Author: Barbara CavengPage 1 of 2

There is only a fine line between the sane and the insane.*

Not far from Schöppingen, just 65 km away, is a boardinghouse called Entenhausen (German for Duckburg). I wanted to know where googlemaps located the residence of Gyro Gearloose…

Behind closes lids

In the fourth month, it is becoming harder to separate reverie and dreams. Hair strands dance behind my closed eyelids. Sweet curls meet in an endless round dance,…

The silence of the hair

Today is marksmen’s festival (German and Swiss tradition; festivity, featuring a target shooting competition). Another one, probably the last of those all weekend festivities, following the four-quarter-time.

Seventeen Days

When seventeen days are counted, a man will wake up in the morning of the eighteenth day and his hair, long or short, grey or blond, curly or smooth, will line his head on the pillow. If ever he lifts his head, they won’t follow the movement.

Hila donates hair

Hila, a Beijing based visual artist, arrived yesterday night after a long trip from China at Künstlerdorf Schöppingen. At our first meeting Hila donates a strand of hair.

Hair in soup

Beatrice has short, dark hair. Small, firm curls frame her face. Not one of them moves, even if the wind makes the giant wings of the steel towers on the Schöppinger Berg vibrate. The pictures of her with shoulder-length hair were taken only recently. She had tamed her full hair into a myriad of small dense pigtails. Braiding her hair, strand by strand, had kept her for hours glued on a chair. Two years ago, the weight of all that hair disappeared with the help of scissors. Since then she feels free.

“In this world nothing ever perishes. Bones become grasses or flowers again or I don’t know what – which makes me wonder what happens to our thoughts? They…