28/01/2005

28/01/2005
Originally uploaded by bridge guard.

25/01/2005

Screaming trees all day long. I can’t stand the sight of it. Years and years it took them to grow this magnificant and then one small man with a big electric saw takes them down within the hour.
One tree took its revenge and destroyed an electricity cable on its way down. Our electricity cable. Instead of drinking my morning coffee and working on my computer, I’m thinking of trees. My hair is slowly turning green.

When evening falls I go out to take some photos. Standing in front of the city hall with my camera and tripod, a police car drives by. I realise I left my passport at home. I realise I might look suspicious. My nerves wake up and my fear frightens me, even though it is only small fear.
Even in Holland we have to carry an identity card these days. What world are we living in?

I go home, get my passport and continue my shooting. The police car drives by again. They are not interested in me.

25/01/2005

25/01/2005
Originally uploaded by bridge guard.

23/01/2005

23/01/2005
Originally uploaded by bridge guard.

22/01/2005

Today was the day of the big ball, held for all citizens of Stúrovo/Parkany and Esztergom. About 120 local people and two Dutch citizens gathered in the Culture House. Many meters of black velvet, coloured silk and gold necklaces.
An unknown phenomenon for us, big city dutchies, but for these people a welcome way to lighten the long and dark wintermonths. Like caterpillars these people take of their grimy faceless clothes and dress themselves in conspicious garments to glitter and shine on the dancefloor.
Actually it is just like in the old days. The very old days, when the nobility amused themselves by meeting each other in the ballroom. Probably (hopefully!) the music was different then.
There was a tombola and Albert bought a lot of tickets but had forgotten we hadn’t learned the Hungarian numbers yet.
I took my camera but forgot to take my memory card (I had a digital day) so all the images are left in their heads and mine only.

Important tip for the next winter bridge guard: bring an evening gown! Or perhaps we can set up a bridge guard wardrobe for unexpected special events.

20/01/2005

Travelling from Stúrovo to Buda, you are first passing God. Actually God with dots. Göd.
In Budapest we enter an arbitrary restaurant. We are hungry. And find ourselves in an Amsterdam surrounding. Pictures of our homecity eveywhere, typical Dutch objects and symbols of Amsterdam on the walls. Some bad Dutch newspapers on the bar.
At first we feel uncomfortable. Then we laugh. And eat. And feel like Göd is playing us.

19/01/2005

The photos which I printed today look like photos which have been lying around in some drawer for twenty years. Photos of buildings, streets, images no older than one hour. A city from the present, bearing the colours of the past.
It seems nostalgic, almost romantic. Every picture seems to be worthwhile. But it is not by definition the quality of the image itself, but the presence of history, our longing for travelling back in time, which seduces the eye.

Something similar happened in the local galery, later on this day. We were caught by the wonderful sound and rhythm of the speeches in both the Slovak and the Hungarian language and the charming clumsiness of two women playing the piano. The deputy mayor, on the other hand, could only just keep himself from yawning. Seeing this I realised that in Holland I would probably be yawning too.

The opening followed the same rules all art openings do. At first everybody has to listen to long speeches, after this everybody glances quickly at the artworks and finally people gather around the bar (in this case table) to drink and eat and talk about trivial things without taking any further notice of the artworks.

18/01/2005

18-01-2005
Originally uploaded by bridge guard.

17/01/2005

“Let us ask ourselves sincerely whether the swallow from this summer is another swallow than the one from the first summer and if between these two summers indeed a million times the miracle occured by which something was created out of nothing after which it was ridiculed just as many times by complete destruction. Whoever hears me assuring that the cat that is playing at this spot is the same cat that jumped and crept about this same spot threehundred years ago, may think whatever he wants: it is even far more foolish to imagine it being a really different cat.”

Schopenhauer/Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung

16/01/2005

16/01/2005
Originally uploaded by bridge guard.

15/01/2005

This Sunday will be remembered as the day we learned the most important sentence in Hungarian. Jó villág van. It is a good life. To make sure we got the meaning right, Gyuri’s wife Zsofi coocked us a wonderful Hungarian lunch. There was no end to the food and the wine. We couldn’t but say the sentence again and again.
During the meal Gyuri made a list of the new English words he learned. Gyuri likes lists. In our first week here, he came by now and then and when anything was needed, he took a small notebook from his breastpocket and wrote the errant in question down meticulously. Striking it through again five minutes later when it appeared not to be necessary after all.
It was the same notebook he was writing in now. And at the end of the lunch, it was almost evening, he named the words one by one. Ridiculous. Terrible. Disaster. Horrible. Nightmare. Deception. We fell silent. So this is what our Hungarian friends learn from us Dutchmen? Fortunately Gyuri knew the solution. He striked the words through one by one and poured us another drink. Jó világ van!

14/01/2005

14/01/2005
Originally uploaded by bridge guard.

