Oh mon dieu

i’ve recently began to watch Friends in french, to help with my learning of the language. I’m very familiar with the dialogue in the show (sad I know) so I find that I already know what they’re saying, but simultaneously now learning the french version too.

La Fête Du Slip

I’d heard about a weekend long festival in Lausanne at the beginning of March, which featured artistic films and videos, and so I planned to check it out, however, during my search for more information I found that it was actually a festival of sexuality, and the film events that I had heard about were just a scratch on the surface! There are several venues across the city in which its held, and the one we visited at the Arsenic Theatre hosted pornography competitions, where throughout the day/night they would show screenings of several films to an audience and then we would vote at the end which film we preferred. Chelsea and I only made it in to one screening however as it was so busy! Afterwards we went to Le Bourg further up in town, which was the resident music venue for the night. It was an experience like none other, and would definitely like to go next year if possible.

International Women’s Day

My friend Jasmine, who also lives at the Auberge, was asked by someone back in her home of Argentina to photograph a women’s march in Switzerland. But, as it was highly unlikely that anything on that scale would be happening in our little town, or anywhere nearby, she resorted to the idea of taking photos of women she lives with - including me - and women on her course. She had left her trusty polaroid camera in Berlin, but luckily I had bought one and it had just been delivered that week, and lent it to her. Here is one of the photos she took with it

3 week holiday!

My week at home in wales went by in a flash. Apart from the nice 6 hour delay I had in Geneva waiting for the flight. I had to take a trip down to Coventry for the day to secure the booking of a house to live in for my final year, which was pretty nostalgic. When I flew back a week later, my mum came along with me and stayed in the Hotel Casino in Sierre for a few days. We crammed in a few places - Biel/Bienne, Zermatt, and Lucerne. She hadn’t ventured out of the UK in a good 30+ years, and I think Switzerland was a nice place to begin for her. 

The mountain peak poking through the clouds is that of the famous Matterhorn! 

The day after she left, I was off to Grindelwald for the weekend, a dazzlingly beautiful place (literally i was blinded by the snow) on Saturday me and Chelsea went up to the Jungfraujoch ‘The top of Europe’, which held a viewing point looking across the glaciers and mountains all around. On the Sunday we took a cable car up to the First mountain, at a discount, courtesy of our hotels/hostels for giving us a voucher. Up there we found a cliff walk with a horrifyingly high drop. One part even had a glass floor, if you are prone to vertigo this is not the place to visit

After being back in Sierre for all of two seconds I was then flying to Madrid to visit Ash. I was doing that thing where you fill your free time with countless activities and then when it comes to going back to normality you feel completely exhausted. Although, living here, what really is considered ‘normality’ now? Luckily Ash was quite happy to lounge about so the time there was pretty chill. We did make some time to visit some art however! A trip to the Palacio de Velázquez.

Arriving back on Friday, I am now spending the weekend resting and preparing for the start of classes on Monday.

From the exposition at Topic in Geneva (i’m in the grey fluffy hoody scratching away for eternity)

National hummus shortage

Seriously. Nowhere has had hummus in stock for weeks. We kind of had a spontaneous Inn film night on sunday, watching The Mummy and realising how awful the graphics/cgi were. Monday was back to same old 9-6 lectures, but afterwards we went down into the town to explore the ‘Foire de Ste Catherine’ (a fair celebrating St catherine). we had looked round some of the stalls on our lunch break, which consisted of speciality foods/sweets, clothes and other items. We had a taste of all the free samples we could, especially nougat, which i then went on to buy in denner (175g for 2.95.-!!) later on we met with a few friends from class and had some vin chaud (mulled wine, new favourite drink). There was a huge tent by the train station which seemed to be full of the entire population of Sierre and more, we left quite early because we were tired and hungry, and found out the next day that there had been a knife attack in that same tent! I think the victim survived… switzerland is sounding less sweet and innocent by the month

I now have a swiss bank account! Going to have to take out swiss franc using my british card as usual, and then pay the money into my new account, so to avoid the ridiculous £22 fee that incurs when sending money internationally through online banking (thanks natwest). Received my parcel from home which consisted of thermal underclothes and chocolate rice cakes, which didn’t last long.

