Through creating a self-portrait, I seek the changing self. then I find some answers. Like Micheal Pastoureau says so well, the being must take precedence over appearing. Within the continuity where nothing is static in space and time, not even myself.
I started to create intuitive self portraits, recordings, writings, readings and pictures.
I collected those things I found worthy to document during social distancing.

Painting myself is almost like an exorcism. Deconditioning myself of toxic belief systems. Seeing clearly the injustices of our current society.
I created a new digital Identity on Instagram, in order to fit the changes in me.
It became an intimate, open and honest page, that reflects as opposite to my regular Instagram account.
Making me ask myself. Is this the new me?

During Covid 19, I found myself extatically excited about the world coming to a full stop. Besides it being an absolute crisis, creating many global horrors, I just hoped that this bubble we call a society might finally pop. On a macro level the world economy thriving on the destruction of our planet. On a micro level I foresaw families realising that they don’t even really know each other anymore, all the rush has completely influenced our relationships with our children, partners, colleagues, jobs, the relationships we have with ourselves, our bodies and our emotions.
Being the fortune teller that I am, I should have foreseen that those predictions might also count for me.

T U N I N G  I N

I sent a letter to my ever stoned, artsy, hippy grandparents.
I call them my grandparents, but in truth they are just friends of my mom's, that helped her during her pregnancy. They gave us housing while I was still in my mothers belly. Before I was born, we slept in their community garden in Amsterdam Noord.

My mom found out she was pregnant after 5 months into the pregnancy, she never thought she could get pregnant, nor that she could be a mother.
She didn't get her period for 6 years, due to her eating disorder. She was traveling through France, her birthplace, she found work at a goat farm and was content eating cheese and drinking red wine.

My mother was the ultimate vagabond, a beauty that could be the leading actress in an Agnes Varda film. She was often compared to the girl in Blue Lagoon, and just like her, she became a vessel due to circumstance, my portal to this world. Life always just happened to her, the order of things mysteriously connected.

France, 1995, my mother had such bad belly aches, that she decided to go back to Holland to see a doctor.
"Well, no wonder you have belly aches, you've been pregnant for 5 months". "That can't be true", my mother replied.
Two months later I was prematurely born. That night she went to the Buldog club in Amsterdam. To dance, like she always danced through life. It must have stimulated her water breaking. It bounced me right into the hospital, and after that, into the garden of Emmy and Tito.

When I was young I was so embarrassed when she would start dancing so uncontrollably in the grocery store. It was like her Jam came on and she would just be unstoppable. Now every dance I dance is an ode to her dancing.

I wrote a letter to Emmy and Tito, and because of our history, it wasn't a letter, it was a story. Of how life turns out sometimes. Writing, why did I forget this passion of mine? Did the unwinding and slowing down, get me here? Back to myself? No more running away from hearts desires, or forgetting about them? When I feel lost I always try to connect back to something, to myself, to my roots. Emmy and Tito are part of these roots. Maybe my soul didn''t only choose my mother but also these creative, stoned, hippies as a portal. They are the poets, painters, gardeners, readers, space cake lovers ( one slice a day ) and most of all, they are the well kept secret, of my life.

They lead a poetry club, Simon Vinkenoog was their previous "leader". Every Monday night they come together to write. Tito's work is comical, humanitarian, political and personal. I am sharing my letter correspondence, and my favorite poem from Simon Vinkenoog.

With this I welcome you into my life. I don't share this with everyone, I guess now I did, please read the words like they are the most beautiful words you have ever hear, because, why the fuck not?

Drawing:

From my dear mother, Marilou

Collage:

from my dear "grandfather" Tito

T H E 
A C T 
O F  
R E A D I N G

Escobar, Arturo.
Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds.
Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2018.

P E R F O R M A T I V E  A C T I O N
N O T E S

My greatest inspiration, her Films and documentarys are liberating for the soul

Exersise 6 Going Public or Underground

NOTE: Remember to take physical distance and social solidarity into account (don’t put anyone in danger).

Social intervention

R E F L E C T I O N

SPLASH

Going through radical changes, we suffer a collective loss according to Esther Perel. A loss of our routines, maybe even our jobs, a loss of interactions. Everybody has their own coping mechanism, either you go through it with humor, with aggression, with frustration, with creativety or you are like me and you you through all the stages.

I wanted people to be able to let their frustrations go with water balloons filled with pain, I let them throw it on a blank canvas.

Hurdles on the way: A rainy day, so no needing to go from a sunny park to the center of Utrecht. Also, filling the balloons with paint was hard, I made 4 balloons in 1 hour, and then just went with it.

GOING PUBLIC OR PRIVATE

Pro's Public, publicity, reach
Con's Public restrictions in what is legal

Pro's

I grouped with Maya for the resit period. After all these months of isolation it was refreshing to work together again.
Since the lockdown was basically over for her, while I was already back in Armenia in a full quarantine, we couldn’t relate the COVID isolation of April anymore. First, we had the idea of doing a projection mapping and sharing thoughts of people on buildings, so basically having the contrast of small bits of personal thoughts on big, uncomfortable spaces. This took us to a conversation about our current situations, and we realized that, in a way, we have similarities in our background: some current political heat, the socialist past, a lot of abandoned spaces.
We thought it’s more relevant and more open (educational, why not) to combine our current situations, common historical past and connect our project to it.

Also, we noticed how the quarantine detached people from the world, as everyone was literally interacting with their own close, small environment (room, laptop screen), so we wanted to create a space where people could just share simple images from their lives and see, learn what life is like in other parts of the world.


We thought of making collages with all these scenes/buildings and distribute it as posters around with short texts about human survival/class struggle/social conditions, however, not in a very sophisticated way.
For collecting images and sharing with people, we thought opening an Instagram and taking people’s submissions of places they live in, or just images from their city that mean something to them. This could be an Instagram page for instance. That would also allow to create a network and share personal images of scenery, to make these collective images (collages) and talk about really simple, human actions and encourage humans to share their visual environments with each other and think about questions, especially after/during a pandemic that has made us question a lot.

Our audience is every citizen, every person who evern walks around or just wonders how people further than they are living.