Habits

Reception

Munich, Germany, Holzstr. 7, 8.00 PM.

Light is flooding through the row of windows on the ground floor. The paved courtyard is bathed in the warm glow of amoeboid lights.

Two friends welcome the invited guests: the painter, Charlotte Eschenlohr, and sleep artist, Florence Kan-Ti-Shan.

A number of guests have already arrived and are gathering in small groups.
Champaign is served. There is party music.

The room

A white room: The walls are covered with paintings. It’s an exhibition by Charlotte Eschenlohr: Painting on Print. Large-scale, colored printouts of clearly structured collages serve as canvasses. They consist of ca. four rectangular image fields, showing photographic illustrations of people or urban landscapes. Using these motives as a basis, the artist paints over the collages with light brushstrokes. In places she follows the outlines of the printed copy, in others she places colored or linear accents, or adds more detail to a particular motive, whereby some sections of the pictures are leaning towards the abstract. Color as material and to establish a certain mood blends into a dialogue with the underlying print. Between representational details and abstract smudges of color you can recognize female figures, Asian women – and, as Florence stresses later: friends.

Pushed together at the centre of the room are 35 square seating pads in pastel shades, occupied by the guests as a communal seating area. From here, the view takes you back to the paintings.

Florence, the sleep artist, calls the seating area “bed”, as a place to sleep, dream and getting in touch with the subconscious.

Bright green lights trail across the ceiling: quiet, steady, with their own life. At times they pause, then pan along the ceiling joists, down and up the back wall, twinkling as bright as day, like reflections of the sun through leaves, over the frames of the dark windows to the nocturnal garden. Here, two large amoeboid-like lanterns light up the dark, randomly going off, only to instantly light up again – with their own slow rhythm of light, which generates the illusion of autarchic essentiality.

Parallel to the bed, and separating the room from the entrance hall, is a projection screen, which shows two identical black and white photographs of a Chinese living room. As Florence explains, this is a homage to the beginning of Charlotte’s relationship with China, and respectively an incantation of remembrance, which is already slightly obscure: the projection alludes to Charlotte’s childhood and her great affinity to her widely traveled grandmother, who told the child about the Far East.
This is how China became a longed for place for Charlotte, and already as a young girl she started to create a chinoiserie around herself.

The projection consequently rekindles the memory of Charlotte’s childhood. At the same time, due to its colored incompleteness, the projection of a richly detailed, highly cultivated room in black and white, requires the imagination of the observer, who is trying per se to recognize past events and to bring them into line with their inner wealth of pictures and experiences.

It is similar with a DIN-A4 sheet, which hangs on a pillar. Like an optical analysis, it shows white shapes against a black background, whereby the outlines are easily identifiable as a dog, or person, etc. That is, well-known objects, where the inner detail is added by the observer’s imagination while looking at the piece of work.

While Charlotte’s pictures, which are the centre of attention, recount stories and are filled with objects and people, the room is otherwise full of empty or transparent objects, which appear to be at the start of a development: Florence calls it “bland”, meaning calmness and lightness as an ideal basis for change and development: the empty, pastel colored bed – ‘baby colors’ / the translucent amoeba as a creature in its initial state of existence / the empty black and white shapes on the piece of paper urging completion / the black and white projection demanding imaginative coloring, which at the same time is a childhood memory / and the green light, which is eminiscent of a garden and plant-like growth. Everything implies the possibility of development, or demands intellectual completion. Especially the bed and the black and white pictures encourage the visitor to change the object through immediate appropriation.

The well thought-out production by the sleep artist is therefore unobtrusive, the intention remains unnoticed. It does, however, generate an agreeable atmosphere and ‘activates’ the guests. And it reflects the pictures of Charlotte Eschenlohr.

Overture: About the bed and friendship

In their address, the artists introduce themselves as friends: the evening’s event is presented as a joint project.
Florence explains the meaning of the bed to the guests:
It represented a pictogram: a unit of 35 stools, a meeting place which brings together 35 individual positions.

She doesn’t say that she calls the pictogram “bed” also with reference to her sleep art.
However, in her address she reveals that the two friends had decided to do ‘NOTHING’ in the course of their plan to carry out a joint project, since “it increased the suspense”.

However, she does not reveal that the concept of sleep art also means to create an
atmosphere unnoticed, namely “out of nothing” as it were, which opens us up to each
other, and which creates pathways into our heart of hearts with our eyes closed. Sleep art is
the art form developed by Florence, with which she tries to generate positive energy
unnoticed and to give impetus, “injections”, and respectively promote communication. At
her events, Florence takes specific concepts as her theme, which she supports
atmospherically.

The subject of tonight is the friendship between Florence and Charlotte: Charlotte, the painter, generously invites Florence, the sleep artist, to stage the evening in her studio. On her part, Florence uses the evening to pay homage to Charlotte.
Charlotte’s pictures take centre stage. For Charlotte’s friend, Florence, the paintings represent “dramatic, associative pictures”, which express feelings non-verbally in an “Asiatic way”, in a “light, joyful and childlike” manner typical in Chinese art.
Florence had discovered “a lot of Chinese strength” in Charlotte and her pictures with their vibes and play with color. Charlotte’s collages had given Florence “profound access to her own culture”.
For instance, Florence, who herself comes from Vietnam, had discovered her own childhood in Charlotte’s pictures. And just as Charlotte, Florence notices her own art and her life, her “habits” are also shaped (unconsciously) by a longing for Asia that developed already in childhood. That’s the joint central theme for the two women, and it forms the basis for their mutual affection, their “friendship as a holy alliance”.
According to Florence, both had recognized each other. On an artistic basis, their relationship is at the same time fruitful and stimulates the artists equally: it’s a matter of give and take.

