Finse, 02 (day by day)

Sunday, day one:
after almost missing my train (I arrived at the station exactly seven minutes before my train left) and the raised eyebrows of the couple sitting with me in the train after I accidentally dropped the milk container into my cup of coffee, I got to Finse. Getting off the train I felt a little confused, because all there was around was the platform and a hotel. a few little houses scattered here and there but nothing else. I heard two girls speaking english and recognised one of them, carrie, because I’d checked out her website the previous day. Anyway, turns out that both carrie and laura were going to be in the snow sculpture workshop; we were given the key to the steinboliger – our home sweet home for the week – and dropped off our bags into our rooms. I, of course, picked the crazy room with the broken lock, no drawers, but a nice view on the frozen, snowy lake…


I lived at number five :)

we had to wait for everybody to arrive, and it was already 6pm with dinner scheduled at 9, so we bummed around the hotel lobby (where our base/hangout would be for the rest of the week) sort of getting to know each other.

Monday morning started off at 7:30am, with breakfast at 8, a little discussion about our expectations for the workshop after that, and then we got our skis (yes, the only way to move from one place to the other was to ski..) and went for a ‘walk’ around the area.


gorgeous

By tuesday, I’d already decided that I was going to build an igloo!


work in progress


dinosaur-igloo!


the igloo lit from the inside..


pretty dinosaur


dino head. I want to hug him!


candle holders in the snow.

[to be continued..]

spatial practices, collages and squats

this is going to be a long one.
I am currently sitting in the library, it’s quiet and it’s empty and it feels like a stormy day because the world started whispering.. This week started off with another Brandon LaBelle workshop (well, the continuation of the last one) where we have to do a work based on people. I was thinking of basing mine on the guy who works at Apollon, and to develop that further into a work about language/people speaking different languages/having to adapt, etc.. until I passed by Jonsvollsgaten and saw the anarchist flag. It’s a flag that’s sitting on top of the roof of a house that’s among other houses that are so close together, once you are walking around in the block it’s impossible to figure out which roof is which and where the flag is. Earlier last semester, rudi and I tried to find out where the flag was, with no success. So after school on tuesday I went to knock on some neighbour’s house asking about the flag. A girl was really nice and told me to go to number 6, I rang the doorbell and a very nice guy opened the door, S.
Turns out he put the flag on his roof to protest against the Jonsvollskvartalet houses being torn down, he was also squatting there and he told me the history of the Jonsvollskvartalet squat. we sat around drinking coffee among mandolins and he was so helpful, got me a lot of material, magazines, newspaper articles..
We met in town yesterday (he copied me the dvd of the small documentation they did about the squat.. with Erlend playing the guitar randomly at some concert, of course..) and had a lot of fun so this is turning out like it will be a great great project… and obviously now I have a friend for life and a lot of connections into the anarchist Bergen scene, haha.
Parallel to the spatial practice, I’m in a collage course with Dag. it’s now the second week, so I am doing some class-hopping, as well as working on my very secret sculpture… and in two days I am off to Finse, to beautifully freeze my ass off in a beautiful setting in the middle of nowhere… obviously making art. ICE SCULPTURE for realz. Kind of looking forward to it, at the same time this means I will be spending a lot of money that should probably be spent on rent instead.. or on my Oslo train ticket (going there for Easter… AGAIN)

and now I’m off to go see what Ricardo has made for dinner (projects involving MUSIC and FOOD are the best ones.. ever).
I’m curious.

spring around the corner

days busy.
sculpture workshop part one has ended, the weekend was a slight downer and now I’m three days into my painting workshop. professor is enthusiastic in a cute and funny and refreshing way and I am enjoying learning about making paint and finally getting my hands dirty again (yes because ink and book-glue and blood don’t really count as dirt). the past three days have been gorgeous, a lot of light, and sun, and blue skies, and nice colors when the sun disappears behind the mountains. (I’ve been thinking that I’d much rather have it disappear on the horizon into the sea, but you can’t have everything in life.)
today is a happy day; I managed to get cheap train tickets to Oslo for next week, I’m getting some mixed art ideas&thoughts (though not writing them down, I guess I should at some point?), people have stopped hibernating, and I watched Nuovo Cinema Paradiso tonight, an amazing movie I had not seen in a very long time. Was at trond’s place last night for dinner, yummy curry and very good conversation; then last bus back, some hanging out – D8 were having a pizza party – and then reading a book until my eyes closed.

..furthermore (since we are 1 hour into horribly-silly overcommercialized day)..

