And within me a chittering urgency
What does the anxiety around time look like?
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What does the anxiety around time look like? -
Stumbling, a hunting party gathers underneath the leafs. Growling, flews raised, loud. They are the army of the hungry, their white collars starched, their crips trouser's creases ironed. They never get tired. Perfection chafes at the bit, excited, foaming at the mouth, her nostrils flared wide. She can sense my footsteps on the path ahead of her. There are clatters and trumpets, metal against metal, leaves ripped apart by their screams. A trumpet blast and they rush off, following the unmistakable trail of exhausted footsteps. I can hear them from far away, my steps far too close to theirs. I start to run.
(And within me a chittering urgency. The hunt. 2024.)
Nothingness
I must have fallen off the edge of reality at some point. At some point they all must have left me so far behind that nothing has been left anymore.
Time no longer exists here. Did I just imagine the flews and growls? Shoes on stone and gun barrels against wood? My fists want to rub reality back into my eyes.
Maybe I've just gone blind. Maybe I just missed something.
In dealing with a concept as abstract as the fear of time and the consequent loss of everyone and everything, this project aims to find a new way of visually communicating the invisible. It aims to go beyond simple representations of emotion, which we have sen so many times before, but to create a narrative that manages to evoke the emotion by representative imagery from nature and symbols.
The fear of time gets broken down into multiple chapters, which follow a simple structure of a title page, wordless imagery and finally an associative text. Thus the reader can first freely associate and after reading the text go back and re-contextualise own experiences with those of the illustrator and author.
Within the narrative the fear culminated into panic, into overwhelm and derealisation, until nothing is left anymore. It is the haptics of the world around her, that brings the environment back into existence. The silent protagonist learns to breathe again and to keep herself grounded in the detail. The book doesn’t give a solution to the fear, it rather describes a process, ending on a forgiving note.
Selected chapters/ selected excerpts
Entry
Today, my eyes can’t focus. Edges blur into each other. And my limitations intertwine with pulsating fears. Above me the leaves twist from green to yellow and orange, below me a sea rushes around my feet, always brown-red. I part its waves with every step. And an urgency rushes through me.
Aging
Brown interrupted by stubborn white hair, a harsh contrast against my dark curls. I have ripped them out. Again and again. Not now. Not yet. Because as I get older, they will get older.
My mother and I are sitting at my grandmother's bed. She is laying underneath the blanket, just like a child. Small and fragile. She was always small. But never fragile.
My grandma, my mother, me. A chain.
Detail
Things I like: Pale white grass against a dark backdrop. Against mud, squelching moss, wet leaves and brown morass. Their fine, sharp stalks, their hard edges. How they stand against the velvety darkness around them. Their shape and their structure. When they take over entire fields. Large areas of laying, bright grass, stacked on top of each other, their calm colors, sleepy, dramatic in their own way. Only defined by the negative space between them.