FERNWEH

FERNWEH

Fernweh is a German word for misery, a longing for a place you´ve not yet visited.

"You would think as free as a bird; you´re wrong, it´s as free as a flower", reminds Jacques Derrida´s kaon in philosophy. We think that the free goes for the bird, and freedom goes for the opportunity to escape. The primeval romantic desire for adventure comes back to life. Escape from the well-known civilisation offering a promise of return to the unchained spontaneity. But what if the clue to achieving peace relies on no changing places as Seneca suggests because a change comes with restlessness, inability to bear oneself. What makes a flower free is having roots.

However, this series of photographs depicts both: a human able to become a bird as well as a flower. The bird is unfree, so it flies away. If we want to make a change in our life, we need to make the whole change at one go. Our inability to change our lives from inside will perhaps call for radicality of the environment different enough to reveal all the secrets we keep from ourselves. After contrasted with the otherness of the things encountered in our daily lives, we get to know the things we are born with. Taking photos of oneself in the course of self-exploration and cultivation of the self becomes then a method of art of living.

The women´s bodies in the photographs embedded in the surroundings are none of those anonymous perfect bodies of women featured in the advertisements. The women in these photos look like someone you might have known for a long time. They could easily be some of your female friends. The illusion of restful holiday is broken by the silence of the women, tension behind their lying around, and practicing meditation. They are not spending their holiday time chit-chatting, eating or swimming in the sea. They came to this place to understand the meaning of solitude, instinct, and restlessness, with each other. The meditation practice is connected to the spatial arrangement of the bodies, with the city women and eccentric wilderness seeming to become attributes of the same single substance. As if the women were dreaming of the ocean, and the ocean was dreaming back of the women. As if the ocean reflected the women´s unconscious mind and the women reflected back the ocean. The same thing is happening in the hotel room with the bed sheet slipping off the bed just like a waterfall or a wave.

A city animal in the wilderness, little women with a desire to fly away and turn into plants that get replanted, arranged in space creating communities. Lying down on the sea shore, just like algae or stones that had gone washed out, the women´s bodies are arranged in well-cut shapes as if huddled up in meditation. The basic techniques of the self as practised in Ancient Greece included reading, writing, restraint, meditation, silence, and listening. Photography is becoming here a new technique of writing of the self, inscribing of the self into photographs, displaying of the self and one´s own face. At the same time, photography is becoming correspondence, or a letter. The things already experienced begin to unfold before our eyes just like a holiday postcard. These photos are not postcards though. They are photographs valued as letters. The writing of the self as practised in Ancient Greece included private correspondence. Writing letters was based on two principles: first, it is necessary to train yourself during your entire life; second, this training of yourself is impossible without the help of other people. The photographs also intend to convey the idea of denial of strong individualism, inherent to the aestheticization of the existence purely highlighting one´s self and its self-presentation, with no community life involved, without the solitude of life of women shared.

Passing one´s eyes over the photographs back and forth uncovers coordinates of playful irony. The holiday illusion fails and turns into a pilgrimage, an action of snuggling closer to one´s self, descending into one´s self; it´s moving inward rather than recording a moment of memory. The moving action is a way to understand the momentary situation in life, a tool to help face the expectations and requirements made for the life of single women. Sometimes it is enough to be merely a silent female friend, a solitude companion of yours.