We moved to live…we moved to stay…each of us with our own previous project…both of us in the space…the apartment was empty….and than we started…
DIARY BY FOUR HANDS
15.05.09 We arrived, here in this zwalov building number 603. Two people in their first day of living together in a previous empty space. The presence was printed in the walls by a landscape somewhere in Europe, two horses, the driver and two ladies, they were all waiting for the picture without even knowing their future in some wall in Delft and further in the same wall in pieces.
The contemplation of doing nothing. We were constantly looking to that landscape as if we could calm down the struggle of nowhere. The emptiness was never a problem but a strong question. Why do we need? What do we need? How do we need? Where do we get? How do we search for?
Without the objects we were clear exposed to our escapes, exposed but without tools.
20:00 Empty. Empty. Empty space, clear mind, no destruction.
We are addicted to the sound, light, voice and human touch.
Learning to do nothing will be a hard task.
16.05.09
The first sleeping night. Heavy bounds in the red floor, no bed but just tinny blanket in the red. We wake up as if were hardly beated by the floor. Nothing to do, maybe something to search for making the next night more light between the bounds the skin and the space. We just knew we need to search but not where. We waited.
How to use nothingness?
17.05.09
The building in front was being build for the people who are living in the same we are. They are here now and just looking in front of them the future house. They are living in their future past and watching their future house, as if they are contemplating the new but being in the old present. We went to the future building to search something, something to the under bed. Pieces of wood were found and given. They were six long gray pieces in the trash. We carried them from the future house to the future past. In each point we stopped to manage the passages for the woods realizing the unexpected and present one second sculptures. They were there waiting for being carried again, making lines trough the spaces, corridor, stair case, and the body. They were a space being carried from one point to another and in this between they were existing as moments of functional transportation. Now they are the under bed, the square that release under us, the frame that make us understand where is the sleeping space.
A MAN WHO INVENTED 20St CENTURY
…Secret pass. Cosmic race. Modern electricity. Free energy. Utopia. Interplanetary. Antigravity. Earthquake machine
Nothing hidden that will not be known.
Who murdered Nikola Tesla?
Listening a radio, waiting for Veri, cooker, spoons, forks.
Warm hot soup. Warm meal.
18.05.09
Eating raw. No fire, no pot, no oven, no fridge, no possibility to conserve, the food was constantly showing us their time of life. Three eggs were coked on candles. Timing for changing. From liquid to solid it has a big way in the slow and small fire. We waited and ate.
Late in the night a big noise came from the building, it was like an explosion, something that we felt strongly in the structure of the building. Silence. Marina said “I think the elevator felt down”- Veri – “No…lets wait for the next noise and them we see” – The next noise was the siren from the fire savers. The container exploded and in fell minutes we had this big group of police, fire savers, and neighbours outside of the building.
Place just for living. We don’t make art here, Installations downstairs 589.
Maximum time aloud for sculpture in space is one second.
19.05.09
Asking for donation. Letter in Dutch, English, Serbian and Portuguese. The languages we suppose they will know and the languages we speak. Languages to communicate. We asked for donations, we asked for house basic objects without being used. Objects that were doing nothing in their houses.
20.05.09
First donation. Walter arrived with a big old lamp, he was happy to give it to us, we were using each other, we were asking for things we needed and he was underwearing stucked objects from his house. He came again with wife and again with daughter and again. He was hanging the objects with memory hands and nostalgic eyes. He was giving some old part of himself.
21.05.09
we arrived at the house and a small letter was lining on the floor in front of the 603. The message was in Dutch by struggle hands, we could just understand the number 596 and the signature by family….It was the next donation, we noked the door and Aida oppened. A russian small old woman that by gestures and the language we could just understand by suppositions. We entered her house and she was already separated her gifts. Chocolates, massage chair, vases, plastic flowers, cups etc…
We cooked in Walters pot, we seated at Aidas chair, we ate with them both forks and spoons.
Walter knocked on the door with enthusiasm and said -someone left a TV in your box downstairs, it wasn’t me, but someone left it, it is true…can you believe it?- The TV doesn’t work.
Wishing is the one which kills, not emptiness.
Waiting for the dark, for sleep.
22.05.09
Here at home. The sun entered in the kitchen and crossed the top of the building over to the other side. From 14.00 in the evening until 20.00 the sun invaded the apartment slowly and precisely. We keep hiding and moving things that could not be in the sun. These objects are constantly changing place here. The computers.