13/01/2005

Today I planted my tulips at the other side, I expanded my territory all the way up to the Basilica of Esztergom. For more than 1.000 years this has been the seat of Roman Catholicism. The country’s first King, St. Stephen, was born here and it was the royal seat from the late 10th to mid 13th century. Esztergom has both great spiritual and temporal significance for most Hungarians.

Every afternoon at 16.30 sharp a song is being played and send out into the world from the majestic rock on which the basilica is build. It is a Hungarian nationalistic song and therefore some people on this side despise it. 16.30 is the exact time when the treaty was signed by which Hungary lost two third of its territory after WWI.
It is a sad song, a lonely flute, a melancholic sound. To me it is beautiful. Because it is only music. Although it can be used as a symbol, as a nationalistic mean, in itself it is only music. And it is beautiful music indeed.

12/01/2005

Workers are moving around outside. It’s unclear what they’re doing. Walking from here to there, staring through windows, opening doors, smoking cigarettes, talking, waiting.

I’m trying to teach myself some Hungarian. It’s difficult. My tongue still stumbles over the ö, ó, ú, ü, but I’m starting to remember the first words. My first word is “apa”. Father. Is it a coincidence that this word is one of the first words my Hungarian language course presents to teach people like me the pronounciation of the a-sound? Or are they trying to put this language, this culture, this country under my skin?
Of course, officialy I’m not in Hungary but this part of Slovakia used to belong to Hungary. Or to be precise: the whole of Slovakia was once part of the big Hungarian Empire. Just like Transsylvania, Croatia, Roethenia (Ukrain) and Burgenland. After the First World War Hungary had to give up two third of its territory. Half of the Hungarian citizens “moved” to one of the neighbouring countries while in fact they didn’t move a single step.

This morning a man wearing a hat peeped into our bedroom. Our bedroom is what the map calls storage, but we changed that name into bedroom, so we can use it to sleep. During the day we call it studio, so Albert can work there. It is adjacent to the space where the big boiler for the whole building is situated and where at night the sea seems to hide itself. The hatted man entered the boiler room and took out my grandmother’s grandmother’s furnace. Or at least it looked like it. It was time to get up.

12/01/2005

12/01/2005
Originally uploaded by bridge guard.

11/01/2005

Stúrovo is veiled in mist. It crept through the city all day and now, when dusk is falling, there’s a visibility of only a couple of metres. You can’t see the other side. the bridge seems to dissapear into air.

This morning the fog forced its way into our heads. We moved through the new apartment and lost sight. Where to go? What to do? The fog lifted. We drank coffee and seated ourselves in front of our computers. Straight ahead, just keep on moving. Even when it’s the wrong direction, you’re still on the right track.

Actually it is amazingly easy to step from one life into another. When we open our eyes in the morning we wonder what we’re doing here. And what we used to do in our other life. Everything is different here but everything is the same. Outside people are walking the pavement, trees are standing along the road, water is streaming through a bed, birds are flying over our heads, shopdoors are sliding open, cars are driving to and fro. There’s grass, there are clouds, there is a city and there is a bridge.

I planted the bulbs throughout the city today. People stared. Nobody asked. These people don’t seem to be used to ask.

09/01/2005

Stúrovo is named after Ludovít Stúr, a 19th-century nationalist and linguist. The Slovak grammar is based on his work. But in Stúrovo most people use the Hungarian language. Including Hungarian names. That means most people talk about “Parkany” instead of “Stúrovo”, a name which is in fact not Hungarian at all but Turkish: a reminder of the Turkish occupation which happened centuries ago.
I don’t know which name to use. So I use them both. If you’d put a knife on my throat and ask me which name I like best I would say Stúrovo. This doesn’t mean I have Slovak nationalistic tendencies. I just like the sound of the word “Stúrovo” more than the sound of the word “Parkany”.

On our first day in Stúrovo-Parkany, Gyuri showed us a memorial stone in the small park near my house. It commemorated the take-over of the city by the Turkish. Withered floral wreaths laid by its side.
It turned over my head. My imagination ran away with me and flowers started growing in my head. One tulip, ten tulips, hundreds of tulips, feeding on my brain.
The “Dutch” tulip is the dubious symbol of Holland, there’s even a song “Tulips from Amsterdam”. In fact the Turkish are the rightfull owners of this culture symbol since “we” imported it centuries ago in large quantities from Turkey to make it “our” national symbol.
I thought about a Dutch bridge guard in a Slovak city that was once occupied by the Turkish and pondered over a way to conquer this area with the help of an innocent flower.

So I went to Billa. This is a large supermarket, on the edge of the centre of town and very near the bridge. The large supermarkets are the most recent conquerers of this city. There’s also Coop and Tesco, they all came after the bridge was restored to eat away the income from the local shops. Billa also sells tulip bulbs. I bought 200 bulbs, in different sizes and with a promise of different colurs. “Product of Holland. Aus Kulturmaterial vermehrt”.
During my “explorative” walks through Stúrovo and Esztergom I will plant them at arbitrary places, one by one. In every new street, park, corner I encounter, I will plant one. In spring they will grow and bloom. Not just on this side, but on the other side as well. And people can see: the bridgeguard was here.
I thought of a name. “Biological graffiti”.

