Things that influenced me this weekend, 14 and 15 August
2021/ 1996 (1996 performance project)

1. Free Guy, movie

Free Guy is a Disney movie about Guy, a non-playable character (an extra, an unimportant character) in a video game.
He has come to live and starts thinking for himself because the source of the game is a (stolen) code that allows Artificial Intelligence to develop.

This stolen source code is designed by two young programmers.
In the real world they’re Millie, who becomes a Trinity-like (Trinity from the Matrix movies)-Molotov Girl when she enters the game;
And her male design partner Keys, who now works for customer service within the company that stole their code.
These two are the unacknowledged brains and heart, of the popular game Free City, and they try to retrieve evidence that their work was stolen.

The character Guy, who has been programmed by Keys to look out for and dream of, a girl who behaves just like Millie does, becomes their ally when he “awakens” in the game, and becomes the first non-playable character to start taking part of the game.

Although I do not game, and did not have any references from that area (although I heard the famous gamers of the film, were in fact cameos of actual famous gamers!) Free Guy was a wonderfully warm and entertaining movie.
Even for me ;)

2. My Daily Schedule

Where the past two weeks were spent, already feeling way more grounded, because I had managed to draw up a map of who I am – how the different personas and parts of me go together;
This weekend I managed to draw up a map of the sequence, priorities, of what it is I actually do or “should be” doing, if I want to focus on building my business.
“Should be” has quotation marks because I know myself well enough to know, that for me making something a should is the quickest way to never do it again.
Only when I have full freedom, can anything of value be created.
So these shoulds are based on the natural order I do things, with only minor adaptations.

An example of such a minor adaptation to what comes naturally to me:
To no longer share things when I see them, or send things out when I have them ready, but to batch up all online/interactive tasks to once a day, and to stay offline the rest of the day.

I m not including the schedule/drawing here, because it’s rather complicated and I think it deserves a little more context and explanation before you should invest your time in it.

But I wrote a blogpost, a letter to my creativity coach Sara, that includes the schedule, as well as guide to what it means.
This is the blogpost with the schedule:
Three Stars Are Born 

Next episode of Time Capsules

I started this new blog Time Capsules,  about the things that inspire me, right before the weekend.
So naturally there was both more inspiration as well as more time to write.

This is the first workweek and I don’t know how it will pan out, either on the inspiration front or how much time there is to write.
I have a call with my creativity coach, so that’s something to look out for, and that will very likely make it to the next Time Capsule.

But I expect to be back end of the week at the latest. 

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

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.
You cannot subscribe to this blog, but you can follow Time Capsules on
Facebook
and
Twitter

 

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.
You cannot subscribe to this blog, but you can follow Time Capsules on
Facebook
and
Twitter

 

Things that influenced me today Thursday August 12
2021/ 1996 ( 1996 performance project)

1.  Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules

The most important thing I have come into contact with today, are Andy Warhol’s time capsules.
Around 1 AM, wide awake as always, I Googled for people who time capsuled themselves as art.
So they pretend to live in a different time.

The reason I was looking for that, was because I have been on a project to pretend to be living 25 years ago.
By the fact that I was Googling on my phone when it was supposedly 1996, illustrates I still have not nailed it after two years.

A search that must have been somewhere in the lines of “time capsule art” did not give new hits for people living in a different era – a Victorian Couple and a woman living in 1958 are the most famous ones – but it gave me Warhol’s time capsules, and I had never heard of that.

Over the course of today I toyed with the idea of using that for my art. It seemed like a brilliant way to combine my art, which I make under different names (Lauren Harteveld is my alter-ego)

The idea to create one page a day where I collect everything I make, including a mention of letters I write, and other creativity that is not for the public.
The idea appealed to me to have it all collected – that letters were written, vision board cards were laminated, and other intangible forms of art were expressed.

But precisely because I work under multiple names, and really think they should all be found by whomever is there to find them-
I do not want to cross link them-
that is the reason I decided to go to the more fundamental art.

Not:
What were my artistic expressions, that make this day unique?

But:
What influenced me, that makes this day unique?

What you are reading now, is my very first time capsule, of Thursday 12th August, 2021.

2 Transgender

I went to buy a gift, and I was helped by a transgender, and it really struck a chord with me.
I hope to see more diversity in all jobs. Also contemplated if I myself would get more transgender.
I ve always looked androgynous as a child, and in my 20s as well, when I had short hair.

I started wondering if I would ever go back to that, since that is definitely what came natural to me.

3 Nikki

For a few days, I had been aware that I had made a spelling mistake for my blog that is set in 1996.
Instead of giving my pen-pal the name “Nikki”, inspired by Nikki Sixx, I had misspelled it to “Nicky” 
I had no idea in how many of the 1996 blog posts this had happened, but I didn’t like the inconsistency.
However, I put it off all the time to correct it.

The character of Nikki, is a British bootleg trader with whom Lauren1996 corresponds.
She tells him all her secrets, the two have something beautiful going there.
Even when it is only on paper.

But I knew that blogging about him as Nicky was doing their relationship short.
And today, when I got home late and really thought I had nothing more to give, I made Nicky,  Nikki again.

And then I started this time capsule project and it was way, way too late.
God I really feel so horrible now. And my kitchen is an absolute mess, I just came home, tossed my bag in, and got behind the computer.
Eating whatever could be prepared in under 5 minutes.
(grapefruits with nuts)

My next capsule will be written in the morning, probably Saturday morning 14th.

Nikki’s name turned out to have been misspelled in only one blog post; Last weekend’s.
This is the new updated post:

Undocumented Birthday Sex (NSFW) | 1996 diary

 

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

 

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.
You cannot subscribe to this blog, but you can follow Time Capsules on
Facebook
and
Twitter