Matilde Søes Rasmussen & Marie Flarup Kristensen
All my life I have practiced crying on command. It was mostly when I sat on the toilet and could see myself in the zigzag mirror from Ikea that hung on the toilet door. I need to be able to see myself to really get into the mood, to feel sorry for myself. Sorry for all the unfair things that have happened to me through life. Sometimes I wave my hands in front of my eyes to get an airflow directly onto the eyeball, it is not cheating if that is what you are thinking. Then I hold my phone up to my face and open the camera in selfie mode. Sometimes I hope there really is someone watching me through the screen. Someone who might discover me and my talent. This is also why I write a diary, in case I should be discovered after my death.
It's a little hard to understand another person's boundaries. We work to blur the boundaries through photography and text, we mimic each other's poses and we continue each other's written words, but we sleep in two different beds. Your mentor told you that to live like this we either would have to be a couple or to be crazy. And I don't think we are either, so where does this leave us?
I forgot to text you how strangely happy I am here. It is vastly different in Berlin than on a Swedish mountain top. Here are the most distinct differences I’ve noticed:
- In Berlin you rarely see the stars and the moon, but something you never see is the fog.
- In Berlin you can’t throw a slug off of a mountain top.
- In Berlin you see many men walking the streets with baby strollers. I ask you, if you think that’s nice? You say that you think it is both nice and gross at the same time (it is a mystery to me how men form an identity).
The words come to me at night
it’s fucking awful
emotions feel different when you sleep next to me
it's really hard to believe in duality but it's just as hard to believe in loneliness
should I just sit here and stare into the air alone
forever?
The Macbook exhales heavily and makes noises in the stillness of the night
I think about the thickness of some paper we need to print on, is it not a little too thick, and I think about whether you have actually started in therapy and have found a way of soothing your panic anxiety
I look at you a lot
waiting for some sign and then I remember that I used to snarl at my mom because she always just looked at me
looked and
looked
and
looked
while I ate a bowl of oatmeal with milk
and once in a while I actually catch something
and I try to figure out how the good moments occur
I'm trying to set up psychological formulas to get closer, isn’t that what we all constantly try, but I haven’t found the bulletproof formula yet
we're just lying here in the dark
with different emotions
as people
My ankle has swollen, turned into a little blue chicken egg. You work from your office chair at the squeaky table. Editing movies. I have noticed one thing: we feel best in the morning and in the evening. During the day, it's like we're floating away in a soup of emails and props we buy on Amazon. And then comes the evening when we lie in bed. There is clarity and the day's irritation has disappeared.
We talk a lot about our bodies and how we hate them in a myriad of various ways. The hate is an accessory we can carry around, every day we are blessed that we get to choose new features to hate. Forever negotiating with our insecurities. A race of weaklings.
We burp quite a lot
I can’t remember if I burp that much when I’m alone
Maybe we just burp a lot together
I feel like Adele is a little too stuck in her past, you say
Today I was scared to become alone. When you leave. I will come to remember things again. But I don't even think I can write about it. You can, if you want to, or else it can stay forever undescribed, which would be okay with me.
It hurts like a motherfucker until it doesn't hurt anymore.
Marie Flarup Kristensen and Matilde Søes Rasmussen work as a duo with writing, photography, video and performance. Their work is the offspring of an artistic collaboration where care, trust, and an interest in mythic female existences are all elements. They like drama and to stick their high heels into the dark mud! They both hold a BFA in Fine Art Photography from HDK-Valand Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden.
