stuck, closed out and closed in at the same time.

2. All those dreams

In the game of acting yourself every day, where do we keep the things we save for later? The ageing dreams and the abandoned plans. Where do the unused end up when we forget about it? When we give it up.

3. All the perspectives

The cost of sorting is paid by the sorted – placed in a category that shapes who they can be. But also by everyone else, when all the problems they could have solved go unsolved.

SparaSparaSparaSparaSparaSpara

The cost of drawing a line

New project, made in response to an exhibition invitation from curator Winnie Pelz. Part 1: the process.

Starting point

“The European colonists created an egg without a chicken, a logical absurdity repeated across the continent and one that continues to haunt it.” Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography

What is this island I stand on? And what is the rescue I’m hoping for? I’m waiting. To be useful. To cross the border. To be whatever “me” is.

What is the cost of drawing a line?

Without the right key

you’re stuck between doors

rusting while waiting.

Forgetting how

all the doors we could have opened

no longer apply.

After a summer outside

In early October it was time to take down the “In the periphery” exhibition. The weather had changed and aged the pieces in interesting ways. The wax had gotten sunburnt, some of the jars was filled with water, little algae and rust was climbing up my grandmother’s mazarines, only her hat acted as if nothing had happened while the moss grew around it.

They live in the window of my studio for now.

The Organizer

As the organizer I wanted to sort the world, draw the lines and put everything in it’s right box. It makes the world understandable. But the categories kept failing and unless you make a box for every single thing you won’t understand the world that way anyway.

Control system

Everything changed a little bit to the left.

I wake up at the subway with no idea of where I’m going. Who was I when getting on this train? I look out the window. We create this hard world. Then we create shoes to walk on it without damaging out feet. Lights passing outside in the dark while I’m trying my shoes against the floor.

Everything will move back again to the way it was and they will tell me what station to get off at.

Silicone cubes

Shellac and fabric box

Collapsing cube of bandage and shellac

Bloated cube of raw hide and concrete

 

Reading and wrapping

“The stories don’t fit back together, and it’s the end of stories, those devices we carry like shells and shields and blinkers and occasionally maps and compasses.”

From “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit

There used to something living

And the preservation of it keeps it dead forever.

Broken bones saved for later