{"id":36296,"date":"2023-03-24T15:11:35","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T14:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/?p=36296"},"modified":"2023-03-26T14:26:38","modified_gmt":"2023-03-26T12:26:38","slug":"a-five-walled-time-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/a-five-walled-time-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"A Five-Walled Time Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[357],"project_type":[848,725,726,735,736,743],"class_list":["post-36296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-solitude-blog","project_type-artist-residencies","project_type-formats","project_type-text","project_type-spheres-of-practice","project_type-textual","project_type-themes"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"What if Cinderella were an artist? What if, the poor thing, she needed a magical nudge in the twenty-first century? Say, what if magic did not end but began<\/em> at midnight?\r\n\r\nI see the folktale all twisted up like this:\r\n\r\nShe\u2019d be called Hinderella. Where Cinderella earned her moniker from cinders,\u00ab the ash that covered her after nights huddled exhausted by the fireplace, Hinderella would be named so for the hindrances that make up her artistic career. A protagonist distressed by typically Third-World hiccups \u2013 power outages, water shortage, loud neighbors, a stout pile of demotivating freelance gigs \u2013 who must rely on online applications to conjure supernatural assistance.\r\n\r\nThe Fairy Godmother would then of course be a Fellowship Coordinator. She\u2019d be ace at administration. Her spells would turn a pumpkin into a seven-foot-wide desk. She\u2019d invite Hinderella to a castle where not a royal ball, but the Ball of Creativity, is in full swing. Knowing how accommodating artist residencies can be, our protagonist would be allowed to dress in rags and walk barefoot if she pleases, instead of fussing over glass slippers. And instead of the terror of a clock striking twelve, she\u2019d be granted twevle months to go on working. Her fictional counterpart would have been appalled, but Hinderella would be excited, impatient to get back to the desk every evening. She might even take the Fairy Godmother thing more seriously than the ball itself. Weighed down by gratitude towards her benefactors, she\u2019d double her cigarette intake and risk four smoke alarms\u2019 wrath. Let\u2019s just say she\u2019d go a little cuckoo under imagined pressure.\r\n\r\nThe most un-Cinderellaesque turn of events would be the resulting transformation \u2013 not overnight, but definitely lifelong \u2013 a reversal of the gift of Time.\r\n\r\nHinderella would discover the freedom that comes with waking up an hour after midnight. It\u2019s when the world goes to sleep, clearing space for thoughts to topple, spill and hurl downward with the force of springtime meltwater \u2013 the force of a story that has waited too long for the right conditions to thaw and flow \u2013 down, onto the page.\r\n\r\n \r\n

*<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":false,"img":[36302],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"The elevator sank down the three floors that separated my studio from the garbage disposal room in the basement. I held the brown paper bag at an arm\u2019s distance \u2013 an olfactory nightmare of onion peels, red chilis, turmeric, and an expired loaf of pumpernickel bread \u2013 dressed in pyjamas and flipflops, contemplating the beginning, the very beginning of the story, that first time he\u2019s driving down the gorge, whether the reader should see anything more of him than a headlamp-lit silhouette, if he should be alone in the vehicle on the moonless night, when the elevator doors opened.\r\n\r\nTo be honest, I\u2019d have preferred a technical failure \u2013 the elevator should have descended past the basement and hit the foundations that supported the castle \u2013 because people were wearing ties and drinking champagne when the stink of stagnant onions announced my entry into the brightly lit cafeteria. The Director stood nearest, and since he was now smiling and greeting me \u2013 me, as in \u00bbthe Indian writer here at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart on a year-long Literature Fellowship\u00ab \u2013 I feigned what I hoped would pass as the eccentric-artist smile and wove my way past more directors, curators, state officials, and the who\u2019s who of what could only be an exhibition opening, whose announcement I obviously missed because I kept the internet turned off. I made it to the garbage disposal room with a couple of discreet hellos, and then I flip-flopped the whole way back \u2013 slow and steady, past historians and architects and poets and hackers \u2013 oh that terribly slow elevator, finally ascending up the three floors and across the long corridor to the safety of the studio.\r\n\r\nThe studio doors were 15 feet high in thick, solid wood that I was confident even an elephant couldn\u2019t knock down. It\u2019s where the rest-of-the-world ended and my story\u2019s universe began. One that allowed no time to process the asocial basement incident; the castle\u2019s evenings coincided with my deep-sleep time. There was that perfect desk introduced by the Fairy Godmother, and next to it, laid out on the floor, a yoga mat that served as my bed. I mean, that wasn\u2019t it, of course; there was also the rest of the duplex studio, with a double bed upstairs, a lounge chair to sink into, three windows \u2013 all curtained \u2013 and twelve skylights, also darkened, but that circle of light cast by the desk lamp was where I lived.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s where I conducted a little time experiment \u2013 where I cheated the body clock and dialed off the 24 known time zones of the world. A good two years ahead of the world in making a habit of self-isolation; \u00bbquarantine\u00ab is common currency since the pandemic, but I was already far gone inward by then.\r\n\r\n \r\n

