DUST TO DUST
2022
Reflections and it’s emotions in changing times -Covid-19 times. By times i feel a growing need to understand the notion of ‘undoing’ something. Can we undo our actions, our damage to the world, our self-evident comfort, our privilege. Not literally undoing as a Ctrl Z action. As an attempt of understanding this, i started experiments around the concept of making and unmaking, from dust to dust, a repetitive physical action. An attempt of gaining embodied knowledge. I’m not expecting to find immediate answers.
In the first experiment i unraveled my own project, a woolen carpet i knitted with industrial textile waste. It took me weeks to make it, a few hours to unmake it. It felt like a process of undoing self-evident comfort. It was performed in times of Lock-down.
Comfort, Lock down, locked up, strapped, intertwined, entangled, constrained, restricted, transience, obedience, fighting against time, suffocated, slow, giving time, speeding up, need to set loose, translucent, break free, unmaking, undoing, unlearning, open, give new form, new life, breath, air, light.
The second experiment was done in Lithuania, near the Belarus border, at LT_Ranch, @lt_ranch_space . A wonderful place, an artist in residence by Kristina Kotov.
At the time i was there in 2022, Lithuania and Poland were building fences at the Belarus border to stop migrants entering Europe. In this situation people are used as a political instrument. I’m privileged as a European citizen to benefit from inherited wealth. But does it really belong to me? And why not to someone outside that wall / fence?
In this context, i felt like undoing a self-built ‘silver lace’ looking fence. Can we undo a sense of safety, accept being naïve, to be vulnerable? Loose privilege? What are fences stopping beyond humans? It creates borders for animals and nature as well, minimize their habitat. Why should all that land belong to us? Who (or better what) should have ownership of the land?
I first build a fence. It took me a few days. It took even longer to unmake it, cutting wire piece, by wire piece. A monotonous process. Feeling vulnerable in doing this, getting cut by the wire. Whilst doing this, i started to see more and more details. Butterflies and bees buzzing by. It felt like they were reclaiming their territories as well.
Undo, defense, fence, lace, silver, privilege, cutting, sharp, doubt, vulnerable, gentile, harsh, translucent, opaque, open up, empathy, human touch, animals, butterfly effect.
