Tuesday, 12 August 2008

Hassle-free Hasselt

A composite of faces from yesterday in Hassle-free Hasselt.


It was a day of meetings and re-connections, people who I had met before or who had contacted me in some way as well as those who I now call friends.


The gigantesque hand of Hasselt. Beware inhabitants of this town, he may come to your house too!


I managed to get some renovations done, this wallpaper comes from a destroyed building not far from the festival centre. The walls are beautiful, you can imagine on each floor the conversations, the tears, the dinners spent together and alone, the stairs on the right must have seen a million footsteps. Each of the rooms has it's past-life-personality desperately clinging to the building next door, each roll of lovingly hung wallpaper standing like a coat of arms. On the ground was a small piece of wallpaper from the top floor, I have pasted this to the walls of my own house now so that the stories may continue.


I don't know who the artist is, but I like them very much.
A freeer intretation, yet I love it just as much. He has such a strong left arm and wears his heart like an armour.


Meanwhile there were a field of interpretations of my house in the letterbox. I present them to you as collective - a city of houses, yet each one alone.



And down the brick lane back to dark box from where the house comes. And all the miniature people inside scream, 'no, no not the dark box, we like it here in Hasselt, don't take us away from here'. I don't listen to them, in one hour flat the house is packed up and in my car for the journey south.

We will see you again in Groningen, my friends, don't say a word, sleep well and you may be surprised what we will find there.

Thanks to all those I met in Hasselt, it was a pleasure and surprise to be met with such warmth.