*<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[36304],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Quite how far inward do residencies let an artist go? This query led me to experiment with a schedule since described by some friends as part monklike, part military. It involved sleeping at 7 pm to wake up at 1 am. Day after day \u2013 with no clear-your-head breaks and no space for socializing \u2013 right through to the last page.\r\n\r\nSounds harsher than exile, but whether shaped as an artist residency or political asylum, an exile is better understood against the context of the home that is left behind. For me, \u00bbhome\u00ab translated as a Himalayan village that retreats into natural isolation for half the year. We experience a brief influx of tourists for two of those months, but the remaining four are still timeless enough that the days of the week lose significance. It\u2019s a soothing pace manifest in shapeshifting clouds, swaying cedars on mountaintops and whistling birds, but also one where the strength of infrastructure is determined by the rough topography. Not that the villagers would care what hour I chose to start my day, but equally, nor could anyone help if at that precise hour a snowstorm chose to visit us \u2013 the kind of a temperamental guest that disrupts our connectivity with the world while it stays. The most well-intentioned schedules fall apart when faced with the mountains\u2019 rhythms.\r\n\r\nFar from that scenario, in a plush Germany, the nonchalance with which the castle\u2019s residents responded to my general absence \u2013 and the occasional nod of encouragement from the admin staff \u2013 made me feel an overwhelming gratefulness for being left alone. An obligation, as it is, to make the most of this generosity. How productive could each castled day be? Each day with cozy heating, uninterrupted water in the taps, lights that never short-circuited, a printer that never ran out of paper and walls that wouldn\u2019t let a soundwave in for distraction? A day whose monotony could be broken by late-night walks without having to watch over the shoulder for springy attackers? When seen against the backdrop of a village, how could each such logistically perfect day be accounted for?\r\n\r\nThe rigidity of a schedule seems inherently at loggerheads with artistic rebellion. It enjoys a mixed reputation among artists \u2013 at times applauded as a deadline\u2019s best friend, other times accused to be the enemy of spontaneity and inspiration.\u00a0But an unspoken, discomforting question lurks behind this dilemma \u2013 what exempts an artist from quantifying productivity? Or, to put it another way \u2013 in a world of limited financial resources, why should artistic labor be spared an accountability to the clock?\r\n\r\n \r\n

