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next Thuistezien 97 — 11.08.2020
Rites of Passage VI
SeamlessnessAnnastate
I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray. But when I woke up this morning, I thought that there was not enough time to experience the future anymore. You probably noticed it, too (…). At the same time, the speed of its arrival is such that you don’t notice it, either. You don’t even think anymore about how many times it happens.
In this final video, I wanted to read a text from Raimundas relating to time, and the arrival of the future. These subjects are not hard to find in his body of work, since his writings are submerged in layers of time. They find their way to the reader by changing the voice of the dominant speaker, the narrator, moving back and forth between the past and present. We swirl around in the authors thoughts, after have been in direct contact with a stranger, another author, an event or a dream.
In this densely layered experience of reality, mortality and identity, there is besides a grey voice of melancholy and mourning over lost time, an intens freedom (as Raimundas calls it ‘seamlessness’) awaiting us in the changing narration and juggling with vocabulary and grammar, in the space-in-between it creates.
In this time when facing chaos, uncertainty and undefinedness, when catching this vertigo which we can feel when swirling around like the reader in Raimundas texts, we would like to give a hint and a feel for that freedom lurking in the multitude of perspectives and voices.
Raimundas says: ‘(…) but… What if you were to be looking in the mirror and your reflection began to laugh back at you, or walked away from you to leave you standing gazing into an abyss that was once your being?’
This abyss we can look into, redefine and transform, as ‘metamorphosis’:
For me, the butterfly is the best example. One thing is not changed for another, instead it undergoes a metamorphosis. When you want to change the world, attack it, but you cannot change it because you’re bound to damage it. What you can do is mutate it, working towards making a change. [...]
In this final video, I wanted to read a text from Raimundas relating to time, and the arrival of the future. These subjects are not hard to find in his body of work, since his writings are submerged in layers of time. They find their way to the reader by changing the voice of the dominant speaker, the narrator, moving back and forth between the past and present. We swirl around in the authors thoughts, after have been in direct contact with a stranger, another author, an event or a dream.
In this densely layered experience of reality, mortality and identity, there is besides a grey voice of melancholy and mourning over lost time, an intens freedom (as Raimundas calls it ‘seamlessness’) awaiting us in the changing narration and juggling with vocabulary and grammar, in the space-in-between it creates.
In this time when facing chaos, uncertainty and undefinedness, when catching this vertigo which we can feel when swirling around like the reader in Raimundas texts, we would like to give a hint and a feel for that freedom lurking in the multitude of perspectives and voices.
Raimundas says: ‘(…) but… What if you were to be looking in the mirror and your reflection began to laugh back at you, or walked away from you to leave you standing gazing into an abyss that was once your being?’
This abyss we can look into, redefine and transform, as ‘metamorphosis’:
For me, the butterfly is the best example. One thing is not changed for another, instead it undergoes a metamorphosis. When you want to change the world, attack it, but you cannot change it because you’re bound to damage it. What you can do is mutate it, working towards making a change. [...]
These reading sessions were made possible by Raimundas Malašauskas and his collected writings ‘Paper Exhibition’, West Den Haag with support of Marie-José, with support of Stroom Den Haag, the film recordings of Ciril Rafael Vasilyev and Kate, archive footage and editing work of Sasha Zalivako, filming and organisational efforts from Zahar Bondar, and the voice recording from Janne Schipper. Organised by Annastate collective.