Description and meaning of the work below the images
Description
The work Oneinde has literally and figuratively several angles.
I choose to not translate the title, but it means Unend(ing).
As you can see in the video, the sculpture is uneven on every side, everything is crooked, broken off, and can in principle continue to spin indefinitely, perhaps even go crazy. I also used the video in one of the illustrious radio video shows i made in 2022/2023, and there it did indeed seem to spin crazy. Eventually the sculpture calmed down a bit, unlike myself. And so i made a few more Oneindes; one of about the same size, plus a few smaller ones (which i can't seem to find - did i throw them away, or are they just in a box somewhere with other stuff?).
And so, before you know it, a series is created, and i have the idea to continue with this, the only question now is: How?
When the time comes, the solution will come.
Meaning
Version 1.1, so the black foam sculpture, in which i also used photographs, symbolizes for me a mysterious affair, with a very sad background.
For long i was friends with ❤️Sepp*.
We first met on a Queen's Day in the street, where we danced and chatted and drank. Later we ran into each other in the supermarket. And at some point my then boyfriend, with whom i lived together, invited a friend with whom he had played in a band, and when i opened the door there was Sepp. "What are you doing here!" we both said at the same time, and our friendship began. We experienced many things, talked, drank, partied a lot, even walked. That last walk in his then place of residence was nice, but there were also cracks in our friendship. He had become rather gruff and somewhat conservative about a number of things, and i couldn't handle that very well, especially because they were things that directly affected me. I didn't see him much after that, at some point we lost each other.
In 2020, a few months into the pandemic, i got a call from a mutual friend who told me he had taken his own life. He had been struggling with mental health issues for a while, and had been doing so before, and the pandemic had stopped his day care, and despite all the care from his family and friends, he was unfortunately unable to make it. Terrible news, he was such a special person. For me it was a loss, although i had already missed him before his death, in fact.
Exactly one month later - i still had Facebook at the time - the news came of someone else's suicide. I knew ❤️Benjamin* from the time i worked as an application manager, we sometimes worked together in different capacities, and when i stopped doing that work, we always kept in touch via Facebook, although that was also starting to fade away, we both weren't that active there anymore.
Again i was in shock. I didn't know enough about his private life to know why; often people don't know (exactly) why someone chooses death anyway, not even family or friends. I felt especially bad for his children, who i had seen grow up from a social media distance.
So far two sad events, and apart from the fact that they were so close together, you wouldn't look for much behind them. But there were a number of similarities and facts that give the whole thing a mysterious strangeness.
Both men had a lot of knowledge and love for music and film, both had also worked in a film house annex music venue. Did they know each other? I don't think so. They also always lived in two cities far apart. Although it wouldn't surprise me if they had had contact about something, a band, a film, something like that. But there was no friendship between them, or any other connection. Outwardly they didn't look alike, but inwardly they did. There were also some similarities in their lives, although that also applies to many more people. It's not all that bizarre, but i still always found it remarkable.
And they were the same age, at least: Sepp was exactly one month older than Benjamin, but died one month earlier, and you could say that they both became the same age because of that. Especially in the beginning, this kept going through my head - how was this possible? Especially in combination with the suicide fact, i still find it very miraculous.
How something like that ends up in a sculpture, i can't really explain. Sometimes things go the way they go, not everything is precisely fixed in a nameable path. You put things together, break them down again, add something, change it again, and so on and then something comes into being, together with all your thoughts and emotions, condensed in a mysterious as well as logical and natural process. I didn't make it 'to close something off', that's not how it works for me. It felt like something that belonged, like a report of the mystery that had shown itself to me perhaps.
There was a lot of anger in it, even then, sadness about all the bad things in life, about the angry outside world, the pandemic, all the uncertainties, and of course my loneliness, the endless turning, turning, repeating of everything, everything that shows itself again and again in all kinds of forms, and the question of whether anything would ever change for the better. Big things, big words, and all of that captured in one image.
The photos i used were from a night on the Wadden coast, during a party and camping on Sepp's father's estate, years ago, as a farewell when Sepp left for a long time to a faraway country, and the deep blue-green-black night sky that made such an impression then. Where was that time? The melancholy of those photos, the colours, the memories, the mourning too, the mystery of life... it's all there.
Version 2.1
And then, some time after i made the video, i was looking through my older work, i still had a load of removed paintings and drawings lying around, and i wanted to do something with them, but what? Because i just didn't know what to do, i once, out of frustration, crumpled a piece of canvas together, and voila! suddenly i saw it. With contrasting thread i sewed the turbulent monstrosity back together, but then in a three-dimensional form.
Actually i was planning to do this with all the old stuff, enthusiastic as i always am, but after this one and a few smaller ones i stopped. I found it a bit over the top and boring, and what on earth does the world need with a hundred thousand of those things. And now i've even lost the little ones! After the last move i've seen them somewhere, but that goes for just about everything i've lost anyway (a few sets of spare keys that i put away somewhere so i wouldn't lose them: where are they:?!).
Version 2.2
I had completely forgotten about this one, but today, December 18, i suddenly found it during a clean-up of a number of taped boxes. Also made from a former canvas, which was more of a drawing than a painting, but which i did not find worth keeping for eternity. And thus nicely made circular. The rest of the canvas did end up in the residual waste.
Version 3.1?
I think there needs to be a version 3.1. But i don't know yet how or what. I think it needs to be something made of fabric, because i have miles of it in my stash, and it's time to do something with it. But what?!?!?!?!1!:!? There needs to be more thinking and experimenting, and that frustrates me - on top of everything else that drives me nuts, so it'll probably be a crazy implosion of fabric.
* These are not their real names.
DatumTijd: 2024 dec 18, 17:05 CET
Auteur: Mulder
Tags:
experiment
friendship
life
mourning
mystery
process
sculpture
suicide
Names register:
Benjamin
Sepp
Categorieën:
Film: Hannah Celsius
Sculptures: Oneinde