I took the Moleskine everywhere with me for three months. We visited places I’d never seen before, always enthralled by this very new context. Hitchhiking through Germany with a Belgian accountant, an American mom who campaigned for Obama (and repeatedly told us this) and a Columbian scuba diver was how the journey began. The real life bear in the center of Berlin left me feeling awkward. Public swimming pools followed. Forests. Turkish airlines. Fish markets. Blue Mosque. Eiffel Tower. Street cats. Red lights. Bratwurst. Special K. Mosquitoes. Rain. Fortune telling rabbits. Roasted nuts. No floods. Grilled mealies. Apple tea. Mosquitoes. Metro. Mangy dog fights. Tapas. Giant wooden shoes. U-bahn. Not so Irish coffee on a cold rainy pavement. Slow cars. A view that makes you never want to leave the hotel roof. Trams. Dogs in windows. A bowl of hundreds of miniature edible fish. A canal filled with swans eating litter. Grand Bazaar. Traffic. The best coffee you’ll ever drink. Endless train rides. Nutella crêpes in front of a view that made me cry. Waffles. Techno music in a taxi, so loud that it massaged my back. Spice markets. Another bear. The smell of sweat. Ferrets for sale. Refresh*.
*The final presentation of my Moleskine notebook is of a worn out, saturated object – illustrating, or rather not illustrating a journey through popular tourist destinations (Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Istanbul). These places are frequented by so many tourists that most representations of them become somewhat blasé. Instead of a literal or graphic representation of these journeys, my notebook intends to recall one’s own memories, opening up imaginations, curiosities and uncertainties.
(1984, Pretoria South Africa) Lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.
I seek to personalise my relationship with everyday activities, inanimate objects, places, smells, people, animals, movements and time in a way that could metaphorically represent my integration into or rejection from my current situation. I am contemplating the present, and the future, looking forward to the unknown, while respecting and researching the past – but never wishing its return or letting it hold me back. I am incessantly searching for the most appropriate or necessary ways of dealing with this artistically. Constantly doubting, failing and starting over.
