#oreste3

– Oreste, Oreste, is this a kind of workshop?

Hmmm… Italy. If it is a workshop with excursions I’d like to come. What projects? About kitchen? I’ve been writing diploma about kitchen. Second project connected with people? I can talk, I speak Italian a little. OK, I check it at Internet. It’s no need to do art? Only take a part in one of the projects. I see…

– Lukasz, Do you know what is this Oreste?

– No, I don’t. But you should go. I hope it will be nice, you will meet some new people. And don’t forget to take their addresses to visit them later. Hmm, I think Oreste participated at the Venice Biennale.

– I was at Biennale, but I don’t remember any Oreste.

– It was an empty space with tables and papers.

– I have to check it in the catalogue…Yes, There is! „Who is Oreste? Nobody is Oreste. Oreste is not a group…”

– Super.

– Listen, Lukasz, They don’t want us to do art.

– Well, you would take pictures.

– But, there will come only artists.

– Yes, this is probably a kind of art holidays.

– No, I think I should go as a journalist, as Raster magazine. And I will write an article about this Oreste, if I will manage to understand what it is.

– Great.

– Mammy, It is not a sect. They were at the Venice Biennale. At Biennale do not show charlatans. Besides I go with Dorota.

– Come tomorrow to take some money. You should have some money, just in case…

– But where in Basilicata?

– Montescaglioso, near Matera, Auntie.

– I wanted to visit it during my stay  in Italy. This is a wild province. “Christ stopped in Eboli”.

– What?

– Don’t you know this book or film based on it?

– Lukasz, I go to a wild country. Even Christ did not reach there.

– Italian country cannot be worst then Polish one, rather better.

Montescaglioso, before Moslem dinner, 29.08

– This is a piece of cardboard for you. And here there are markers and sprays.

– What to paint?

– Something abstractive to make an impression of the Moslem carpet.

– Abstractive… Hmm… I should paint some Moslem patterns. In Warsaw we have an Arabian carpets collection and I saw it two times, but I don’t remember any pattern. What to do? I’m starting from the border with some geometric plants. Then I’ll put a rectangular lake in the middle. Water and plants are always meaningful.

– This is not abstractive.

– Well, Yes. I can do something new.

– Oh, no, no... OK, I like it.

– Look at him. He is all dressed white.

– I’m afraid that his trousers will be dirty if he sits at this sprayed cardboard.

– That’s why I put dark trousers on.

– Look, he is putting a towel under his seat.

– So, why did he ask us to paint all these cardboard carpets?

– I was said that we would eat by hands without spoons, really like Moslems.

– Good idea, but everybody uses the spoon.

– I think eating like Moslems means that men and women eat separately, we after men.

– Do you want to wait for your turn, when men have eaten the best food?

– No, but eating with spoons is lack of radicalism.

– Natasha eats without using spoon. It doesn’t look like a dinner, it looks like a cabaret.

Montescaglioso, at Italian family, 1.09

– Buongiorno Signora.

– Buongiorno, I am fat and that is why I am tired. Where are you from?

– From England and Poland.

– I saw a queen on television and from Poland … the pope is from Poland.

Matera, cafe, 8.09  

– When I came here I couldn’t understand what is going on. Do they want me to do any work?  I’d rather do something together with others.

– I have felt lost for the first few days and I have been nervous. Then I’ve picked up the rhythm of common breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

– Now I feel very well.

– If we call Oreste all the excursions, discussions, knowing people, swimming, dancing and everything we do here, Oreste means Oreste.

– Yes, we are Oreste now.

15 things which astonished me during Oreste:

– some mutual friends beyond Oreste with people whom I met at Oreste;

– an office closed for 3 days because of lack of a computer;

– a siesta which can cause a disaster (you cannot copy anything for the public presentation);

– a total lack of water in a city for some days;

– a cook who doesn’t want any help in preparation of your dinner;

– a kind of mozzarella cheese stretching like a chewing gum;

– too late dinner time, against any reasonable diet;

– the wild Sassi people fighting with the civilised Oreste people to catch some food during an integrating dinner;

– the difficulties in keeping silent during the Benedictine dinner;

– a popular form of selling own fruits in front of a house;  

– a shop-assistant who doesn’t know the prices of the products she sells;

– an existence of Fiat 126p, the car from the 70s, standing at Italian street, just like in Poland;

– the people taking the same pictures;

– the enormous sea waves in Metaponto;

– a bucket of watermelons prepared by Finnish to the beach.