The Bridge Guard - Part Four - Words

Erm, what happened to that month!?

It's exactly a month today since I spent that first blubbersome (if it's not a word it should be) day wondering round Sturovo and the bridge... It's gone by incredibly fast.

So...you know the wood I told you about last time? Well, the next day it had gone, yup, just missed out there. But, Kati from Kaliedoszkop called the building firm on my behalf and they said I could have the next lot but then due to bad weather and people being away on holidays and stuff it's two weeks on and I haven't got any wood. SO, after a cracking discussion with my mentor Juliet via skype last night we decided that I should move on with another idea and that maybe the wood thing wasn't meant to be. I'm not sure the building can take some of my bodge-work either. It does need to be in good condition for the next bridge guard! I felt a re-think coming on...

It's weird how thoughts can often just float round on the edge of you consciousness then only in a conversation do they step forward and actually demand your attention. I'd been thinking about a past work I did ages ago back in Suffolk called, Conversation in the Kitchen, it was for a breast awareness campaign going on at the time and the work was to be exhibited in a local health centre. I'd recorded a conversation I'd had with a friend about the project and wrote the dialogue all over a 'mock-up' kitchen I'd created the health centre. It read like a play, it was written all over the walls, plates, cups and saucers etc, covering everything in the discussion and inviting others to read it. This had popped into my head last week as I'd had this idea to use text on the walls as part of this piece here in Sturovo. Thinking about how words had become such an HUGE part of this experience. In that, it's alienating but freeing sometimes that you don't understand what's being said or written, it allows you to drift off or even imagine what they may be saying. Not being able to chat freely all of the time explains this sudden burst of writing I think. I mean, this story I started writing, The Bridge Dreamer, I've never done anything like that before. That's the beauty of the residency though, there was no way I could of guessed I'd of spent the majority of the first month writing. I hate writing. Well I hate 'proper' academic art speak writing. As you may have noted for yourselves!

sketch

So yeah, talking to Juliet, talking about text on the walls, about the wood situation then talking about the drawings and the short version is I've decided to start drawing directly on the walls and use layered cardboard (seeing as I have some) painted black to create some 3d lines along with the drawn 2d lines. I want to do big massive drawings and take over the whole room....Working from my photographs to zoom in on certain sections of the bridge to start with...

scribbles

sketch

sketch

I think another big factor was having my Aunt and Uncle visit last week and being able to talk over ideas in some depth and get some feedback.

So today I went looking for black paint, simples huh? Nope not unless I wanted to pay a million pound for a tube of acrylic that would last me 5 minutes. Luckily I had a new chum with me, Bogi, who took me to tesco of all places where I discovered that they don't sell big tins of colours like in the UK, you have to buy a big tub of white then a little tube of colour and mix it yourself, if Bogi hadn't been there I'd still be there now trying to work out how many tubes I needed for a 4l tub of white! The woman in the shop told me to just try the tube on it's own with a little bit of water, I got stupidly excited about this as if it's OK it'll save me loads of money. I honestly can't believe how expensive stuff like that is here, and I'm not even going to start on shampoo! Or face-paint! (I've been invited to a Halloween themed Zumba class! I have no costume so I was just going to wear my overalls and do my face like a zombie and carry a hammer...why not? A flesh eating workie??)

sketch

Last week was great having Aunty Alice and Uncle Ted around, we spent alot of time in the Green Pub where Zoli was the perfect host! Cheers pal! And the cakes, (drool) in Esztergom were tremendous. In spite of the thick fog that descended over the whole of Sturovo and Esztergom on the day of their arrival we still managed to have a good time without actually being able to see! It did force us into the pub (kicking AND screaming) a lot earlier than if we'd been able to sight see, silver lining and all that jazz...

foggiest fog we ever did see

Alice happy near cake

Alice and Ted, Basilica, Esztergom

Day after the foggiest fog ever but still foggy

happy jaunt across the bridge

cake

On the party front, (which is definitely now 22nd Dec) things are moving in the right direction and fingers crossed there'll be a terrific band performing on the night, chinese lanterns, fire, mulled wine, people, costumes and an added surprise. Early stages so lots can change/develop but I at least bought one chinese lantern today! It's a start! I'll ask politely for other 'Bridge Guards' on the night to bring one too. They sell them in the paper/art/craft shop in Sturovo for €1.89.

I'll sign off this time with a serious of random observations. Thank you/D'jackujem/Koszonom.

The 26?

She looks happy with the Man's Hands Massage

 clapping dogs

My Father attempting skype for the first time

smarties

boss bench in Kormano, Slovakia

the soup's inside the bread, genius!

what I miss that I should of asked Our Alice to bring, damn.

