Newsletter  232
June 2023

While mulberry and apricots are ready to be picked, the first fruits of the residency program have been harvested already. Ingrid Simons had her exhibition in the National Museum of Evora, We had wonderful, site specific performances and artist talks.
This newsletter gives some recent highlights. Events earlier in 2023 are on the 2023 page.  

In June our residents in Portugal are Ingrid Simons,  Dan Ayres, Juliana Stankiewicz, Beate Schnaithmann, Charley Wührer, Janice Deary, Peter van Huffel, Andrea Brasch and Jona Ray. In OBRAS Holland Yvonne Halfens and Nico Huijbreghts take a residency.

Ingrid Simons, annual resident at OBRAS since 2010, had an exhibition in the National Museum of Évora. The title Onde cresce a esteva – A luz do Alentejo [Where the rock-rose grows – The light of Alentejo] indicates that it is an homage to the nature and the skies of Alentejo. The exhibition was from 22 April until 29 May.

The exhibition is part of her residency that is from 14 April until 27 June. In this period the artist also gave a ceramics workshop, together with Luis Rosado, in Redondo.   

Ruth Baettig (performer; Switzerland), Beate Schnaithmann (cellist; Germany) and Giuseppe di Salvatore (philosopher; Italy) are currently all living in Switzerland. During their residency they were working on a long-term project: “Ich habe mich verloren”. The idea is that losing yourself can be a starting point, a pearl, an opportunity to find yourself in a reality previously unknown. The risk of getting lost is a chance to really be there on earth. The project also considers the place of the human in the Anthropocene, and what the links are between human, animal, vegetation and non-living matter.
Their joint residency was a burst of creativity. An obvious highlight was a performance 70 metes deep in an abandoned marble quarry in the light of the full moon. While Ruth, dressed in a black “skin”, was making minimal movements, Beate was improvising on “La Folia”, a motive from the Baroque period. Other site-specific performances were in a cork oak plantation and around the residency. The slide show gives a first impression. Soon a video compilation will be published.
The project will get a follow up in September, during a several-weeks voyage from Switzerland to Portugal.

Anna Geary-Meyer (USA, living in Berlin) was working on a novel: Chocolate mouse, that tells, among others, about the fear and wish of a young woman to be pregnant. The woman is sexually confused and lives a bohemian, opportunistic life. In a deeper layer the novel also contemplates on a time spirit in which writing about personal trauma and suffering seems to have become fashion, as if life becomes more beautiful by experiencing violence. Anna´s writing is also informed by her professional training in clinical psychology. 
 
During her artist talk Anna did read out fragments of several stories. She showed to be an expert in writing about heavy subjects in a light, humorist way. And she was highly productive during her residency: she wrote 160 pages.

Reinekke Lengelle (Canada) had a residency at OBRAS Holland, as part of her sabbatical. She wrote about living for a full year as a minimalist. It will be published in 2024 as a chapter in a book called “Meaningful Journeys: Autoethnographies of Quest and Identity Transformation” edited by Alec Grant and Elizabeth Lloyd-Parkes.
Reinekke also wrote a beautiful poem integrated in a small art object (co-created with Annita van Betuw, a local artist). The poem tells about her stay and her memories of her Dutch grandparents. But reads also as a contemplation on the dependency of each other and on the passing of time.

Seema Lyer (UK, living in Berlin) was working on three, very different stories.
One is was a non-fiction, though absurd story about a woman who was by error officially declared death and was trying already for five years in vain to get this declaration reversed.
A second story was about Priya, a six years old girl who tries understand the absence her brother. He died but her parents do not tell her. Often Priya hears family members talk about him, so she fantasizes that he is invisible, and that he is an invisible friend of her. 
A third story was about a toothbrush that suddenly disappeared out of a young woman´s bedroom. She concludes that this must be a Houdini act of her boyfriend. He has always been good in disappearing acts and she has a long-time experience in being the magician’s assistant. Now also most of his clothes have disappeared, but she could recognize all the signs of a poorly executed disappearing act…

