The Attic

In the latter days of the old year I started on a new project: "The Attic". Towards Sylvester people tend to look back, and so did I, and this time even further back, over the years. I have more and more to count, and although that is a blessing, it also makes me feel as if I am getting further away from quasi the planet on which I grew up. The “Major Tom to Ground Control” feeling.

Once, when I was dreaming of becoming a poet, I expected to end before my fortieth birthday - like my heroes Hölderlin, Nietzsche and Slauerhoff, - in premature death or insanity. Comparable to how men in the Middle Ages assumed to drop off the earth when leaving the continent too far behind.

Hence I look back from this ‘afterlife’ upon myself and how I got here - and peel off layer by layer of my self-image until I reach deep into the dark side of my imagination. An experiment for which I restrict myself to a single object (myself), a small and sober space (the attic – metaphor for my mind), a single strobe of (northern) light, and a single non-color (black&white). Still, the resulting images express various moods or states of mind which I take on me, fitting them like coats to sense how they suit me, and foremost: what they do with me. While doing so, engaged in his evil game, my elder self returns to life, shimmering through shades of madness. À la recherche du temps perdu.