mosquitos and a new member!

we're getting eaten alive here. i wake up every morning with a new red, itchy splotch from a mosquito. this morning's lucky winner is my thumb! yesterday it was my earlobe and my eyelid. they know how to pick the awkward spots, eh?

the pressing matter at hand is jasmine leaving tomorrow for groningen. she will be away on the weekdays, to return each friday evening. with this time line, and having mapped out how many days we'll have together to shoot, we've been focusing on her film. i think we've made really good progress on the choreography. we are having fun improvising in the kitchen, and have choreographed the first half of the piece in the upstairs /on the staircase.

lastly in the news, we have a new addition to our house! from this wednesday until 25 july, hope davis will be joining us. she is a beautiful dancer and photographer i met while she was at the springboard project in montreal this summer, and we hit it off right away. i proposed that she join us to document some of our process (seeing as jasmine and i are not actually photographers - could you tell?) and we settled it in three emails back & forth. you'll find a link to her site at the bottom of the page.

and so ... from this sunday until wednesday, i will have the opportunity to work - just squashed a mosquito! - uninterrupted on my piece. solo time. you'll be hearing from me a lot then.

a few shots

my first sighting in delft

early morning recap

one bird outside our window had a rhythm going pre-5am this morning, and once it got in my head i couldn't shut it out. i dozed in the light for an hour or so, until i was bored with that. when i felt it was late enough that i wouldn't be putting myself back to bed by the time jasmine awoke, i got up trying not to disturb the sleeper on the other mattress, and came downstairs for tea. running low on tea ... we are going through it at such a pace we fear it might be unhealthy! you can't die from too much tea ... i keep telling jasmine there are worse addictions to have. jajaja

yesterday focused a lot on the beginnings of jasmine's film. her idea centers around co-existence and co-dependent relationships, and will feature a new character in our house, who will be visiting the weekend after next. may i introduce henning. a guitarist and harmonica player from frankfurt, germany! he will be playing the harmonica, and i will be the co-existing character. so yesterday we began with the beginnings of a day: getting out of bed. three impros later, one in the bedroom, one in the stairwell, and one in the kitchen, we had the base concept of the film. jasmine had mapped it out, and we filled in the blanks by trying out how to walk across the wall of the staircase, instead of taking the spiral stairs. or how to take a pair of sneakers off on the window ledge instead of conventionally untying the laces... or using one's hands...

two snapshots from our video-making!

a rabbit on my back

today we went to visit liset van dommelen, a local artist in delft. we met her at the residendy's showing this sunday past, and she told us about her most recent project: she is silk-screening images from her family's history onto wooden cutouts of rabbits. these rabbits will be worn on people's backs or carried like hand purses, around town on people's daily activities. when i showed interest in being a rabbit-bearer, she suggested with enthusiasm that we wear them during a dance rehearsal. and so today, jasmine and i went to her studio in downtown delft for our "fittings". we selected images from her collection that we thought inspiring or appropriate, and came out with a scale, a butterfly, a pair of angels, and "stage crew" in block lettering. she will take creative control and print them onto our rabbits, and have them to us by friday. the photoshoot is scheduled for the following weekend, at a park picnic in our neighbourhood!

above: the walk home after liset's, and a successful stopover at a second-hand store. purchases: that hot jacket i'm wearing (3-euros-50), a blue-painted tile for my mom's mosaics (1 euro), and a gorgeous b&w postcard in the style of audrey hepburn (10 cents)!

for liset van dommelen's website, please see the links list at the bottom of the page

15 days in delft

... and it only took two weeks for us to get our blog up and running. not bad, eh? it was really that it took us this long to find internet in our soon-to-be-demolished house.

welcome to our blog, and thanks for reading. we are two weeks and two days into our process, though i am one week and one day since actually being here in beautiful delft. two days ago, on sunday, we had a showing of the work so far. we presented a live work, out in our front garden, while the viewers stood in the living room and watched from the large windows. we tried to speak to them, difficult for the closed door, and directed them around the house using the map drawn on a wooden shelf, hung for their viewing. set up in each of the rooms we had clippings of things we've been exploring: photography in the community, a video (poorly edited due to our un-tech-savviness), and a video of allison's, who is our third collaborator-to-be.

for most of the other artists involved, this was their final showing. (ours isn't until 2 august.) it was a good opportunity for us to see the site-specifics happening in the ghetto, and a chance for us to finally meet the other people with the green-painted windows. there were a number of artists who, unlike us, are locals and use the space only as a separate studio space ... but for us, this space is our living space, working space, sleeping space, cooking space. we shower here and afterwards make a dance under the sink. (which we haven't done, but i might have to try now...)

sadly this first post must happen in a rush because we are soon out the door and into the grey & rainy streets. we are headed to one of the fore-mentioned locals' full-time studios to meet with her about a rabbit.

more to come when we return from town...