Author: stickypsyche

Jasmine

This afternoon Alexis and I were talking about how bodies will be flying off bikes, bikes sliding across the pavement, because of how beautiful the jasmine smells.

The scent is precious because it’s fleeting, and also because it’s good. Alexis is leaving soon, and the jasmine essentially her proxy.

At the end of March, Sam said “congratulations” and put white roses on my desk, their scent adding to a dazzling experience of looking through migraine visuals into a last-second grant application, which Juho kindly hand-delivered minutes later in Finland.

At the apex of lilacs in April, Hon and I were the only people in the design department not yet in Milan. The spring bloom was so beautiful it almost made me weep as we biked silently to mensa. A week later, back from Salonè Mobile, they were gone.

Sam is in the studio now and with him came giant vases of lilies. When we walked up the stairs at the same time today I thought about commenting on how the olfactory landscape is always nice when he’s around.

I’ve been ambiently nervous about my future, overwhelmed by the beauty of the people and flowers that surround me, and how all things are fleeting and unknown. I was thinking about all this while riding my bike home. Then I got hit by a car.

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7.6.17

It just all settled down, from the back of my head, through my brainstem, my spine. It’s firm black in the centre and with a cascade of blank white. “oh, it’s all going to be okay.” It happened while I was writing about my ideas. 

I know it’s time to go deep into my spine and extend it out my arms. In the evenings, in the sun, and all day. Be alone in here with a powerful intention.

30.5.17

I did a sneak-behind the bush (tall forboding hedges) and run through the midday sprinklers in the Rugby field with the interactive boys, post mensa.

Jasmine replaced lilac.

Fabrica is fleeting by nature because being a “young creative” doesn’t last 4ever and 1 year is an instant.

Lukas and I put our hands against the air conditioner at mensa, the good-dancer-curly-haired-editorial-guy (who’s name I have never known) said it is usually not this hot yet.

I had brought a glass container for to put an extra salad. Buying store-bought is for chumps, I realize, having been one for 7 months.

Making fun of the project I added to my website as I added it to my website.

A poorly-prepared lecture about a cool project. The glossiest parts were overdone video pieces with didactic soundtracks. It was so cloyingly manipulative that it could have been meta, but clearly was not.

The first question that came into my head was “who made your music?” But I held my tongue. As we were walking in golden-lit 8:16pm Fabrica Jonas said he wished he asked who made their music… “It was so good!”  I held my tongue.

I spooked everyone in Treviso, zooming on the Hell Bat and singing 1UL outside of the headphones. 

22.5.17

Taxi going the wrong way, 2 hours of sleep, those good greek bread things with sesame seeds on by the train, training American tourists not to order cappuccino after noon at Rome airport, then ordering soy cappuccino (it was 10am). Perfectly timed public transit thereafter.

21.5.17

Maca chocolate coconut milkshake for breakfast… again?

Hot, sandals, backpack, pre-packing, Despina in yellow, abandoned building with a cat, buying Aloo for later and then getting inspired to make Aloo at home, lightning storm on the rooftop, getting to see the downstairs installation by myself + saying hi to the artist, deinstalling and packing Petrichor till 3am while trying to avoid the dude who was trying to d8 me.

19.5.17

Lunch at Avocado, a vegetarian restaurant. Angelo commented it smelled like ginger. I had a kalamata olive oil kale juice and Angelo had the house wine, said it was good, said Mediteranean people love to eat outside and know which wine is good and which wine isn’t.

Public opening. Rooftop beers with a view of Acropolis. Chatting with short and un-sober Beligian guy and clever Italian artist (who made a winky frown rock – artifact from the #postfuture). Cigarettes on “porch” (window ledges outside bldg.) with new Berlin friends.

Acropolis, walking through a park, being stopped by a locked gate, Documenta, Angelo liked the scores by Pauline Oliveros, “Not Just Falafel” where we made friends with the owner, programming at ADAF, rooftop chats, the dancer from the best AV performance telling me I looked like Bowie, sneaking into a house show with Angelo, Partying with the curator at Teddy Bar, dancing hard with Angelo and buying all his ginger ale cocktails (which he later paid back). I’ve noticed Angelo really likes ginger. The curator of ADAF, Elli, noticed that I really like darkwave.

20.5.17

Maca chocolate coconut milkshake for breakfast.

I gave an artist-talk of which the main purpose was making Angelo laugh. It ended:

“In projected-future-unreality immaterial gestural interfaces have optimized the human-body to digital-communication interaction, and we’re all lithe-post-nerds on the floating-community of #risingsealevels, sending our avatar’s-avatar’s innovations to the cloud to be 3d-projected on the cloud.”

We ate falafel at Not Just Falafel before A/V shows again.

17.5.17

Vegan burgers for lunch thanks to nice lady who noticed me not having pizza the night before. 2 fans broke half an hour before opening (Athens Digital Art Festival, 2017). Was fine though.

People were not into the rain. I was. On my tech rider it specified that I would not install my piece unless it was raining.

A classic family restaurant by Acropolis metro. Super cheap. Huge portions. A local spirit at the end and the owner wrote our total on the table cloth. “Accounting will love this.”  

Half-enthusiastic, half art-let-down mode. Questioning myself vs. promoting myself. Pee out the prior beer, put in a new one.

Infinity room, people doing VR, one performance missed and another seen. Not going out partying, sleeping.

16.5.17

20 hours of travel/work straight. Glamorous. Angelo and I talking in the smoking lounge of the airport about how an unclear future is part of Fabrica’s structure, about how when I first discovered Fabrica I thought I would join the “being and dying” department, and about this being the anniversary of the day I found out my first love had died.

Angelo had been up till 3. I had been up till 1, drinking and chatting with Kristen (while wiring the new fans). I had a plane-beer while Angelo had a nap.

There was a public transit strike in Athens and a “creative technologist” as Angelo called her, drove our taxi, operating two phones and a tablet with her long nails. We sat with the Polish artist who we would make friends with and eat breakfast with and party with, but first we had to install my piece, which we did until after midnight.