TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

5:32 PM
Posted by jodi rose

nice radios borrowed from sophea in the pixelache transit lounge

It's a strange process listening back to your own conversations for the purpose of archive. Makes the experience into a memory far more quickly than when it fades naturally and is remembered random later. Those people are gone already, some I will see again, others maybe never.

Had a lovely meeting with Lea last night about our work for the exhibition on 12th April. She suggested fragmenting the answers and disturbing their context, which I wasn't going to do but actually heard so many intriguing comments that it would be fun to play with and highlight. Thinking of Jean Cocteau's film Orpheus, where the poet protagonist hears voices from other dimensions on his car radio, before disappearing through the mirror into that bizarrre underworld.
Radio's suspened in the space along the corridor - Radio in Transit.

Govinda left me his bike to use when he went to Cologne and Paris.
Although the seat is too high and my centre of gravity slightly off - must find time to locate someone with a spanner, it's wonderful having a bicycle, the whole city has opened up. I no longer have to see those ad's for Madonna's designer range at H&M - one more day looking at her lounging in a black v-neck dress with a riding crop.. and I was going to have to try it on. Thankfully the impulse has passed now.
Being flat broke has its advantages, definitely erases any unnecessary consumerism. Funny how people imagine that if you travel a lot you must have plenty of money, when in fact the exact opposite is true. Rob mentioned that he imagined all the art scene in europe being made up of these incredibly well-funded uber-cool types, when actually it's really a bunch of people scraping by, keeping it together the way artists do anywhere. On a string and a prayer.

Having said that, fingers crossed to sucessfully negotiate the next round of grant applications and sponsorship negotiations.

Doing this project - with a moment last night of, what was I thinking, this is banal trite and completely irrelevant - has made me realise just how much I have invested in the bridges over all these years. Dammit, we will hear them sing together. Whatever it takes! Good to have some perspective, through the filter of starting a new idea and finding ways to express it, and make it more collaborative, all feeds back in.

Looking forward to the 'Architecture for Participation' day at Pixelache, and coming back with some more voices. It's a very strange conceit, to collect conversations. I'm opening it up to anyone now, who wants to contribute, by text or sound or video. Although this participatory art seems to suffer largely from the difficulty of people finding time and energy to participate, unless it's streamlined with a particular activity or group or focus. And the transit lounge blog is already neglected, by me anyway, so perhaps one more thing to take part in is unncessary.

The sense of home I was expecting to find is still elusive, but maybe that's just another part of a life long journey. Finding home within yourself. Or something abstract like that. Realised this morning that I am really quite happy with it all though. Life, love, friends... who could ask for more. There is a joy in simplicity, being stripped of all the support networks and structures you use to keep life mediated. Suddenly it's raw and there is no way you can do anything else.
Days and nights float by in the studio, my head in the magic screen.