The Bridge Dreamer - A Short Tale - Chapter Two

Under the weight of excitement, exhilaration and a tinge of anxiety she reached out towards a newspaper on the newsstand. It caught her attention initially because there was a man wearing a red shirt (she always liked red) but as her fingers were just about to grip the paper it vanished. What! She looked around, nobody paid her any attention; she looked up to see if anyone was guarding the newsstand, there was nobody there.

What strangeness was this?

A bolt of panic. ‘This is it, you’ve lost it,’ she blathered out loud.

Quickly, she tried to compose herself, screwing her eyes up tight, inhaling deeply and blowing her cheeks out with her lips locked tightly together, rather like when you’re about to jump into a swimming pool for the first time and you know it’s going to be cold. This helped her, she didn’t know why; maybe it was because she didn’t end up in icy cold water? Who knows, but she began to think clearly again. She looked back at the stand and there it was! The same paper! In the same rack, looking exactly as it had done moments before it vanished. Only this time...this time an image of herself looked back at her.

As much as people may think this could be a pleasant experience, seeing yourself on the front page of newspaper, she felt jammed, jammed in her own apparent madness.  Yet again, her imagination had not only run wild it had ran straight past wild and into crazy. Please, please, please, please she repeated, not exactly sure what she was pleading for, but primarily to re-emerge from this cul-de-sac of thoughts bouncing around and refusing to settle into anything remotely coherent.

Her breakfast that day (omelette) suddenly came into sharp focus; it didn’t look appetising. As her stomach lurched and she felt herself blush, she then got annoyed at herself for blushing! It had always let her down in the past, yet another thing that she added to her list of ‘wierdo-isms’.  Again, arguing with herself in her head she tried to act composed and picked up the paper. In the image she noted immediately that ‘she’ looked happy, ironically as she'd frowned.  A strange sensation replaced the stomach curdle, it was calm and it was warm and it felt good. Happy at seeing herself look happy she found herself smiling back.

She was standing at a newsstand smiling at a picture of herself in a newspaper that hadn’t existed seconds before. Gulp.

Then, a rush of un-wanted squirminess returned to her stomach. What was going on here? She’d stopped smiling now and her eyes moved up away from her image to the top of the newspaper, it said, ‘News from the Bridge’ in big fat black bold type. News from the bridge? What bridge? Her eyes darted back to the image, and she spotted the small writing underneath was in a completely incomprehensible language. She didn’t recognise a single word. Time was passing and she was suddenly jolted back into reality by the tannoy system in the train station making an equally garbled announcement saying something about a late platform change. Ughhhh, she thought, I missed the train it was referring to and the platform number!  She looked around dazed and utterly confused as people rushed passed her, scrambling to get to somewhere other than here. Her feet were rooted to the spot, her hands clutching the newspaper. At any moment she expected someone to ask her if she was going to buy it. They didn’t. She looked back again to the image, who was this girl? It couldn’t be her, surely she’d remember being in a newspaper? And the bridge, what bridge? Then, right there in front of her, again from nowhere, she saw what she thought looked like a green iron gate, or maybe a post, or something...Her eyes whizzed back to the image once more and she realised for the first time that in the image she was standing on a bridge, a huge bridge made of green steel, a huge church or something in the background.

Where was this place?

   

She knew she hadn’t dreamt of a bridge and for the first time she was sure, one hundred per cent sure that she must have fallen into another person’s dream. There was no other logical explanation. As the last few people sped off, away from her, she knew she wouldn’t be following, she couldn’t even remember where she’d previously been going. All she did know was that she had to find the maker of this dream. She had to find this place that was making her smile, she knew a journey was about to begin, this time she intended on being fully awake.

To be continued...

Bridge Guard - A short tale - The Bridge Dreamer, Chapter One

The Bridge Dreamer

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past lived a girl who’s dreams fell out. They fell out no matter where she was, on the stairs, on a bus, in the aisles of Tesco, didn’t matter, her head would just bust. You see, this girl had ideas that could fill the Grand Canyon, when everybody else slept at night her mind flooded, more and more thoughts, more and more quandaries, more and more lists that no human mind could physically store.

Therefore, each day she began in hope, in hope that she could keep her dreams in, keep them to herself. They were hers after all. She had to figure out how to keep them, only share if she actually felt like sharing.

How to keep your dreams?

One day, as a particularly embarrassing dream had just emerged from her head while waiting for a train she saw a newspaper stand she hadn’t noticed before. In fact, she was sure it had just appeared, like one of her dreams, or maybe, just maybe she was seeing somebody else’s dream! Oh my, she thought, the excitement of seeing somebody else’s dreams! The possibility that she wasn’t the only one who’s dreams fell out! A feeling overwhelmed her. Inside her belly felt like the time she met Father Christmas – nobody had believed her so the feeling had faded. Her flooded mind beeped like a car horn; she wasn’t sure if the noise was inside her head or outside, she didn’t care!