This special artistic friendship is to find expression in a joint undertaking with “Habits” this evening, summarized as a message to their guests. Charlotte makes this evening possible. Florence reacts by staging Charlotte and her pictures. At the same time, this production – her sleep art – as her own artistic performance remains in the background and is rather “noticeable”. She picks up on the very strong emotional bond between the two friends: their longing for Asian culture, by which Florence places her art in relation to Charlotte’s pictures. Born in Vietnam, Florence had the Asian culture taken away from her as a child. Charlotte had come to know and love it as a child from afar through her grandmother’s stories. That’s why Asian culture represents a place of longing for both artists, a place of (inner) refuge, from which they draw their creativity. For Florence, this spirit is evident in Charlotte’s paintings.
And, according to Florence, this shared passion was the reason they became accomplices. This is what Florence wants to show this evening. The projection of the Asian living room as well as the Asian food served later on stand specifically for this. But, in terms of contents, the motives of the start and the origin of the friendship also reflect the mutual inspiration of the two artists: a relationship, which facilitates development on both sides.

Translucent amoebas drift through the living room projection later on and place themselves on the Asian seating. The young sits down on old seats. Friendship that thrives on mutual inspiration and is willing to embrace the new (amoeba) is based on an affinity to Asian culture (living room chairs) developed by both already during shildhood.
At the same time, the amoeba symbolizes the Asian idea of people as a vessel, which is open to whatever may happen.
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Beyond the individual friendship between the two artists, the evening also deals with friendship in general, mutual inspiration, patience and trust as a prerequisite for
friendship (“I know my friend will turn up punctually at 3.05PM. – Even if it’s three years later than expected”.)
The pictogram of the 35 assembled stools is also directed toward the nature of interpersonal relationships. Friendship too could be described as a unit of individuals.

As a deliberate joint activity, or a ritual of a joint act, the guests are then encouraged to disperse the bed, the meeting place, the place of friendship and exchange into 35 individual positions, in order to reassemble them into new small groups. The bed as a symbol for sleep, for a state of dreaming, where taboos are not kept secret, where everything in the depth of a person is allowed to be revealed; this is the “stuff” the guests use to create their seat (or their base), to form small discussion groups. With that, the group moves from the overture onto the first act of the banquet.

Act 1: The appetizers

Spring rolls and other small delicacies are served, whereby the complex interaction of different ingredients comes together in a tempting, tasty unit – one can taste individual aspects. It’s a similar situation with the small discussion groups, each on their own representing a unit of different participants.

The common experience of the evening, pictures, the production, speech and food provides immediate topics of conversation, which, in terms of contents, lead to the subject of “friendship”.

Act 2: Chinese fondue

(Finally), the tables for the second course announced in advanced are brought in.
Florence had asked for patience, which deliberately corresponds to the crawling lights and the slow amoebas in order to achieve a slowing down and to point out the need for patience and trust – the essence of friendship. Waiting, as “empty” time can also be filled freely, in contrast to effectively well planned periods: again the motive of emptiness.

The tables are specifically carried in and therefore staged as the highlight of the evening: Three tables are being set up as a place of community, place of discussion and gathering. They are shaped like amoeboid and symbolically continue the subject of the start of a development (of friendships?). The curved shape also provides a practical parallel with its symbolic gist: it promotes cross-table communication.

The anticipated Chinese fondue consists of a clear broth. To go with it, a wide range of bite-sized food is served, which is to be cooked in the Chinese fondue with the aid of skewers. Just like the soiree, the food is eclectic. It is then prepared jointly – to make a soup in the same pot.

However, the cooked morsels are removed again from the broth. Small pots, filled with a variety of dips, encourage individual preparation.
Now and then, guests come across something “bland” in the large selection of morsels, such as wholesome Tofu, as a culinary stimulus on the variability of blandness or its intrinsic potential for development. As a result, everybody – as a guest as well as a cook – makes a (verbal or edible) contribution, prepared jointly (at the table or in the pot), to finally be adapted (intellectually emotionally / or with the aid of dips), to be digested (intellectually / or biologically). Everybody creates their own end product from the jointly cooked food – everybody draws their own conclusions from the joint discussion. And, like the bed of pastel colored stools, we are one unit of 32 individuals.

All this is at the beginning of something that may yet happen. What that may be remains open for now. Florence takes the potential for change as her theme. She does not propose any theories with which to confront the guests, but, in her words, brings about a situation in a “pragmatic Asian way (namely true-to-life)”, to make the opportunity for change apparent. Her analyses involve the senses, her art is a calculated “hypothetical lob” into the future.
In the end, this evening, dedicated to friendship and the start of something new, is itself at the beginning of a series of other evenings as a starting point of a development.