The monuments, chapter 6 - Before the Concert

Before the Concert 16.12.2022 7 pm – 22 pm – 5th floor site-specific installation and performance

“We have been here before,” is how I would usually start. Maybe to get in the right mood. To get you in the right mood. In a way, I keep on writing the same thing, the same situation. I keep on going back to this room with people. Not just any kind of room, usually it becomes “this room,” the one where I’ll place my next thing. My next work of art. When I step into this imaginary room, before I decide on the actual venue, I become more aware of the one in which I find myself right now – my studio. Winter is creeping in outside and through the bricks, as days cut short and night clouds down fast. I hear distant voices of familiar souls downstairs as I wonder if they might evolve into a fight, but just then a train passes by, so I close my eyes.

The colour of my shut eyes was the first abstract painting I ever made. Mid-summer, on a small island in Dalmatia, after a lunch of fish and white wine, we kissed, then I glazed the painting I was working on, and the image made me giggle with content, so I opted that the best way to crown the moment of pure bliss was to throw myself into the sea. As I did, jumping into the blue water, I did so with my eyes closed. It all pinnacled into this vibrant light blue dot. As I surfaced and opened my eyes, it was still there, but changed colour and at one point I saw three suns. A real one, and two glowing oranges in front of my eyes.

As I close my eyes right now, I see it all again. It often happens, through different triggers: a smell, your soft skin, the vertigo of music and everything that goes along with it. Like that day, when the city edges burned with violet flames and again I giggled, thinking the image was of my doing, as it appeared in front of my eyes.

“Are we really” asks that familiar voice next to me.

“What?” I respond.

“Are we really here again?”