Letter to Joroinen                                                                                                    writing test I

At the age of fifteen my father writes in a letter to his father: “I sent your bicycle by train but the designation was wrong”, as he filled the receipt and put a luggage tag stating that somebody is travelling along. Yet he was sending a bicycle not traveling with. When he realised the mistake but couldn’t correct the label. Then worry and trouble captures his mind as the bicycle is grandfather´s precious, a vehicle to carry the goods to market. He ends the letter by writing the numbers of luggage tag: six thousand five and one hundred sixty five.   

In the year of 1940, every man was called to join the army. My grandfather then at the age of thirtyeight, was sent to Joroinen, stationed with the troops. He is old for recruitment but everyman was needed. He served to supply food for the front. Almost twenty years before he was immigrant, escaped, hiding in the woods, with no papers to show.

The letter is in Tatar language, which is my mother tongue: rarely spoken in public nor used with unknown ones. The letter is in Arabic script.

Now, this letter, me copying, writing it onto snowy landscape. My foot writing, remnant of the act, is heavy and shivering.  Pressing snow, shifting, tapping with my feet, printing marks and getting familiar with the suburban woods under the water tank on a rocky field or near a walking path. Only random passers-by,  some dog walkers confronting my act.

My concerns are practical ones; whether my breath will mask the eyeglasses while photographing or will three pairs of socks be enough.

Letter to Joroinen                                                                                                    writing test II

Father gave me an envelope, look if there is anything interesting, he said. Worn out, brown envelope full of old documents containing several papers of bicycles registration documents, licence for peddling in the countryside, court order of accident with kick sled and van.

It is a sheet of paper maybe torn out from the notebook, pages where lines are forming squares. Somewhere the ink is spread leaving a trace of blue spot. Anyway, it is wrinkled, barely readable in some parts.

In January the temperature was minus twenty and foot writing was more challenging. First, I was worried whether there will be any snow at all or if it stays long enough to finish the letter. I searched for snowy places, extended my walks to the conservation area nearby. But it was cold, far too cold. I shortened my walks. Anyway, in winter the days are short and sun rises low.

What kind of place I needed? Sure, not too sloping surface and broad enough for the whole word to be filled in and then a good spot for photographing it. I hoped for the sunshine. Locating that the sunshine comes from my right side then the shadow of my body points out the direction where the writing proceeds. The Arabic script extends from right to the left. In some cases I have to turn around to form a letter that is when I easily loose the direction. I move ahead word by word, sometimes only a couple per day.

Here the writing body is not at the first hand communicating a message whereas more measuring space, having constant negotiations with situational factors.  Carrie Noland investigates in her book, “Agency & Embodiment” how culture is filtered through our corporeal acts. She claims that effect of using inventive ways of kinaesthetic acts affords knowledge[1].

Transition gives a sequence of places, diversity of surfaces; first, there is a sheet of paper, then landscape and gallery space. What is shown in gallery space is only inscription, imprints not movements themselves.      

In “Writing exercises” I use two kinds of scripts; Latin and Arabic scripts. I connect them by the thread line indicating that the letter here occupies two different kinds of sign systems. The thread line implies for three-dimensionality, rising from the plain sheet.

Ornament is regarded as something that occupies aesthetical aspects and designs surface by covering it. Thinking of ornament as having parasite quality, being supported by other could be approached in another view, too, by thinking it in the name of flexibility.

An ornament can be seen as a trace or a shape produced by motion. It is that which remains when the motion is gone. Seen through kinaesthesia, an ornament can therefore be regarded as an open concept that embodies the potential and capacity for change. It then becomes a tool for responding to stimuli, for acting in response to some reason or event.