Bright sunshine falls through the window onto the carpet. Single reddish hairs have formed a thin coat of fur on top of its long beige threads. They shimmer golden in the white daylight. Clumps of fluff and dust are entangled in it.

I am crouched on the bed, gently running my fingers through my curls and pulling on them softly. They are barely connected to the scalp. A strand of hair sticks out between my fingers. Some days I arrange them on the coverlet, but today I let them slide to the floor. The roots are small and white. I follow the beams of light with my eyes. Outside, the desert sun is burning onto the hot stones. From the east to the south to the north and west, ochre mountains are lined up like cardboard displays in the dry soil. Observed from a distance they appear flat and hostile. For a moment I am sure I can poke my finger right through them.The screensaver flickers. I can hear the TV buzz from the living room. A small, solid lump starts to form behind my belly button above the pelvic floor and radiates up to my throat. My eyes begin to hurt. I lie down, close my lids and try to fall asleep again. When I wake up, I hear footsteps in the hallway and I quieten my breathing. My body has sunk deep into the mattress. The revolving fan rattles above me.

FLOOR PROJECT: Frank gevloerd.

Vriend,

Zelden heeft een mislukking tot zoveel opluchting geleid als in dit geval…. Ghita S. was mij op het spoor gekomen via mijn voormalige collega Eb. Zij is een conceptueel artieste en zocht een ambachtsman om haar te helpen een stuk van een vloer in een ruimte van De Ateliers (Stadhoudhouderskade) open te zagen en tijdelijk te verwijderen. Een eitje, dacht ik, en: net iets voor mij.

In overleg met een technische commissie(3 man: 2 techneuten en een manager) van het gebouw werden de omtrekken van het gat vastgesteld en een datum. Ghita, een pronte Marokkaanse uit Marrakesh, had het in haar conceptuele hoofdje gezet twee tentoonstellingen tegelijk te maken:

In Amsterdam het gapende gat (om een slijtageplek van de vorige gebruiker, een veelzeggend ‘symbool van macht’ in G’s ogen, ‘het he;eproject is een uiting van jouw macht Ghita’, reageerde ik), met daarbij de film van het maken van het gat: mijn geworstel ..opgenomen met een hoge en een lage kleine camera, de eerste getaped aan een trapleer, de tweede vlak boven de grond.

De vloerdelen zaten vast in de balken met enorme verzonken nagels van een centimeter of 12…toen ik er een aantal verwijderd had met mijn kleine en grote (inderhaast aangeschafte) koevoet was ik zo vermoeid dat ik niet meer toerekeningsvatbaar was. La S. vroeg of ik de zaagsnede aan de verkeerde zijde van de balk kon maken, de slijtage plek was net te groot…tegen een charmante conceptueel artieste zeg je geen nee.

De verwijderde vloerdelen zouden op transport gaan naar Marrakech. Dezelfde beelden zouden daar vertoond gaan worden: mijn bovenmenselijke pogingen de nagels te verwijderen, de scheve zaagsnedes op de verkeerde plaats, alles. Ik gebruikte niet mijn Japanse zagen- die waren veel te bot- maar een decoupeerzaag die G.S. inderhaast gehuurd had. Deze ging helemaal uit de route…de snede liep weg van de balk.

De manager was schichtig langs geweest, in verband met de Corona mocht hij de kamer niet in: Alles okay? Alles ok.

Een van de technici merkte op dat mijn snede aan de verkeerde kant van de balk zat: ’Daar verzin ik wel wat op, iets met lamello’s misschien?’

Die nacht en de daarop volgende nachten lag ik wakker. Hoe in godsnaam zou ik de planken weer terugleggen? Dat was ‘part of the deal’. Zo graag had ik de kunstenares een plezier gedaan, dat ik de afspraken met de technische commissie aan mijn laars had gelapt.

Het terugplaatsen van de planken was zonder bijzondere kunstgrepen niet mogelijk…en mijn zaagsnedes waren niet subtiel dun (Japanse zagen immers) maar scheef en krom en breed. Hoofdpijn kreeg ik er van. Hoe zou ik ze wegwerken? Gelukkig belde de sympathieke lesbienne dat ik het vertrouwen van de technische commissie volledig had verspeeld. Het was mij niet toegestaan verder ook maar iets aan de vloer te doen.

