Sandra Sterle: Round around

On The Island

1. I asked a very old peasant woman from the island of Mljet to borrow me her clothes. I put them on and started to perform in front of the camera.

2. I look very healthy. My cheeks are red…but thatís a make up.

3. It feels like a strange, ironic game, except this could really be me…

4. …in the picture from the tourist guide: the wild nature and the local people.

5. From some another perspective this is an exotic place…

(Mljet, 1996.)

Walking Down The Road

I enter the nuclear power station. The air is warm and dry. They probably see me on the monitor, because I can see the camera recording me. Sometimes cars are passing by. Everyone is driving slowly. I notice this nuclear power station was built in 1965. The year I was born.

I take pictures of myself. I am happy I have found this reflecting blue ball. The dress I am wearing is created by Asmira Salkanovic, a fashion designer from Bosnia. You can see the reflection of the tent where I slept and a painting of a red sun I hung on the garden wall.

Walking on the roads through rural English landscape, I follow the white line in the middle. Coming from the continent you become confused with cars coming from the “wrong side”. Do you think about road accidents?

I am absolutely powerless and vulnerable. I discovered that the local farmers like me. They think I need protection.

(Somerset, England 1997.)

My Mother Told Me

My mother always told me I would abandon things and hurry to sit in front of the TV when “Stark Trek” was on. I was then four or five. I remember I felt pins and needles watching Mr. Spock on the screen. His sharp ears made me think that my body or that of my mum and dad could also change some day. Although other characters didnít have remarkable body deformities, they were also “different”. Their hair was kept so under control… There was no spontaneity or unruliness. They were superior….thatís how I felt. They didnít have trouble falling asleep or waking up. They were hardly ever angry and never irrational. The fact is that television was still new and I was also aware of this. Somewhere around that time the first man walked on the moon and everybody was talking about it.

I thought that my grandfather was let into a secret about outer space. Not only that he knew about space flights but he also knew the names of the stars and their distance from Earth. He had a lot of books about the stars and planets and the only other books I remember were the little red ones. No wonder I saw an unidentified flying object over my head one afternoon in the garden….and it was red.

In the moments of silence and serenity he would always start to talk about the stars. It happened often when it got dark and I would immediately feel hypnotized by the deep tone of his voice. I would be so excited…I almost didnít dare to breathe preparing myself to receive the great truth about the universe. “Do you know the Earth is in fact a ball?”, he would ask…

I wanted to be an astronaut at that time. It seemed the only reasonable thing to do…I had a small toy made of rubber, an astronaut or it also could have been a diver because he had oxygen bottles on his back. I donít remember playing any particular game with him except taking him in my hands and leaving him somewhere inside or outside the house again. After a few days I would find him and I would think: Look! He is here! He has been somewhere else, where I wasnít. He had his own life…

 

Sandra Sterle

 

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Sandra Sterle
Born in 1965.She lives and works in Amsterdam.