[One of three videos completed while artist in residence at Impakt, with assistance from the Mondriaan Foundation and the City of Utrecht.]

 

 

Achterberg Conversion Modules

 

ThI'm in Utrecht. Outside they're celebrating. Holland has just won their first match in the World Cup.

But I must get down to work.

I have this video camera, a desk, paper and pen, a book of poems in Dutch, and a Nederlands/Engels dictionary.

The poems are by Gerrit Achterberg, who once lived in Utrecht. He shot a woman here, and then he left — or was taken away.

The beast is patient at the window. It is not presently hungry.

The saint is lifted. The saint is peeled away. I'm hitting the road. I'm travelling before the tears — before god and man and animal. The saint is here. The saint of saints awakes. I'm drawing things together, making equivalencies. Life and death, for instance, no longer stand apart. The walls have fallen. The four regions of heaven have fallen open. You are loose, laughing. But hooked into it. The paper you are holding is knit together by the individual letters. They've gathered together, character by character, and stand as variables of you, for you.