The girl approached the newspaper stand with giddy caution, trying not to let her expectations run wild (she was always doing that). For a split second she was a tiny bit deflated because the newspaper stand was so solid, so real, then she remembered something. She had once dreamt something several times and part of that dream had remained...here in the real world. It was a lamppost, and it still stood on the corner of a street in her hometown. She never told anyone to this day she’d dreamt the lamppost, people would think her even madder than they already did. But here, now, in front of this solid newspaper stand that had appeared from nowhere she was discombobulated and totally flabbergasted by the size and possibility of it all. It was enough to keep her awake for the next twenty years at least.

To be continued...

The Bridge Guard - Part Three - Lists

A new day, a new list...

I have a list to get done by the end of tomorrow that will lead onto several other lists.

So, you have an idea, (still interested in building something indoors) then look for materials and tools. I've identified wood that would be perfect to try out the idea, I've identified a person who may be able to help me find out how to find out who owns the material! AND find out if I can have it, or some of it?? That's just one material, that's a very investigative process. IF this material is unavailable, I start again...again. This will be addressed tomorrow. Kati from http://www.kaleidoszkophaz.hu/ will be sorry she met me...

But here's the wood identified outside a church in Esztergom (probably a really important Church that I don't know the name of yet) I only had eyes for the wood.

Then there is a question of tools - drills, screwdrivers, metal drums to put fires in, sky lanterns etc - that will be discussed tonight with Guri. Poor George.

Then I have this other idea, the fancy dress party thing, this is something that will be ongoing throughout this process. I already have the ball rolling, meeting last week at the local high school with some very tall 16 year olds. They seemed keen, well one did! This followed on from an invite from Adriana (who is a teacher at the school and new friend) to come and watch a school play about English History. I was intrigued...

It was brilliant! I learnt so much! The Bear Theatre company perform all over Europe performing as an assist to helping kids with their English. http://www.thebeartheatre.com/en 

I tell ye wa...I wish we'd had stuff like this at school. It was funny and well written and afterwards we all went out for lunch. Hurah! David Fisher (the company founder) and Lenka Fisherova even brought their euro coin collection to show me. Fascinating.

David and Lenka with their big bag of coins!

So I'm hoping by Wednesday to have lots of questions answered. In the meantime I have some bits and pieces in the studio I'd like to start experimenting with. I may use some cardboard I found to work with first. I've had some good adventures this past week, an overload of the senses so it's good to write about it here and begin to process it all.

One of the highlights of the week was Bratislava. I had the morning to wander around while Adriana went to a seminar - I was fascinated by the architecture, the old town really is the old town, and then everything else built up around it. One of my favourite bits however was the walls of graffiti and 'childrens wall' around the base of the cathedral. 

Bratislava speaks for itself...

 

I stumbled across the Slovak National Gallery and ended up spending ages in the current exhibition called Interrupted Song. The Art of Socialist Realism 1948-1956. What a find, I had no particular plan that day and sometimes you come across things that can influence an entire trip, this is one of those chance experiences. I didn't even notice the Stalin statue outside when I first went in, part of the exhibition! If you happen to be passing through Bratislava in the next week I can highly recommend it. Maybe it's an outsider thing though? Maybe it's so fascinating to me coming from a perspective of never living under communist rule. I wonder how people who have feel about this exhibition? 

http://www.sng.sk/en/uvod/vystavy/aktualne/prerusena-piesen

Jan Murdroch, Partisan Woman, 1954

and then a tremendous pink tram

Adriana (the fastest walker in all of Europe) and Bratislava

The Blue Church, Adriana's favourite, a hidden gem in Bratislava

The new controversial bridge

Back to art and back to Esztergom, great show opened at Kaleidoscope on Friday, a Hungarian painter,  http://www.gazdagagnes.com/index.html Her work is equally freaky as it is beautiful, I thought about Paula Rego when I was looking at it, she hadn't heard of Rego. We had a good night too, the night flew by, I thought it was about 10.30pm when I left but it can't have been as I got in at 1.30am, unless I slipped into some weird unexplained bridge time zone on the way home...now there's an interesting thought...

Big Headed, oil on canvas, 80 x 120cm

Rabbit, oil of canvas, 24 x 18cm

The final leg of the blog (promise) ends rightly so at the famous Green Pub, as I finally got a buddie (temporarily although) to hang out with in such a fine establishment. Lauren and I were welcomed with open arms and free Borovička, the Slovak national drink, a bit like gin but much nicer to down as a shot. It was a good night. It's a shame Lauren lives in Budapest.







I'll sign off again for the week with some photies taken from around and about, the day to day business of Bridge Guarding.

 Bridge Guard out.