- [:swvar:option:104:] [:swvar:option:103:], [:swvar:option:105:]
- Category: poetry
WEG/aWAY +1 year
Today I reopen Weg/aWay to take you along the lines I started writing years ago and am writing still.
Ghent - 18 July 2020
Sabine A.M Martens
WEG/aWAY
+ 1 year (start)
A year ago no obstacles existed to organize the Ghent Festivities and I opened my poetry exhibition Weg/aWay on the first Friday. It was a fantastic period during which I as an artist daily met my public and could open a dialogue with them. Some came intending to visit the exhibition, others were passers-by unaware of it but each and every one of them was important. Never my work had been so tangible, never had I had the possibility to converse with hundreds of readers, never had I been able to look them in the eye as they could look at me.
It was my only vacation that year. The experience fulfilled me in such a way that I canceled all my traveling plans. I had been allowed to spend my time in a monument of a building of which I knew it would not remain in its current state - I was part of the privileged artists who could work within its walls. I was at home there for a couple of months and when I closed the large green gate behind me, I could work without any disturbance amidst absolute silence that softly floated on the nearly inaudible classical music from the concierge’s radio. How strange that strange could be so much home.
Parallel to the work, I showed in the exhibition, new work originated on top of which the experiences with and the comments of visitors became a new layer as if wanting to preserve the temporary character of the installation under a protective layer. I documented as much as I could and decided then already to grant the work a second life, be it virtually.
In the same way as so many things that happened to me in the summer of 2019, that also proved to be prophetic because I could never have imagined that exactly one year later the virtual world would seemingly be the only way out of the dead-end the world had taken a turn for.
Today I reopen my exhibition Weg/aWay and welcome all who read this to the story I started years ago, and am writing still. The coming days I invite you all before and behind the scenes, between the folds and dust of the derelict exhibition venue, along the letters that you cannot touch but still grasp now, on the sound of...
Why it must. Start
I had the choice not to write. Correction: that is not right. I write. I write like I breathe, to survive. I could choose not to survive and there have been moments that felt like I wouldn’t continue living.
I did have the choice not to show my work in the form of an installation. I didn’t have to prepare for months on end. I didn’t have to set up works. But I did. And I am glad because of it.
The building at Lindenlei 38 in Ghent breathes past times but is also a nest of creative minds. It used to be a convent and after that a technical school. Now it harbors studios for sculptors and painters. It is a space of tranquility and positivism. There is an openness, although the gate is always closed. In this secluded place of free creation, I can thrive. My way is the one of a maker and the venue invites me to make.
The old and protected library is the biotope of an old filing cabinet in which the hyperlinks of the past are hidden. Here I will make my starting point because my whole life is stitched up with books. “I am deciding” is the first idea for this exhibition that came to my mind months ago. By placing a sentence in a tense and form indicating duration in contrast with the verbs that have a rather temporary meaning, a choice or a way not directly becomes definitive. Why couldn’t a life be a period of “being in the process of choosing” and being allowed to doubt. A road once taken can always be walked back and the process of deciding can be resumed again.
The economic Western society however imposes that people do something with their lives to provide for their needs, to have purchasing power. Purchasing power is the golden calf of what humans strive for. Standing still is going backward. And so what. Maybe it is nicer, more pleasant, more interesting to stand still. I hear of various visitors that they like the very fact of silence and being alone taking their time to absorb my work. They are watching, reading, … preferably as slowly as possible. There is no interference. The only interference that could arise, is the impatience of the observers and their volatile, swiftly disappearing attention.
The beginning of the exhibition is a plea for each individual’s own personal time to chose or not to chose or no … or yes… It is a plea for freedom.
A young visitor tells me he actually has ever wanted to study something artistic … writing, acting. He has already started three different studies without success. His parents made him do so. Is there a future in drama studies, he asks, because his parents will want to know. He asks me because he witnesses what 1 person can make and he feels touched by it. Morton wrote, “of all the paths lying in the wood I chose the one less traveled by”. Apparently, it takes courage although it shouldn’t. Parents prefer three unfinished studies than one artistic one. Infanticide.
