14 Dec Dinner Table

Velibor and Bogdan take on the responsibility of the dinner for our final night. Velibor is the chef, while Bogdan assists him with cooking the pasta dish. While they cook big portions of fettuccine, Jessica starts on the salads. They move around swiftly in the kitchen, which is probably not meant to be occupied by more than two people. It is like a choreography that is both spontaneous and carefully planned.

 Around the dinner table again, we sit down for the last meal of the trip. It is a relatively quiet dinner. We recap certain logistical decisions that we made about the research lab and the upcoming show at the Musée de Baie-St-Paul for the Mariette project and we allocate tasks for people who can help putting the books together and work out the timeline of our production until June. Bogdan is making two tables for displaying the books, and the maquette has been finalized on this trip, including the cover design. We all vote for hand-binding the books and printing the covers on Tyvek.

All of the discussions on upcoming projects aside, another concern for the group is about its own existential quest. What could be the tangible outcome of this group? Would we have a show that featured our individual works in a space? Would we create something collaboratively?

We have started archiving our activities in the form of images and writing. The photo-romanidea came up as a potential direction to give form to our group. Building on this, there was an idea of consolidating the Afterlife archive, consisting of materials gathered during the group’s activities—such as images of the Kamouraska trips, potlucks, and regular meetings. This archive would be used as material to create work that tells a fiction of a process.

“Is it going to be all about ourselves? How can it go beyond that?”

 With that question in mind, we come back to Montreal the next morning.