I found nothing / No past no future
Katarina Šoškić / I found nothing No past no future / Antwerp 11 19 / 08 / 14
One / 13/08/14 I don t know what to expect. I feel nothing spectacular will happen. Memory is a construction. It is not left behind us to be found afterwards. It s been carried with us. Layers of it were constantly generating themselves. What is authentic, What were we told, What did we see in the photographs? Smells and vibrations of other kind I expect to find. Origins of some traits. / Three
Two / I saw all the photos that were taken at the time. Situations that were not captured in these images the scenes I have forgotten will be real evoking. I am searching for the oblivion. Forgetting, recalling, hiding, discovering. 13/08/14 Memories are what we tend to remember I am curious about what I forgot. The amount of present moments that pass by next to us. To turn into my future memories. That old man, to turn ninety, gave me a candy not to forget him. I am excited imaging myself in front of the other house. This one I don t remember at all. / Three
One / I found nothing. Terrible rain followed me on the way. Through the blurry window of the tram number seven I saw buildings that looked like the one we used to live in, the one I was searching for. I discover them earlier than I expected, it surprises me. 15/08/14 Familiar scenery green and grey. Sudden excitement. / Five
Two / I got lost while I was searching for the building. They all look so similar. Streets all empty. No signs around. Little figures of old people too distant to ask. Green and grey, the way I know it. 15/08/14 Fruithoflaan 108 The main door as I remember them from the photo. The entrance is different. / Five
Three / I am restless and clumsy. Not sure what will happen next. I meet a young man and his grandmother, The young man brings an old man to help me. The old man calls the owner of the flat that I want to visit. The owner is rude and unfriendly not in the mood to talk to a stranger. 15/08/14 The old man gives me a tour that I didn t ask for. I accept it with a tiny back-thought that this person is ruining my memory. He touches my childhood photos, he tries to locate them, he shows me what to photograph. / Five
Four / He is sweet but I am disappointed there is only one chance to experience this situation and that is now. A moment after I am relieved this is authentic. We spent more than an hour together. He helped me more than I could have ever imagined. 15/08/14 We have no language in common but we understand each other. / Five
Five / 15/08/14 He walked with me to my kindergarten. It has been closed for two months, no kids around, there is no way to get into the courtyard so we try from the other side. There, he shows me an impressive factory complex. It is Agfa, they produce photo equipment. The smell of the chemicals is strong in the air. He leaves. I stay alone with the empty landscapes. I take a walk around the factory, impressed by the way these scenes are given to me to compose them, Their amount and strength overwhelm me. I feel as if I finally found the origin of a certain trait of my sensibility an urge to grab the nothingness, show the invisible. / Five
One / 16/08/14 That man was ruining my memory I thought. What he did brutally and literally we do all the time while picking through the images from our past, while trying to recall. I am glad there is no romance in this journey. Nothing moved me. Nothing. No tears. But. / Three
TWO / 16/08/14 I was supposed to have a rendez-vous today. It was a long-planned meeting that he cancelled in the last moment he will stay in Paris. I am confused and hurt. Longing for clarity. Sad. I imagined in advance where we would walk. I was counting hotels, searching for the one for us, I gathered all the impressions I wanted to share with him. I took fatalistically both the fact I invited him to join me here on this journey and the disappointing outcome that he will actually not. I used to have an imaginary friend in my childhood. His name was Franja. I was a lonely kid not speaking any language and Franja was with me all the time. One day after some years I explained to my parents that he moved away. Still, my crazy aunt from Belgrade continued writing me most beautiful love letters that she would sign with his name. / I had only boyfriends as a child. Three
THREE / I woke up today with a thought both Franja and the idea of imaginary love I grew in my mind since ever are finally dead. What happened here is actually good. 16/08/14 Despite all the pain I feel in my throat and my chest My journey here makes more sense now. I feel I am ready for real love. I grew up. The photo of a wave I prepared as a present for Stéphane and didn t have a chance to give him becomes here an evidence of fragile memory. It is about constructing and destroying it. Killing of an image it is important, so the truth can live. / three
ONE / I go back. I want to convince the rude man to let me in. I am ready to be rude on Sunday afternoon to disturb his peace for the sake of seeing something that I can not imagine. I seek for waves and vibrations. He is not there or he doesn t want to open. 17/08/14 I take the route similar to the one the old man showed me the other day. I stay alone with my thoughts. I am alone. No people around. It rains, it is cold and grey. But green. Since ever I repeated I love green only when it rains. I am trying to catch the angles and perspectives that my parents took some photos from It is out of touch. It has changed. / ONE
One / Out of anger or pain I go further with destroying my memory. I repeat an extreme situation that back then, when I met my pilot one year ago, brought me pleasure and happiness, self awareness and strength. 18/08/14 I expose myself and my body to two random strangers again. This time it feels wrong, self destructive and makes me weak. I want to get rid of hope by ruining the ideal image, the sweet memory of something that never got a chance to become. I hurt myself. I feel empty. / Three
Two / I photograph two sweet boys after the night we spent together. Also the corner where we slept. Little details of their lifestyle. I document fragments of the surrounding willing to document the traces of our experience. I create the memory to be recalled in future. I fail. 18/08/14 The pure memory does not exist. It gets contaminated the moment it is created. It weaves itself into the layers of our complexity. We are incapable of revealing it. Retelling an event is already a construction. Diary note might be an evidence but diary notes are never to be read as the memory is never to be caught. / Three
Three / There is only one real flash back from this journey, an old leather seat I found in the tram number seven. 18/08/14 / Three
One / I am going home. The captain tells us about the weather in Vienna his French and clouds make me cry. I feel silly. 19/08/14 I loved Antwerp. It is the smallest big city I know. The most inspiring so far. Fresh and alive. Healthy. / Two
Two / These seven days of my life the frozen artificial unit in time I gave to myself to undertake this journey. It seems there was only one way given for all the events to happen to make my investigation complete. 19/08/14 I was careful not to miss them even when losing the focus for a moment or two they would quickly slap me back making sense as if someone directed this story before and I was simply playing my role. There was no other way but to take them all and equally significant for the matter of my exploration, I am overwhelmed. There was no past nor future to bother me I was floating from one to another moment of now experiencing physically what inspiration is, following it, almost blindly. This story has to stay raw. / Two
/ / This is a book about memory and imagination. The entire content text and images was created by Katarina Šoškić between 11th and 19th of August 2014, in Antwerp. I found nothing No past no future Thank you: / Jelena, Rik, Jozeph, Walter, Taro, Stéphane, Mark, Stefan, Christian, Nina, Josip, Jovana, Anna-Sophie, Hanno, Milica, Sami and Ivan. / / katarinasoskic.net
/ KATARINA ŠOŠKIĆ /