I arrived in Skövde, Sweden, yesterday. The overall project PRINTS OF TIME —
WHERE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE INTERWEAVE TOGETHER
AND COLLECTIVE ENCOUNTERS TURN MOMENTS INTO STORIES
is getting underway…
It’s been about a year since I first started thinking about my artistic project, which I’d like to realise here in a co-creative way with the local people over the next two months. I’ve called the project ‘Footnotes for … Skövde’. I’ll be sharing more about the project ideas and how they’ll be realised over the next few days.
Today, I found myself tripping over my own thoughts. I wondered where on the available museum floor I should set up my workspace. And how? What’s the bare minimum I need? A table, a chair, one or two extra chairs for visitors to sit and chat. A bookshelf on the wall for the small library I’ve brought with me. A power socket for the computer. I didn’t fancy the rectangular and round tables that the museum provides for events – too standard, too impersonal…
Then David came over to me; he works at the museum and will be helping me and the other artists from EULENGASSE with technical and practical matters. And he pointed to the many wooden panels lying around, ready for this and that. All materials that had already been used before. I quickly sketched out a technical diagram, and before long David had fired up the electric saw, cut a panel to size, and together we screwed the workbench and three bookshelves together.
The idea and spontaneous realisation of my personal workspace felt very much of the moment. And it lays the foundation for the future – at least for the next two months during the residency. And perhaps the table and shelves will find a further use afterwards too. Sustainability in action.
Today I found myself pondering why I’d want to set up this workspace in the first place. What does this have to do with me? With my past? Why do I need the security of a workbench like this? Perhaps because I’ve left behind the routine I’d practised for nearly 25 years in my office in Frankfurt to be here? The table could, of course, be a kind of self-assurance. Now I have a place, a position. I don’t need to know straight away what I’m actually supposed to be doing here. I observe, wait, gather. The table becomes a place of possibilities. It is a threshold between my previous practice and what might emerge here.
That is my first footnote: not something I’ve discovered about Skövde, but something that Skövde initially reveals about me.
P.S. An unknown person has left a pencil drawing of a figure on this tabletop. The speech bubble coming from their mouth reads: HEJA! — Yeah, just you!
Photocredits: © Harald Etzemüller (Title, sketch, 1-2) Lilo C. Karsten (3)
