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–How do you come to survive winters here?– asked the Italian taxi driver, newly arrived in town, as we drove through a snowy Tallinn. 

–I know!– I proposed enthusiastically – Walk around allowing a thing to come to you; out of nature works best, be it a tree, a leaf, a patch of soil, snow, or even a material remain already incorporated to the landscape. Then, follow it throughout the seasons; throughout its multiple appearances and transformations, forge a relationship, attune to it, and you might learn, through recognition, that you are winter, so you have already survived!–

A wanderer in Estonia, I can pin-down my first experience of practicing art to the moment when, while walking down a street, I bent down and picked up a seagull feather. Singled out from the streetscape, the newly found became my ‘and-other’, gesturing towards my ‘longing for its place of origin’. Symbolically enabling the event of a journey from the known into the unknown, these types of encounters with Matter operate the way souvenirs do, by seeking ‘distance (the exotic in time and space)... in order to transform and collapse distance into proximity or approximation with the self.’ Singled out from the streetscape, the newly found became my ‘and-other’, gesturing towards my ‘longing for its place of origin’. Symbolically enabling the event of a journey from the known into the unknown, these types of encounters with Matter operate the way souvenirs do, by seeking ‘distance (the exotic in time and space)... in order to transform and collapse distance into proximity or approximation with the self.’