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forms on a 2d plane

2025-05-22

4 minute read

It's been 20 days since my last entry. I've been busy! I've been to a few sunsets, I've had a few portuguese lessons, and I went to Denmark.

sunset by myself

I went to Fontainhas on the 4th to see the sunset and to do some crochet. I couldn't actually see the sunset from where I was, as it was around the bend of the river, but I could see the sunlight on the clouds and a rainbow piercing through them. I sat and did some crochet, and went on my phone a bit too. I wasn't the only one there by myself, it's nice to not feel too weird, and I'm used to doing crochet in public now so I don't feel so self-concious.

portuguese lessons

I've started taking portuguese lessons with a friend. She's not a trained teacher, so it means I have to bring a bit of my own structure to it, but that's something I had concluded already. In my last batch of lessons a great deal of it was just the teacher reading out of an exercise book. I can do that myself! I need the things I can't do - culture, context, contemporary life. My friend has all that. She speaks with a pretty thick portuguese accent too, which is great. I am, after all, here to learn portuguese, and as long as I am in portugal I intend to speak it in the portuguese dialect. The first lesson we went over a few memes, and looked at some some of her most disliked contemporary portuguese artists.

Denmark

I finally returned to Denmark, after 7 years. I had an amazing time - missioned through 4 galleries. Louisiana and SMK were the biggest, and the most tiring. SMK was enormous, and as much as I enjoyed it really knocked me out for the next day. I arrived at 12 and left around 6. Of course there was a good 2 to 3 hours of rest in between, but 3 hours in a gallery is still a long time. The other two I visited were Kunsthal Charlottenberg and Den Frie Udstilling.

I caught up with N a lot (I stayed at her place) and I got to see F too. It's rewarding and strange having friends for so long, so far away.

I treated the trip as a mini residency too, which I will write about in detail separately. I worked on a photo publishing pipeline to replace instagram. I got it in a working state, but rough still. It is one of those things that needs to be used to be refined. It made me think a lot about what I'm really trying to do when I publish something online, and helped me practice using the small methodology.

I realised that sometimes I don't need to automate the creation of files, that simply making the writing process easier was enough. The more flexibility I wanted with templating, the more I realised that HTML is simple enough to write on it's own and gives a pretty wide degree of flexibility if it is required. I ended up writing simple scripts to output and connect smaller fragments of html. With use I can see it crystalising into a more defined process, but for now I'm happy using it as is.

The next step is to actually host it somewhere, which I'll do this week.

I'm excited by the idea of writing thin interfaces that spit out simple html fragments - it feels like a happy medium between full templating frameworks and manually writing html.

what else

I still feel no drive to look for work. Will try to push myself to look anyway, as it always takes longer than expected. Everything does.

I read some breathtaking essays by James Baldwin about france and european culture. Very topical for my life right now.

I've planned a design to implement in filet crochet this weekend.

I'm going to Lisboa this weekend to see a Kali Malone performance and to visit a zine fest. Apart from that, I'll do what I usually do. Drink beer in the sun, find a quiet place to work on a project. I am continually moving forwards.

I'm going to try out candles tonight as a form of low-light room lighting, as I can't bring myself yet to buy a lamp.

I got a bunch of books from the library, it's exciting as always. 3 art books, 1 recipe book, and 2 grammar books. 5 in portuguese, 1 in spanish. I had a chat with a graphic designer recently and shared my anxiety about not being able to create "cool, trendy" designs from my head (except I said "out my ass"), and that I could only copy. She responded that no one can, that it's all copying, and the skill is in finding the most and the best things to copy. Much to think about, and in action - I got art books from the library and I looked at a lot of art in copenhagen. What else is webdesign than arranging forms on a 2d plane. Concepts on a plane of immanence.

listening to

One Off Lyon with Nina Dalva - a LYL Radio set

questions