Spent a lot of time in the studio this week throwing out some new ideas and trying to paint without using it all up. Kind of takes the fun and freedom out of it if you’re feeling limited by your materials. We went to have a look in another classmate’s studio, who has an entire room to himself, filled with random items and trinkets that he finds. He said he buys nothing but hot glue, for everything he finds he believes already is art itself and does not need major editing apart from maybe the combining of it with other items. very ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. With my work (finally decided) i am trying to explore the concept of the language barrier and communications being lost in translation, through a whole range of mediums, planning to attempt at some photography and sound, which isn’t normally my forte

It’s getting really cold now. Missing the brief warmth we had when we arrived

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Ditched Sierre for the week and went to Madrid to see Ash. (Here is his blog) At first i was resenting Swiss Air for having such pricey flights but once they started offering free baguettes apple strudels and chocolate on board i forgave them. Also they had looney tunes as the inflight entertainment on the return journey, so all sins forgiven 

There’s no need to mention how cheap food and other things are in Spain compared to Switzerland, I think i put on several pounds at least in an attempt to stuff myself before returning back to “frozen pizza for 6 franc” land. (I do love it here really just feeling nostalgic for reasonably affordable food)

We went to a lot of places whilst there, but the most memorable would have to be the visit to the Guadarrama mountain range in northern Madrid in an attempt to reach the highest peak of the region - Peñalara. After much sim-swapping, map reading and bus taking, we arrived there in time to watch the sunset from one of the lower peaks. Then it dawned on us that there were no more buses, no more trains, to get back down the nearest town with a metro. This is where the hitchhiking came in! Sadly didn’t actually get to stick our thumbs out as we asked some people who were already parked, and after much Spanish spoken debate between the couple they decided to help us. Dropping us off at burger king back down in civilisation, we waved goodbye and thanked the lord (the burger king himself) that we didn’t have to spend the whole night freezing to death in the wilderness.

We also took a visit to the Faro de Moncloa, a viewing tower over 100 metres high, and had a momentary feeling of vertigo whilst travelling up in their lovely glass lift. El Rastro, a flea market held in the centre every Sunday, was another one already on my list to visit

Templo de Debod. Ash had class so thought i’d take a hike. Whilst here i purchased the travelcard, with which you have access to free travel on all buses and trains (i think) and only 20€ for the month! It’s extremely handy *cough* Switzerland sort it out *cough* and i only needed it for the week.

Overall the week trip was over far too quickly and next time we need to get down to art student business and visit some galleries, the city itself is not short of art though, on the streets, stalls, etc.

Friend opportunity

At MAXXX for the second time! This time viewing René Pulfer’s vinyl art collection ‘Revolutions per minute’. There were some really neat pieces here

He also was displaying what I believe was a limited edition copy of a book ‘Sleepwalkers’ by Doug Aitken which I researched later and turned out to be a visual diary about a film installation of the same name, which was projected onto the exterior walls of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan. René and I tried to speak about the work, with me asking if i could purchase a copy of the book myself, and from his broken english I understood that it would cost a bomb. He said there is a ‘box’ available to buy online in which you receive a vinyl, cd and dvd along with the book, but his repeating of ‘$200 - $300′ made me doubtful that i’d ever own it.

In other news, here’s some recent work i’ve been doing, i’m still very sceptical about the actual direction of my project so i have mainly been experimenting.

Lausanne: second attempt

Not much luck. It rained all day. However we did find a cool comic book shop where i managed to find something in english, and then we stumbled upon a protest against the Dublin referrals, which i later read up about here 

‘STOP WARS NOT PEOPLE’

zZzZzzZzzzZ (arrival)

Never thought i’d be living in an Inn occupied solely by artists. It’s called Auberge des Collines, and situated above a Bella Italia restaurant! There are 14-15 rooms in the inn i think… my room handily has a sink and mirror, and a greedy three windows, though i suspect may get slightly irritating because of all the constant light entering through.

^This is the entrance around the back of the building. The house key magically open both the main door and the room door

We were welcomed with an amazing tea last night, made by one of our inn-mates of whom i can’t remember her name… but I know she was from South Africa.. there are also Venezuelans and Egyptians, and saying we’re “British” just sounds rather dull in comparison. There are mountains right outside my window, and a lake (which apparently we can swim in!) we’re going to the shops soon with one of the girls on our floor for groceries, she will shortly be finding out how awful our version of the student diet is