four memories
We asked four Basque artists that lived in New York a memory. In words and images. alex mendizabal
a piano in an empty street
go up to your flat and pick up pincers and a chisel stepping on the right-hand pedal
force the ropes one by one, overturn
tip it over till you snap the shout of harmony
kin__k dun____g ta kan____k
harkaitz cano
coney island
“Tableu vivant” deritzo aktore talde batek egiten duen koadro edo eszena baten errepresentazioari.
New York, ordea, “plateau vivant” bat dela esan daiteke, bere osotasunean. Bertan ikasi nuen nire idazle bizitzako leziorik garrantzitsuenetako bat: denok gara denon pertsonaia. Rem Koolhasen Delirious New York liburu zoragarrian azaltzen da ongien nola Coney Island mundua jolas-parke bihurtuko zuen amets megalomano zoroa izan zen. Ametsa ez zen gauzatu eta jolastoki burlesko bilakaturik amaitu zuen. Hot dog merkeen eta dantzari exhibizionisten meka samur. Igande arratsalde bat Coney Islanden, udan. Pertsonaiez inguratuta eta pertsonaia bihurtuta zerorri. Jim Jarmusch edo Spike Lee nahiago duzu zuzendari? Denak daude zure baitan. Derrigorrezkoa: besapean Lawrence Ferlinghettiren A Coney Island of the Mind poemarioaren ale bat ekartzea (Yankee-en txapela eta eguzkitako betaurrekoak, aukeran).
kirmen uribe
treasures in hiding
I first went to New York in March of 2003, at just about the same time the ultimatum President Bush had given the Iraqis was about to expire. I went with a few musician friends, at the invitation of the writer Elizabeth Macklin, to do some readings in several Manhattan venues. At one of them, a place called the Bowery Poetry Club, a New York writer named Phillis Levin told me the loveliest definition I’d ever heard on the subject of language.
She had found Basque fascinating, she told me. She’d heard of our language before now too, had come across texts written in Basque. On the Internet and elsewhere. More than once she’d tried to guess at what those words might mean. Hadn’t even come close. But something had caught her attention: all the many x’s that appeared in the texts. “Your language looks like a treasure map,” she said, “if you just forget about all the rest of the letters and focus in on the x, it looks as if you could find out where the treasure is”.
I thought it was the most glorious thing you could say about a language you didn’t know, that it’s the map to a treasure.
maider lopez
windows, 2004.
I look through windows. The New York landscape superimposes itself on the reflection of my living room. Looked at from a certain angle, the mural opposite blends in with the landscape and points to the city’s lit up windows.
Exterior and interior landscapes become one.
a piano in an empty street
go up to your flat and pick up pincers and a chisel stepping on the right-hand pedal
force the ropes one by one, overturn
tip it over till you snap the shout of harmony
kin__k dun____g ta kan____k
harkaitz cano
coney island
“Tableu vivant” deritzo aktore talde batek egiten duen koadro edo eszena baten errepresentazioari.
New York, ordea, “plateau vivant” bat dela esan daiteke, bere osotasunean. Bertan ikasi nuen nire idazle bizitzako leziorik garrantzitsuenetako bat: denok gara denon pertsonaia. Rem Koolhasen Delirious New York liburu zoragarrian azaltzen da ongien nola Coney Island mundua jolas-parke bihurtuko zuen amets megalomano zoroa izan zen. Ametsa ez zen gauzatu eta jolastoki burlesko bilakaturik amaitu zuen. Hot dog merkeen eta dantzari exhibizionisten meka samur. Igande arratsalde bat Coney Islanden, udan. Pertsonaiez inguratuta eta pertsonaia bihurtuta zerorri. Jim Jarmusch edo Spike Lee nahiago duzu zuzendari? Denak daude zure baitan. Derrigorrezkoa: besapean Lawrence Ferlinghettiren A Coney Island of the Mind poemarioaren ale bat ekartzea (Yankee-en txapela eta eguzkitako betaurrekoak, aukeran).
kirmen uribe
treasures in hiding
I first went to New York in March of 2003, at just about the same time the ultimatum President Bush had given the Iraqis was about to expire. I went with a few musician friends, at the invitation of the writer Elizabeth Macklin, to do some readings in several Manhattan venues. At one of them, a place called the Bowery Poetry Club, a New York writer named Phillis Levin told me the loveliest definition I’d ever heard on the subject of language.
She had found Basque fascinating, she told me. She’d heard of our language before now too, had come across texts written in Basque. On the Internet and elsewhere. More than once she’d tried to guess at what those words might mean. Hadn’t even come close. But something had caught her attention: all the many x’s that appeared in the texts. “Your language looks like a treasure map,” she said, “if you just forget about all the rest of the letters and focus in on the x, it looks as if you could find out where the treasure is”.
I thought it was the most glorious thing you could say about a language you didn’t know, that it’s the map to a treasure.
maider lopez
windows, 2004.
I look through windows. The New York landscape superimposes itself on the reflection of my living room. Looked at from a certain angle, the mural opposite blends in with the landscape and points to the city’s lit up windows.
Exterior and interior landscapes become one.
