Some clay thoughts
Friday afternoon, design students are lying down on the cold floor of Prindsen gate.
A new era is starting today, and it looks like this day is a showdown with yourself. There are so many bodies on the floor, inside this elegant room that you see for the first time, you close your eyes and the space disappears. Only someone walking between your bodies reminds you that you are still on the floor and not in the world of your thoughts. Your ears have to work harder than ever and you soon forget what you hear and concentrate on the clay.
How much time do you still have? 18 minutes sharp to create a space, inside another space and the journey feels doubtful. What is going on with the soft but strange and malleable object that weighs my body down? Sometimes you think it will break apart, its center of gravity is constantly changing. What will I do with this shape? What does it look like now? Like a seashell rattled by the sea? Like a stone forgotten in the forest?
How do we shape our thoughts? What shape, color, smell do our thoughts have? Experiencing and practicing at the same time.
A difficult week, and with a little clay here it comes, a flood of thoughts to my mind. And the shape becomes indefinite. Stress and pause and stress. As if you are wearing your sweater inside out and everyone is pointing at you. And again pause, Silence, the mind runs faster, the hands are a good listener. But often you do not trust them. Because you have learned not to stop traveling. And now you are going to the sea, in the woods, in a cave, in the backward motion toward the source. The only organ that holds you back is the hands that move with the clay. And that calms you down. Thoughts are sorted out somehow. Time doesn't matter anymore. The clay is your path, and it is as specific as you want it to be. From abstraction, it has a right center of gravity now, balances with the body, you know each other well, like a good pair of old slippers. You feel familiar with the room slowly. It has no walls anymore, only bodies with thoughts that will remain hidden, but you will know that you shared the same space. The time of protective shields is over. Now it’s only you again to face the shape of your experience, in a non-finished form. Would you do it differently next time?
