Searching for the greener grass
"I once wrote you a story about a magic box, that every time you opened it, there would be a new adventure inside, a window into another world. It would always change and it would always be new, going deeper and deeper, into this endless journey.... This was our road, and I thought we would always travel along it, searching for that greener grass at the end of the line. But we never found it, just kept on searching, not realising that we had it there in front of us all along...."
— (Excerpt from ‘Searching for the greener grass’ Nomadic Arts Festival, 2014))
Searching for the greener grass
A one to one performance which took place on the two front passenger seats of a bus on the way from Warsaw to the Nomadic Arts Festival, (2014, Charciabałda, Poland).
We sit side by side watching the road ahead whilst you listen to the recording of a story on headphones. The story is about a journey, which is partly fictional and partly mine. It is about holding on and letting go, about searching for something new and looking back at the past. I ask you to help capture our moment of togetherness, to preserve it by making a drawing of the landscape as it passes by in front of us. I pass you a sketchbook and a pencil.
Do not hold on to anything too long, focus on how it is constantly changing.
This Island of me
Live Performance. Turner Contemporary, Margate (2015)
Between the stormy sea outside the window, and a looping video of the sea which cropped itself in towards the horizon, I created an island.
The video on the screen is recorded from the coastline of southern Tunisia, the point of departure for many attempts by refugees to reach Lampedusa in search of a new life in Europe. The waves never quite reach the shore, and the image zooms in and in towards the horizon until it becomes simply blue and white pixels.
I slowly unrolled my island, read a passage from my diary, and then rolled it back up again.
Landscapes of the in-between
8 min video recording of a performance lecture presented Batman University, Turkey (2014). Curated by Seckin Aydin.
The lecture uses footage and stories that I collected on an overland journey from Berlin to Batman by hitch-hiking and on trains, buses and boats. It captures a sense of being in-between, being on the road, and dreaming of a different life. This is a somewhat personal narrative woven into the stories of people I encountered on my journey - long distance truck drivers, dreamers, migrants, nomads and exiles.