FLOOR PROJECT: Frank got floored.

Friend,

Rarely has a failure led to so much relief as it has in this case .... I had come to the attention of Ghita S. through my former colleague Eb. Ghita is a conceptual artiste and was looking for a craftsman to help her temporarily remove part of a floor in a space of De Ateliers (Stadhoudhouderskade). A breeze, I thought, and: just my cup of tea. I had to consult a technical committee of the building: 3 men ( 2 kind of technicians and a manager). The outline of the hole and a date were decided. Ghita, a sassy Moroccan lady from Marrakesh, had got it into her conceptual head to create two exhibitions at the same time:

In Amsterdam, the hole around a spot worn down by the previous used. In Ghita’s eyes, it was a significant « symbol of power ». I responded: The project is an expression of your power Ghita. The hole was accompanied by the film of the making of the hole: my struggle : recorded with a high and a low small cameras. The first taped to a ladder, the second just above the ground. The floorboards were fastened with huge nails about 12cm long ... after I had removed a few of them with my small and large (hastily purchased) crowbar, I was so tired that I could no longer be held accountable. Ghita asked if I could make the cut on the wrong side of the joist, the worn section was a touch too big ... You can't say no to such a charming conceptual artist.

The extracted floorboards would be transported to Marrakech. The same images were going to be shown there: my superhuman attempts to remove the nails, the crooked cuts made in the wrong place, everything. I wasn't using my Japanese saws—they were too blunt—but a jigsaw that G.S. hastily rented. It went completely off course ... the cut veered away from the joist. The manager dropped by skittishly. He was not allowed into the room because of Corona. Everything okay? Everything OK. One of the technicians commented that my cut was on the wrong side of the joist: “I’ll find a way to fix that, maybe using biscuits?”

That night and the nights that followed I stayed wide awake. How in God’s name would I put the floorboards back? That was "part of the deal". So much had I desired to please the artist, that I ignored the terms that were agreed with the technical committee. Replacing the floorboards was not possible without significant sleight of hand. My cuts weren't thin and subtle but rather crooked and wide. It gave me a headache. How was I going to hide these in the restoration process? Fortunately, the likable sympathetic lesbian called to tell me that I had completely lost the trust of the technical committee. I was not allowed to do any further work on the floor.

April 27, 2020

Dear Chris,

Since we have had our last conversation and after I spoke to Xander the next day, it became very clear to me, where my approach towards subject matter is mistaken and what my true position is. In the process of making my subject matter is as much material to me as a wooden beam or my spray paint. In a way ‘materializing’ things is basically what my number one job is, so to say, so that I can work with it. But there is no hierarchy between pictures (even though I once lived through them), conversations and video’s and markers, pieces of paper and plaster. The real life doesn’t exist in art. Everything that has been going through is material/ has reached a level of abstraction already. There is no hierarchy in purpose between materials that you recognize as a raw material and something that comes from a life lived. I am working with them, in order to see if I can make an interesting get together or merge between the everyday, the feel/ or felt and the visual object/ actual piece. No narrative/ no purpose.

Which might be confusing, because yes there are figures raised in the pieces, sometimes it does say something directly (which is something that I experience as a goal, because that is very hard and I am still practicing it), but there is no purpose, no story, no narrative. It is just, all kind of things in the mix, reacting to one another, to get a work that is both speaking to what art can be like and evokes what it is to be human and what we recognize as something that can be experienced as a human. Those two things are what I am after in my works.

It is not in any case meant to be individual, egocentric, white female middle class. It is not hand made, but human made, which is imperfect, uncomfortable, indeed misunderstood, temporary, useless and always transforming. It indeed is catharsis, concerning both art as a formal thing, a tradition, a believe, a system and an instrument of power and status and being alive and make stuff.

I couldn’t say this on Tuesday, but thanks to our conversation it helped me to get this straight, even if it only sticks with me for a week or so, or other meetings/ confrontations can make me feel otherwise. But I think I have encountered something that is something fundamental in my approach. And I hereby like to share it with you.

Eleye

Live, from Ateliers. Over & out.