23.05.09
I need to cross the apartment, I need to experienced the space through some dance. The kitchen is the place for possible contemplation combined with action. The body could be reactive in the kitchen. When I don’t know what to do or when I don’t want to deal with the need of doing -I go to cook. If I don’t cook I just stay in the kitchen, there are some memories in the kitchen that save the body of the displacement, a kitchen is a kitchen. We have now all these donations, they were doing nothing in their previous homes, and they are still doing nothing here. We are two, so we need just two of everything, when you have more than you need, you just make more things dirty.
24.05.09
Sunday morning….it is morning since eight o’clock….it is morning until 21 in the evening; the sun pauses the time. This DOING NOTHING became more and more demanding, I could look at the leaves and just contemplate the movement by the wind, I could just feel the sun on my skin, I could watch the children running until the fall, I could just close my eyes and and rest awake, I could just pause and observe the others movements, but I can’t pause my displacement. It will be displacement anywhere. I cook, I smoke, I write and I try dialogue with my computer.
Walter just knocked the door. Walter, Walter!!!! He brought us a small wooden table. He is the housewife, he cares the house, the children, the home belongs to him. I asked him again about some clothes and he said…I cannot give you the clothes I don’t use anymore because they could not be used if I am throwing them away- Why? Because they will be too dirty, I could not use them anymore – but I don’t want to use, I will do another something else… ah…so you mean not as meaning clothes!? – YES!!! NOT AS MEANING CLOTHES!!!! perfect definition. We love Walter!
“A house is not a home.”
“There is no art without laziness.” M. Stilinovic
Waiting for a dinner. 8th day, 2nd cooked meal.
25.05.09
Crossing Day! Awakened at 07.30. Someone was knocking some door, insistently and loudly, almost banging the door down, down, down.
In the city I saw a pigeon being crashed by a bike, the guy left and the pigeon with broken left wing was almost away. She, I always think they are shes, was struggling with her body after the accident, as if she had just realized the unexpected new situation. She jumped or let herself go to the canal, tried to move to fly to still be a pigeon but with no wing to fly. The water was less disturbing, even if I started to cry, I was less moved by her desperate movements….in the water she could pause, letting the slow and permanent flux of the water move her again…them she disappeared through the canal behind the bridge. The guy was watching her struggle and maybe saying in Dutch that we should kill her to stop the suffering. We didn’t do anything, just kept watching her disappearance. His bike fell down while watching.
I meet Walter three times today, he was always going to do something, busy as usual, the second time he said – the third time we meet you buy me a drink! – haha…we laugh.
We made the invitation correspondence ‘Donations dinner’ to Walter and his family, Aida and family, Rolina and Paul. In the house the clouds suddenly became dark gray- almost totally black. The trees in front of the balcony were shaking in a convulsive way, almost fighting themselvess, almost falling, almost disappearing.
Free video camera…
06.06.09
Aida’s and Leonida’s dinner. Greek restaurant. Several breaks for photoS. They were well dressed, it was an official meeting. Translation in squared order. Marina talking to Veri while Veri translating to Leonidas as he translates to Aida. We were constantly talking in gestures. Eating and proud of everything. We were meeting and having empty moments.
07.06.09
The presentation. The move from the inside house to the outside meeting. We installed an external living room in the public garden. Wood, shits, chairs, matress, table, lamp, things….During the presentation we left them outside and the children, they were our responsibility, they were allowed to choose what to do in a emergency situation and they did. The rain started as usual. From inside we invited the audience to go to the outside house and the rain was going intense and heavy. It wasn’t a house anymore, or even as the one we had left previously. It was now a cabana, a box of protection, a urgency for the children to play. They re-built the environment in minutes, and transformed the place in a adaptive body. Inside they was serious caring. Aware of the fact that they constantly said to anyone who wanted to enter the cabana – TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF!
Space without objects, objects without a space
At the beginning we have an empty space, without objects.
Body needed to sit strait,
Stomach needed warm meal
Eyes needed,
Mouth needed,
Ears needed,
Brain needed,
Objects, objects, object…
After two weeks, with gratitude to our neighbors, we had all necessary, basic things for living.
On the last day, during our presentation, in front of our building, we exhibited just the objects out of their context in the living world.
[...] Donations Delft [...]