In search of connections for Tiny Spaces Deep Connections

The Bureau of Slow Endeavours will embark on a new journey in June. I have been invited by Tiny Spaces Deep Connections to travel by public transport (train/bus/boat, no flying) from the Bureau’s new headquarters in Fontao, Galicia (Spain) to Inwole in Potsdam (Germany). The residency offers a unique opportunity to research slow travel while creatively integrating the journey into the artistic process. At Inwole, an educational and cultural association focusing on political and cultural education, sustainability and solidarity-based economies, I will live and work in a tiny house/trailer at the Project House Potsdam-Babelsberg for three weeks, connecting and collaborating with the local community before travelling back slowly.

I will travel with a mobile version of the Bureau of Slow Endeavours that will have 3 components: 
1. travelling with a living culture: a sourdough starter (bacteria & yeast) that has to be fed and taken care of during the journey and can be shared with people I encounter (because it multiplies very fast) 
2. cosmos daydream seeds that will be dispersed along the route, creating a living trail of the journey & collecting new seeds while travelling 
3. collection of (natural) materials that can be used for drawing and will be used to both document the journey (during and after) and the on-site explorations but are also an integral part of the journey because they are found on the way (f.e.: plant material to turn into wild ink, liquids, pigments, grease, mud, anything that leaves a mark when put on paper). 
I will wear a business suit, aka three-piece-walking suit. In the last 10 years, I’ve been doing many slow projects using a suit in a non-conventional way as an anti-capitalist act. I call my suit my Soft Armour, it keeps me warm, safe, sound, it opens doors. It is my uniform, my costume, my house, I use it to collect stories in and it is as comfortable as any outfit I can think of, especially because I don’t mind when it gets dirty, torn, worn out, when the world leaves its traces. The suit I’ll be wearing is covered in hand embroidered questions people have been asking me during earlier projects and while travelling I’ll collect new ones and embroider them on the suit.

Workshops connected to the 3 components that can be organised during the travelling and/or on-site: working with sourdough/fermentation processes, guerilla gardening with seedbombs, using & making natural and alternative drawing materials, slow practises/walking art

I am looking for connections and exchanges on the road. People who can host me for a night (or 2 if you’d like me to give a proper presentation or workshop). This can be very low-key: you offer me a bed or sofa and I’ll share my sourdough culture and knowledge about using it with you (and friends or family if you’d like them to take part), embroider your question on my suit, leave some cosmos daydream seeds on your windowsill or in your garden, share my stories from the road. This can also be at a cultural, art or educational institution where I can do the same but also give a presentation or workshop. 

I am looking for places to stay and exchange:
* 1-7 June in: Northern Spain/Basque Country/Barcelona or a city like Madrid with a good connection to France (around June 1-2), France (around June 2-4), Northern Italy/Switzerland/Austria (around June 3-6), Southern Germany (June 6-7)
* 29/30 June: Paris
* 30 June/1 July: Barcelona
* First week of July: anywhere in Spain
But I am open to making detours if it can fit my planning

More info about me here
More info about Tiny Spaces Deep Connections here

You can write me at mwabesten@gmail.com or connect through facebook, instagram, whatsapp

Exercise in Being Here, day 19: where did the time go?

The world is probably still there when you don’t see it but you don’t know for sure. At night, when the owls call out to each other, the fog slowly fills the valley and in the morning you wake up in the clouds. Every morning I check on the boat and we wait together until the world starts to appear again, little bits at the time, the sound of church bells reaching us before the tower appears. Underneath the green, the boat is as blue as the sky on a sunny day, but it has soaked up the colour of the field it has been waiting in and matches the blades of grass.
Where did everybody go? Manolo left but his boat is still here, how many hands touched the stones of the walls in the building around the old oven? Who baked bread in there? Who planted the apple trees, who threw the fox skull in the well? Who waited for the fog to rise, like I do every morning?

The seeds resemble arrows when they are released, a two centimetre long shaft with an arrowhead, the seed proper. They have tiny feather-like protrusions so they can be carried through the air. As soon as they hit a surface they change shape, in a whirling movement the straight line becomes a spiral, and through this movement the arrow drills itself into the surface it has landed on.

“We called them the clock when we were children” somebody told me, “and we stuck them on our sweaters to see them twirl around like the hand of a clock. ”

I’ve been catching colours. They are in glass bottles and every colour is connected to the landscape and has a story behind it. The brightest ink, a pinkish red, is made from pokeweed berries, a plant that grows everywhere and people try to eradicate in vain these days. The Spanish named it after its colour, hierba carmín, carmine red. It was traditionally used to dye fabrics but also to paint fingernails. The faint green is made from lichen that grow on the drystone walls of the ruins. The black was made in summer, oak galls found on a walk were crushed and mixed with spring water, rusty nails from one of the abandoned houses and left in the sun for a week. Greater celandine gave a beautiful yellow. The colour of the plant, flower, berry, wall scrapings, tree parts, metal items —you can experiment with anything—isn’t always the colour you will get after you’ve processed it. Some colours that are most present in the landscape are the hardest to catch: green is hard to get, especially a bright or a dark green, and blue, blue is a dream. It is in the sky, in the water, it is on the doors and window frames of the houses where people once lived.

“Exercise in being here” is an installation in 3 parts that combines the past and the present, reality and imagination. It is about leaving, about what is left behind, about longing, dreaming, creating something new with what has been around for a long time, using local materials like plants and stones, stories from the local people and the history of the place; in a way mirroring what is happening in O Castro Art Village where a new story is being written, respecting the history and archeology of the village while breathing new life in it through art, attentiveness, a sharing of minds, a bringing together of people and ideas.


1. Ruin
* Carmine red plant stalks with paper boats folded out of an old account pad that was found in one of the old houses in O Castro.
* A business suit that was worn by the artist during her journey to O Castro and working process and got transformed by drawing a dry stone wall on the fabric, similar to the walls the ruined building is made from.
* A white shirt that was worn by the artist, dyed carmine red with berries from the pokeweed plant.
* Blue bucket with a paper boat

2. Gallery space
* Forest made out of carmine red plant stalks with paper boats folded out of an old account pad that was found in one of the old houses in O Castro, supported by stones covered with mosses and little plants.
* Drawings made with natural pokeberry ink (hierba carmín)
* Seeds laid out on paper sheets resembling a mysterious language
* Glass bottle with ink and materials that were used in the creation of the installation
* Polaroid photos

3. Geodesic dome
* Video of the seeds of the erodium cicutarium, sound installation
* Lichen carpet

 

 

 

 

Exercise in Being Here, day 18: natural ink workshop and kombucha tasting

 

Exercise in Being Here, day 16: exploring spaces

 

Exercise in Being Here, Day 15: catching the flavour of O Castro in kombucha

 

I didn't come alone to O Castro, I brought scobys, symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast. In the first days here I used them to make kombucha and today I prepared the second fermentation. Kombucha is made by leaving a scoby for 10 to 14 days in a mixture of tea, sugar and starter liquid (kombucha from the former batch). A new scoby will form on top and the sweet tea will turn into kombucha. For the second fermentation the liquid is poured into airtight bottles and fruit or herbs can be added. I made one with hibiscus flowers and lemon, another with fresh turmeric and lemon and a special O Castro kombucha with ingredients that are available at the moment: apples, mint and calendula flowers. In the weekend, when I will give a kombucha workshop (and show other things you can do with a scoby) we will taste it!

Exercise in Being Here, day 14: dreaming of a pink forest

 

Exercise in Being Here, day 13: observing mythical creatures