Anna Frants, CYLAND MediaLab
Old suitcases, audio
2015
You are remembering your past in fragments, especially when you are moving, but not under your own power. I am a huge sucker for travel, especially train travel – after all, you are in a horizontal position! You can do nothing about it, and yet you are rushing at full speed! Towards your destination.
You probably don’t need to rush there, but the circumstances are such that you would get to think about life (in a horizontal position) nevertheless. And then you would remember your childhood and a sensation of the moss warmed by the sun against which you press your cheek, and it’s a bit rough, but kindhearted because it is warmed, and it smells of some sea, even though there is no sea around within 50 kilometers.
The coin also has a hot smell, the one that jumped from under the train off a rail where the guys and I had placed it. But the most mysterious smell of all comes from a suitcase that’s “been around”.
My mother told me this story: we used to have a chiffonier that got hit during the blockade by a bomb fragment that… created a whole in the chiffonier. Let’s fast-forward 25 years into the future where I, the three-year-old, am standing in front of the chiffonier. THE HORRIBLE BLACK HOLE is terrifying me. “Mom, but it’s true that it’s just stuff in there?”
I don’t remember what mother’s response was, but I am so glad that STUFF stayed with me!