3.1.2024
First note of the year. In 7 days, I’m giving an artist talk at Funen Art Academy. I’ll be in conversation with the British writer Max L. Feldman. It’s a delightful way to spend the last day of my 28th year. Obviously, I’m excited. Between end of August and beginning of September last year, I worked with an incredible team from Berlin: David Schlichter, Max Knoop, and a painter from London named Alfred Worrall. We had met just once, David, Max and I. Alfred and I knew each other from my time in London.
It was a tremendous five days shooting The Man Without Qualities. The piece was originally created for another venue, which I still hold the ambition to show it at, it’s a great place in London, and I hold so fond memories of the whole thing. It was such an undertaking.
I remember one night driving back from the set, a random man on a bicycle was riding in the direction of the old farm we were shooting in. He eventually turned around, whilst he was on the phone, exiting the entrance area. I asked David to follow him. It took only a few minutes. We passed him up in the woods. What really took us by surprise was that a young lady in a car registered in Romania came driving just as we had passed him up.
As there were no locks to the farm, I was out of my head with worry that rumours had gone out that we were filming in town. I mean, there was equipment for quite a good life’s retirement there.
As always on set, one needs to invent a language between the people working there. Fun is really essential. Alfred and I came up with the idea that we’d turn the film into the world’s largest file ever in order to permanently dismantle and crash The Internet. I found joy for at least 5 days in the ambition of making a file of a size that could change the world. Not sure of the others.
Another running joke between us was about the bat that came out around 9pm every evening. Max named it Bat Damon explaining that Matt Damon’s soul might have been caught in the building and now flew freely, tormented, and anguished by seeing pictures he could have starred in.
A last walk down memory lane before the talk next week. The suitcase which is burned at the end by the character The Man Without Content, shown on the right panel, was given new life by Alfred who decided on the spot to take it as it was and bring it back to his Berlin apartment. He wouldn’t have any of the worry we had about the awful odour and potentially harming elements that could detach themselves from the suitcase. He took it as it was, together with some flowers used for The Dying Bloom, went on the train to Berlin and wrote a message a few days later:
I need to recover. Can’t talk. Bye.