(\ /)
( . .) ♥ (UN)HAPPY ANTI-V DAY!
c(“)(“)

library, sticks and lemon goodness

girl blogging directly from the academy library, where I came to do some “research”.. the Space/Sculpture workshop is proving to be very interesting, especially since the guest professor (Brandon LaBelle, will be linking him later) is just very good at holding lectures, very open in his ideas, opinions, etc.. and thorough, straight-forward and elaborate in his speech. I had already noticed that when he was here last semester for the Sound and Silence seminar..
We are on day two of the workshop and have our task for the week, which is to find a location and create a sculpture (in the loose sense) that possibly relates to the environment in some way, using a wood stick, approximately 1.70m long. So exploring, thinking, researching, brainstorming,… obviously what I am doing right now. (slacker, ehrm)

On another note, I am working on a lemon/meringue pie (I love citrus fruits and I am just sick of not finding lemon pie anywhere when I go to restaurants with my parents, so now I’ve got a recipe; it’s my first time making it, let’s hope it won’t be a total disaster!). I’ve got the dough and the lemon cream filling ready, just have to bake the crust today and make the meringue. yummy!

more snow, dinners and workshops.

here is a little review of what has happened in the past weeks – starting with the most important news: our mural is growing daily, making Ana and I happier and happier to have breakfast in our amazingly big and light kitchen.

we are hoping to have it finished by the end of the semester…

The other day I also FINALLY managed to talked to my dear C, who is too much of a busy man to pick up his phone. he rambled for five hours about veganism and hardxcore-ism and about how stupid and ignorant and boring the people he meets at the gym are, and then he yelled a thousand times that he doesn’t like snow and really sounded like a stubborn kid. I can’t help thinking he’s probably the only person in the WORLD who doesn’t enjoy snø :( It was an entertaining conversation AND I found out that his sister lived at FANTOFT this summer – isn’t it the coolest thing ever?

Speaking of fantoft, David came over last night, we invited him for dinner. Ana made her amazing tortilla and I just cooked some vegetable rice.

I told him about my obsession with Minnesota and Nebraska, which no one seems to understand – especially not Americans. oh well.. we hung out pretty much the whole evening, talking about accents, minnesota, art, synaesthesia, crazy Pi-obsessed geniuses, and physics. it was nice.

the weather’s going crazy around here. yesterday was the Great Flood, and today there’s a snow storm..


rainbow: day one


rainbow: day two


the platforms were actually evacuated because of the storm…

we got really, really excited.
When Gabriel and I went for a cigarette on the big roof terrace, we met HÃ¥kon and, after doing a little froggy dance (which, en passant, enabled me to spill coffee all over my freshly-washed grey sweater…), Gabriel built a midget snowman (it looked more like a fat lady with big big boobs.. but nevermind). it was cool.

On my way home from university, the storm was hitting it up, hardcore. It took pictures when I got off the bus, it was totally beautiful and made me very very happy.

I’m really hoping the snow will stay until tomorrow. Then we can go out in the morning and play in it.

hey, remember that time?

no,
I haven’t died.
but this has been the longest week since I’ve been here. I was literally at university every day from 10 to … 7? 8? 9? 10PM? I’ve forgotten… in any case… busy busy busy. We have a show at Teatergarasjen on friday. It’s (very loosely, as in: “not at all”) inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. You should come. It’s going to be good bad.

concerts, heroes, and defrosting fridges

so much to write about, so little time.
I shall start with news #1, which is that I am going to see Kings of Convenience in a few days. Kristine got me a ticket last week, and Patrick is coming as well.

this week has been insane at university. The Sound and Silence seminar was really good, but 6 lectures in a row (with only 5-minute breaks in-between, and 40 minutes for lunch) is a little too much for my tiny brain to concentrate on. The first speaker talked about John Cage, it was really interesting and thorough. Another lecturer rushed us through Yoko Ono, John Cage, Rauschenberg, Heidegger, Bruce Nauman, Victor Turner, the liminal space, and back to Yoko Ono in a little over 40 minutes – it was absolutely insane. the two lectures this morning were really good – the second one was amazing. It was beautiful as well as interesting and it got my brain working and thinking so much of a million things, I felt so much more perceptive to the outside world.

As for Fantoft life, we are getting used to sitting around in the C/D Block kitchens late at night talking about a billion different things. It took me a while last night to believe that it really was 5am, and that I really should be getting to sleep since I had to get up at 8. And because Fantoft is such an exciting place where adventures take place everyday, Ana and I decided to defrost our fridge three days ago. Our kitchen was half-flooded, courtesy of melting ice, and, after hours of me using a nail as an icebreaker, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style, we removed a gigantic piece of ice from our freezer.

Score!