SHAME

Mid-February of 2020 I was starting to stack up on food so I could go to the grocery store less frequent, avoiding the university and public places, except from the daily ritual of training in the gym; shrouded in an angsty aura of hand sanitizer.

A deep desire for emotional and intimate company was consequentially disrupted by the contempt of all humans. They all imposed a potential infectious threat. I neglected replying to flirty messages, I did "rain checks" on dinners, tried to postpone every social activity, both because I expected a storm was coming - but also - because after a decade of youthful spontaneity - I have grown back into a person that thinks it’s a bad idea to immediately respond to an urge. Process, process, process until left with a processed pool of emptiness. Not an abyss staring back; emptiness in both sides of the mirror. An empty room, in an empty house, in an empty village.

But the video medium is different. Its immediate necessity to accelerate reaction, alas in this case: amplifying presumptions of global, national and personal doom. Staying up late and sleeping late. A friend worked in a crane of an oil rig in the North sea, sending me unsettling videos of the winter storm; waves crashing with hard force, making the steel sing. A man, sitting in a tower, helplessly surrounded by forces of the Atlantic sea, only being able to document it.

Oddly, the unsettling knowledge of a societal decline came after the rain had stopped. Slowly, but then suddenly: ashamed that I thought a societal decline would come from nature. Nature is never to blame, it has its own rules.

From the project HOUSE, spring 2020.