*<\/p>\r\nI moved into a clocked universe where the story expanded while space dissolved. Like the real thing, this universe too began with an early, booming start and went farthest in the first moments of its newfangled existence. Has its rewards, you know. No waiting in queue for laundry, for instance. At 3 am, I\u2019d be spoilt for choice between eight washing machines. It also meant that I knew nothing of the passage of time beyond the light and temperature conditions within the five-walled studio. I planned my weekly menu down to meticulous, meal-by-meal detail to minimize grocery trips to town. I took great precautions to stay invisible, avoiding the cafeteria, the elevator, and the library, and took to slinking through the quiet hours. During the official monthly dinners, I focused entirely on the cutlery, which is, needless to say, an absurd thing to do, but which did well to simplify life; no conversation meant no friends, which meant no one to stop for, to pause the story for or acknowledge a time zone for. Within the circle of light cast by the desk lamp was one stubborn wish \u2013 to \u00bbearn\u00ab this privileged time by completing the first draft of the book I was there to write.\r\n\r\nOutside, as the Akademie emails informed me, life moved at a different pace. There were invites to letterpress workshops and museum nights in town. Internal presentations by fellow artists I didn\u2019t know until they were halfway out the door waving goodbyes. Symposiums and festivals and performances and impromptu concerts. German language classes. Birthday aperitifs. Film screenings. There was a digital artist who\u2019d built an installation to conduct \u00bbboredom tests\u00ab by analyzing one\u2019s brain waves; intrigued, I caved into volunteering for this last one and hid in the studio through all others.\r\n\r\nSeasons, months, painfully long summer days and the ever-shrinking night passed over the skylights like the beams and shadows of a lighthouse. I was better connected with a word file on screen than with my immediate environment. At some point, when I was more or less halfway through the story, a crowd gathered on the hill where the castle stood overlooking the town. It was the night of a blood moon \u2013 the longest total lunar eclipse of the century. The next one isn\u2019t due until the May of 2264, but I remained hunched by the desk in what looked like a paper valley with sheets strewn all around. I suspect even the moon was offended at such blatant disregard of life, because its entry into the Earth\u2019s shadow coincided to the second with the coffee I spilt on the desk that evening, soaking plans through to the concluding chapters.\r\n\r\nFrom the castle to the cosmos, everything was on hold until the book was done; life blocked out by a 12-month-long self-imposed studio eclipse.\r\n\r\nReally, how far inward would this residency let me go?\r\n\r\n \r\n

*<\/p>\r\nBack home, to leave someone alone, even to create art, is equated with abandonment. In the castle, I realized, it was an act of care.\r\n\r\nOne day there was a knock on the studio door. I panicked out of habit, but it was only the Fairy Godmother coming to check if I\u2019m alive and well. Two decades of hosting artists; she\u2019s seen all kinds get selected. She\u2019s familiar with those who forget that the studio is in a castle, that the castle is inhabited by people, and that this whole package is in Germany, which is a real country, on a real planet, moving to calendric time.\r\n\r\nIt had been weeks since I spoke to a non-imaginary being, but she was unperturbed. She knows the kind who carry out mock battles within these walls. \u00bbJust to see that you are okay, yes? Good luck, please write.\u00ab\r\n\r\n \r\n

*<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[36308],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Building a literary universe requires that one turn inward. Building it to clockwork precision requires something a tad kookier \u2013 write like your life depends on it. It\u2019s what kept my schedule running. Simply put, I was convinced that I\u2019d die if I didn\u2019t walk out of that castle with a manuscript in hand.\r\n\r\nAs it turns out \u2013 and against all predictions otherwise \u2013 it\u2019s a healthy kind of pressure that pays off. Although used to the isolation of mountains, it was at Solitude that I learnt the true magnitude of pursuits as solitary as books. Chasing a nocturnal schedule leads to unexpected side-effects \u2013 photosensitivity; nine days without fresh vegetables; three weeks without human interaction; a sense of alarm at the echo of distant footsteps; genuine shock at the daily return of the sun; hallucinations where the studio transforms into the shrine of a story \u2013 but in the end it resulted in a priceless skill called Discipline. Come to think of it, Germany might well have been the most apt place to make a habit of it.\r\n\r\nThe day I typed out the last words of the first draft, I climbed up the stairs and collapsed on the bed \u2013 that incredibly soft, untouched double bed \u2013 for the first time during the residency. Over eight months had disappeared at the merciless desk, but I was finally experiencing what writers over generations have described in dramatic terms \u2013 an epiphany, an explosion, a bit of knocking-on-heaven\u2019s-door \u2013 the moment of completion, in my case weighing more than 150,000 words on paper. An impractical mission that would have taken thrice as much time in the comfort of my usual home; it not only surprised me with the speeds achieved in the isolated environment, but also shaped what I now understand to be a lifelong work ethic. And, I daresay, walking out with the completed first draft of a book is more of a thrill than trying on slippers held out by a random price charming; it\u2019s the peak of the trip that a schedule becomes when chased long enough.\r\n\r\nHow far inward did the residency let me go? I had some answers.\r\n\r\nFurther than the mountains. Much further than a lockdown ever could. Far enough to realize that the most peculiar freedom an artist residency provides is this \u2013 the freedom to forget that you are at a residency.\r\n\r\n \r\n