08/01/2005

Leaving Amsterdam was easy. We closed our frontdoor and drove off. It was a wednesday, early afternoon. The next day we crossed the border crossing between western and eastern Europe. A giant rainbow stretched itself out over the landscape. A welcoming arch for the new bridge guard.
We drove under it and I saw a landscape reminding me of my Dutch native region. The Danube, who had kept us company during the last part of our journey, made up the border with Slovakia. It was already dark when we crossed her and entered our new temporary home.

The welcome by Gyuri* and his colleague Eva was warm, our new apartment spacious and wonderful. We drank to our new dreams and didn’t care yet about the big pile of boxes and suitcases which we moved from the Berlingo into the middle of the livingroom.
A first walk through the village, a first look at the bridge; how beautiful she was!
Next soft matrasses and a deep sleep. Eva had told us that the dreams you dream the first night at a new place will come true. When I woke up next morning I convinced myself otherwise.

The mayor receives us at his office, seated behind a majestic desk, the deputy mayor at his right side. We are welcomed in a language we don’t yet understand but we get the message. This new job of mine is serious business. Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I feel at home already.


(Gyuri Himmler = Himmler György is the person coordinating the project here. He teaches history and philosophy at the local gymnasium, he is the president of the Cultural Society in Sturovo and he is the chief editor of the local newspaper. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. He looks just like Herman Finkers. Eva is teaching German at the gymnasium.)

01/01/2005

The new year has started. From today on I’m the official Bridge Guard of the Mária Valéria Bridge. I haven’t seen the bridge in real yet. I only read about it. About the bridge and about my duties:

“In the year 2001 the Mária Valéria bridge between Stúrovo (Slovakia) and Esztergom (Hungary) was reopened. During its history, this bridge was destroyed and unusable for a longer time than it was actually connecting the two towns.

The rebuilt bridge deserves to be saved from further destruction by people. To this aim, mental protection is more important than physical protection. As long as the mental connection between people is intact, the bridge is not endangered.

The post of Bridge Guard requires a person in whose work boundaries of countries of eras are bridged, mental, social, religious or political boundaries are crossed, different scientific fields are connected, or various artistic media are utilized.”

(from the Bridge Guard Residency website, http//www.bridgeguard.org)

“The guard of the bridge shall be a builder of a virtual bridge. Therefore creative people working across disciplines or shifting boundaries of their own discipline are qualified to guard the bridge”

(from the Trans Artists newsletter, March 2004)

For six months I will live and work as an artist on the border between two countries. I’ll take my videocamera, my photocamera, my books and my paper. I'll be provided with an apartment and an atelier situated near the bridge. I’ll write in the bridge guard logbook and wander the streets of Stúrovo to gather new material.

I wrote the following to Karol Frühauf, the initiator of the Bridge Guard residency:

“I studied history. I learned seven languages but prefer to be speechless. I herded sheep in France. I prefer mornings to evenings. I rather make stories than be the subject of them. I’m fond of rituals. I hate miscommunication. I keep forgetting I’m growing older. I keep forgetting I’m an artist.
For being an artist and being a human being is the same thing to me. I’m trying to make art the way I leed my life. In my artwork, I’m trying to show how I experience the world.
In a way, art is something “out of this world”, art creates a world of its own, mirroring the real world, using elements from this real world. They depend strongly on each other, art and the world we’re living in. One can’t do without the other.
As an artist, I’m balancing on the border of these two worlds. This borderline is my subject.”



I prepared myself well. In the last months, I walked an imaginary bridge. 496 meters. 711 steps. Always starting from my doorstep, always ending anywhere. Anywhere 711 steps from the startingpoint.

Day 1:

I closed the front door of my house in Amsterdam behind me and walked 711 steps. As a child I used to count them. My steps, I mean. I took a certain amount and tried to reach the given goal within that number. Usually the goal was my house or a shop my mother send me to in order to get some things she forgot during her usual morning shopping. If I succeeded, the day would be mine.

I don't remember any specific day I failed my mission. I don't remember any day I succeeded either. I just remember the ritual.

This morning I had a goal, as in the old days. This was to be found at step 711. I crossed a couple of roads on my way, bumped into a woman walking her twin dogs, avoided some kids playing football, noticed a giant pigeon looking at me taking my 699th step and reached my goal. There it was. A grey tile on the sidewalk. Next to it another similar tile. Next to it a bike leaning against a streetlight.
I looked around me. I knew this place. But I never knew it was a 496 meter walk from my front door. I took a picture and retraced my steps. The door was where I left it. I hadn't expected anything else.