Beate Schaithmann (Germany, living in Switzerland) is playing the cello. She had a residency with a very bread variety of projects. Together with Ruth Baettig and Giuseppe di Salvatore she did a performance deep down in a marble quarry, in which she improvised on La Folia, a piece of music from the Baroque (see elsewhere in this newsletter). Later she went back to another quarry to play her cello, only accompanied by birds and frogs, and after a while fish who colud not hide their curiosity. Beate also continued her collaboration with Mauro Dilema (piano), with the intention to give concerts, provisionally scheduled for next year. Moreover, she had a life performance with the Mario Moroni (see elsewhere on this page), played with Peter van Huffel (saxophone) and was rehearsing for concerts in Switzerland, scheduled for the next months. And some of us were so fortunate to be present at her birthday coffee.   

Mario Moroni (Italy, living in USA) was working on a very long poem (40 pages), with the classical tragedy of Medea as a starting point. Mario considered that the role of Medea can be interpreted in many ways. So, in his poem Medea is mentioned in plural. And, by bringing Medea into the contemporary he decided that his tragedy will get an open end. Mario managed to finalise the poem in first draft. It will become part of a larger volume that will be published in Italian in 2024.
A specialty of Mario is poetry performance. Several times during his residency he presented his poems, accompanied with slides, videos, life music of Beate Schnaithmann (on cello and percussion with marble slabs) and his own theatrical gestures.   

After his departure, Mario wrote us a beautiful thought:
“We are moving, wanting to exit the frame. The artists at OBRAS want to exit the various frames of conventions that characterize artistic styles and canons. They want to experiment, to search for new, different ways to use the tools of their respective disciplines, to communicate different ways to do art. Individually, in my own field of poetry, this is exactly what i did at OBRAS, re-working the greek tragedy of "medea" and, at the same time, seeking collaboration with other disciplines. The poet is a "shadow chaser," but sometimes these shadows can be brought to light: OBRAS is the location for the shadows to come to light.”

Angelique Delcroix (France) is a multi-talent. She was doing some graphical designing as part of her pay job (she runs a small publishing house), but most of her time she spent on exploring details of her surroundings and bringing her observations into a conceptual setting. She has a special interest in fragility; not as a weakness, but as a strength and as a trigger for creativity. She collected materials from nature (dead branches for instance), the local flee market (jute sacks) and her own recycle stuff (dry tea bags), all having earthy colors in common, and made drawings, small collages and embroidery works with it. It all seem to tell about “powerful fragility”.     

Some more news about OBRAS

Stefano Falcone, jazz pianist from Naples, Italy, had a residency with us in 2021. He composed a series of beautiful works, all dedicated to OBRAS.It is now available on CD (workin´Label 2023; International Records Distribution). The CD includes a leaflet with texts of several residents and the CD cover was designed by Tim Gleason. The music is also available on SoundCloud. A beautiful teaser is on YouTube (see below). It gives a sample of his music, but also indicates how his music inspired fellow residents.

In recent weeks two local artist-friends lent part of our house. Antonio Tavares was painting a lot. And he took the opportunity to invite art-and-nature lovers for a one-day workshop in which two painting sessions are combined with a nature walk and a super healthy lunch. His first students were excited.  .
And Leonor Vanançio got an open studio in our Big Hall for her students from Estremoz, who she is giving drawing lessons. It was a great success with a proud teacher and students, and a warm, social atmosphere.

And some more details:

We decided that in specific cases emerging artists may be eligible for a discount on the weekly rate of 100€. 

We are contemplating on initiating art related activities that could contribute to stopping the crisis in Ukraine.

The annual report on the OBRAS activities in 2022 is now available on request.

Finally, after a dry period of hundred days, we suddenly got a rain shower in biblical proportions. In the evening of 4 June it rained 60 litres per square meter within one hour, while the long-term monthly average for June is 28 l/m2 . While normally in June vegetation dyes off, giving the landscape a golden-yellow cover, this year all is getting green again.