When I think of what’s inside me, inside my brain. I don’t know if you would call it a landscape, but it is my most familiar landscape. It’s made out of the people I like, my friends, people I meet. It’s not urban or natural. I see faces, situation. I talk with my friends. It’s not real. It’s already detached from me. I see only a postcard, a distant landscape.
It’s not visual. It’s an empty space. It’s not flowers, not a specific colour. Maybe because I have bad vision. I cannot see very well. I see something interior but very blurred.
A floating thing. I never feel that I am in one place at a specific time. I want to be, but I just float around and try to get rooted. I always wanted to find a place to be myself. I was abandoned, went to an orphanage and was then adopted in Holland. Everything was new to me. I was the only child of colour in the class.
It doesn’t have a voice. It disappears when I talk. When I’m not talking I see it.
The love—hate relationship between the place you are coming from and the place where you are living in. I’m not enthusiastic about the dreams you can have in NY.
I don’t know about the dream in America. I notice that people change there lives in NY very easily. They dream more then in Europe. But I’m not so sure about the quality of their dreams. I dream very chaotic here. I would rather go somewhere else and have few dreams, but try to accomplish them. The dreams the people have in NY don’t relate to each other, everybody has separate dreams. In Europe people share their nightmares instead of having separate dreams.
You constantly fight here. Everything is a struggle. Nothing is for granted.
It’s a very phallic, masculine city. The strength and height of the building makes me suspicious. It much be a reflection of the weakness of the people.
First I saw NY as a machine landscape. I see myself changing and become large. I don’t feel like an insect anymore.
I can find an entire world no a kitchen table; go to a beautiful city and stay the entire day in my hotel room. The more work did out of my imagination the closer I perceive the real world.
Freedom has to emerge. If it emerges it will not be in Europe, but here. In Europe there is too much tradition and hierarchy. Here there is a collective potential for freedom. But it will take time and we might have to demolish some of these buildings first.