Gabi Scardi
Ciao Helga
thanks for your message
dear Stefan,
it’s a pleasure to e-meet you.
sorry for my delay.
I was sure I had sent you my proposal, but now I see I drafted it and did not send.
this is the task I would like to give you: spend the day with one or more than one animal, if unusual
for you. If this is something you are used to, please search and observe some kind of animals that
you are not familiar with. You can freely decide how to structure these activities during the day. but
please keep some traces of your day.
Please let me know if you agree.
I hope to meet you in person
my very best
gabi
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Dear Gabi,
there were so many animals that came to my mind – following a bird around through the city for one day seeing where it leads me until I loose its track, hanging out at the dog park and accompanying one person home or befriending the pigeon that lives here in the backyard. Helga even offered me to hang out with one of her turtles that she has at home.
Some corners of the city reminded me of Athens, where I lived in 2015 and there were many stray cats everywhere. So I also thought it could be nice to make a short video looking for street cats in Milano. A bit of a joke since I think there are not really any stray cats here, so you just have wonderful shots of empty streets with no cats.
Well in the end I found this fly sitting on the window of the adjacent gallery space in via Aleardi. I checked on the internet and it was a common Mayfly (Ephemeroptera; from the greek word
ephem eros : one day) – which in German has this beautiful and very concrete name “Tagesfliege”, which literally translates to “day fly” describing its average life span.
I found it astonishing to pick one random day of my life to spent time with an animal whilst this day enfolds its entire life, from birth to death. Time to me suddenly felt like a very abstract thing that we try to measure and put into categories since we are having troubles to grasp all this time that was before us and will come after us.
In the evening I had to run some errants and left the door of the gallery open to get some fresh air in. On my way back I was thinking of what to do with the fly when it passes away – if I should just put it out on the street, keep it in an empty matchbox or organise a proper funeral with candles and inscent sticks. When I arrived in the gallery the fly was gone and I was happy that it went its way, leaving no traces, staying in this ephemeral state just as it had begun.
All my best
Stefan