Things that influenced me yesterday Friday August 13
2021/ 1996 (1996 performance project)

My most important inspiration today came from being with my mother.
After creating the map of who I am, which I drew for my creativity coach*, and rekindling or maybe finally falling properly in love with the life and work of Andy Warhol,
our bond has become even stronger.
Over the past few days, I frequently sent her emails with Aha moments.

My mother and father both took care of my cultural education, but I m positive she was the one who was responsible for the parental gift of Andy Warhol’s Diaries and a book box with two books about cats.

I found the diaries on our local site, where I looked them up out of curiosity and regret because I do not have them anymore.
Art books were definitely the bulkiest of all, and it was a category I cleared somewhere between 2005-2010, with the exception of a Keith Haring biography.

I went on our local ebay to see if the Warhol Diaries were on it, and saw my edition had unmistakably been a first edition.

The book with the two cats, were partially drawn by “Andy Warhol’s Mother”.
Not only did I remember that, from when I had them, but I had also seen this in a documentary I had watched about Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol was artistically encouraged by his mother, and she even moved in with him when he was already a successful artist in New York.
Many say this was a good thing, because she was definitely more skilled at taking care of him than he was, and the two loved spending time together.
When she lived with him, she would work for him occasionally, and that’s how she ended up drawing the cats for him.
In the photo with this blogpost you can see her name on the cover as “Andy Warhol’s Mother”.

My mother told me about her resolution to make a collage of the time we’re living in, and her first ideas about what it was she wanted to capture.
She referred to her collage of 25 years ago, and I asked if I could see that.

And although I m sure she had shown it to me, somewhere in the past two years as well, it was as if I saw it with fresh eyes.
And I couldn’t believe what had happened!

Because I ve been on a diary writing project, where I describe my life as if it’s taking place 25 years ago*.
In the first line of this post you can see a link to this project where it is now 1996.

So I live in 2021, but for my art or performance, mindset, I try to live in 1996 as often as I think about it.
Which is, I admit, not that often.
And yet this project which started in 2019 (1994) still intrigues me, I write in the diary two times a month on average, and it is currently my longest running project.

Having my mother make a visual time frame exactly of those years, was stunning.
You can see photos I took from my mother’s 1995 1996 project in this Tweet or this Facebook post.

My mother also shared some memories of my father.

In the 50s maybe even 60s, boys wore short pants because the knees of longer pants would tear, need constant mending, would be too costly for the large families.
The moment when, as a boy, you received your first pair of long pants, were almost an initiation ritual.
The sign you were no longer a child.

Which probably explained why my father never wore short pants, afterwards. Regardless of how hard my mother tried to persuade him.
But in what would unexpectedly be his last summer, he tried one of the pants she had made for him, from a set of long pants which she had cut off.
Presumably because the knees were torn, I guess!

But my father tried them on, after having refused for years and years, and he absolutely loved them. He wouldn’t part with them for the rest of summer.

And my mother also told me how she was involved in the division of the heritage, from his family. Which they handled with an in-family auction.
My mother was the auction master, but she also bought some things for herself that no one wanted.
One was a zinc seed tray.

My mother’s interests are very similar to mine, a combination of diary writing or personal history, local history, and international art.
Her picks on the family auction of my father’s family were different to what the direct family wanted.
So she bought different things.

She even started writing a script for a series for Dutch television, in collaboration with my uncle who did not buy anything on the auction itself, but who was the one who researched our genealogy and who has written about our family history.

The title of this series would have been “Allemoal Inne”, which means “One for each”, and it referred to the hayforks, which had to be divided too.
But because haymaking had been an activity that had always involved multiple people, there had been ample hayforks.
So they did not have to be auctioned, there was one for each.

“Allemoal inne.”

~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

* mentioned in this time capsule
1. the map of who I am, is written out and the drawing inserted at the end, of this blogpost to my coach Sara
2. my performance project where I live as if it happens 25 years ago, can be found in the tabs/menu of my main website laurenharteveld.com

ABOUT TIME CAPSULES 

My time capsules are a written out collection of things that I have come into contact with, and that will influence my art.

The project is Inspired by Warhol, who created one time capsule (box) a month, collecting physical objects.

Time Capsules is a stand-alone project.
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