*<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[36310],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"I came out at the other end and, unexpectedly, found friends: the admin staff who\u2019d resolved my many trivial hinderances on the way to literature. Having worked in an office for a decade \u2013 in India, where there is no art without survival, no independent projects without a hustle for odd jobs and one literary residency of note in a country of 1.35 billion \u2013 I could perhaps comprehend their logistical responsibilities better than the dialectics of art. A schedule was something they too understood well; we spoke the same language.\r\n\r\nAfter a year in their care, the hosts\u2019 role in the artists\u2019 lives revealed itself to be a more engaged one than a fairy godmother\u2019s. And if Cinderella was indeed an artist \u2013 though this seems unlikely since she comes across as a bit of an unambitious whine in the current context \u2013 given her familiarity with hard work, her understanding of the value of each meal through a series of repetitive actions, I\u2019d imagine she\u2019d call upon resourceful godparents more sparingly and take them less for granted.\r\n\r\nThe German Fairy Godmother and I spoke of this at length one Sunday afternoon towards the end of my residency. I met her at a caf\u00e9 in the world outside the castle, to share the news of the manuscript\u2019s completion and to express my gratitude too. She waved it off, of course; it\u2019s just what they do.\r\n\r\nStill, did she agree with the pedestal we elevate art to? What about the lack of support for the thousands of other, equally deserving, more stressful occupations out there?\r\n\r\n\u00bbBut isn\u2019t an artist also more intellectually engaged with her job than the average person on the street?\u00ab\r\n\r\nShe had a point. It almost convinced me. That day, surrounded by quaint European aesthetics, it felt good to indulge in the belief that artists deserve \u203abetter\u2039, that such temporal luxuries are integral to our projects.\r\n\r\nLooking back, I see two ways to interpret artist residencies. The first, an obvious one, is as postcards of parallel utopias \u2013 outside the frames of which exists the chase of \u203areal life\u2039. A more interesting image though, a more rewarding one, is that of an edgeless utopia \u2013 one where the practices and ethos of the artistic and the supposedly \u2018non-artistic\u2019 worlds interchange and merge. A space with potential for discipline and accountability to form the foundations of artistic productivity, and for art to become that much humbler and more accessible to the non-residency world."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"has-bg-grey","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"

Simar Preet Kaur<\/strong> <\/span>is a writer based in the Indian Himalayas. Her features and narrative essays have appeared in a range of publications including Commonwealth Writers<\/em>, National Geographic Traveler<\/em>, Stand Magazine<\/em>, and Papercuts<\/em>. Simar received a Sangam House Fellowship in 2015 and the Charles Wallace Fellowship in Creative Writing at University of Stirling, Scotland, in 2016. She spent 2018 at Akademie Schloss Solitude on a yearlong literature fellowship, working on her first book set on a high mountain road.<\/p>"}],"intro_preview_headline":"","intro_preview_txt":"Writer Simar Preet Kaur tells a tale about living in a universe in which story expands while space dissolves. Her only wish to a fairy godmother is to be an artist in isolation. Free from obligations to society, from survival instincts, from the pressure to \u00bbearn\u00ab privileged time. This text is part of the publication On Care. A Journey into the Relational Nature of Artists' Residencies<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","intro_preview_img":36565,"post_id_old":"","post_author":null,"post_subtitle":"by Simar Preet Kaur","post_preview_img_hide_on_single":true,"post_txt_old":"","post_pdf":"","post_copyright":"ccl_cc_by_nc_nd","translated_post":false,"translations":null,"post_copyright_individual":"","post_related_posts":[36287,36249,36173],"related_posts_post":[7019,17875,40899]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36296\/revisions"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/17875"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/7019"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36173"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=36296"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=36296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}