Thoughts for food. That must be one of the best titles for an artwork in the world. Thoughts for Alex Turgeon. He’s been known to call himself “CEO of Me” on gchat, a joke that encompasses our contemporary condition in 3 words. The guy is going places. General Fine Arts. Lately his beard has expanded and he’s been doing these amazing poetry readings (no correlation). I saw him do one performance involving a metronome and when it was over I shouted “again!” by accident. Sonic puns, visual puns, linguistic puns, personality puns. He has this one cropped sweatshirt that never fails to impress, and in the summer he wears white shorts that look even better when dirty. One work he made called Best Friends (Diptych) was a necklace for the gallery ceiling, a half heart dangling from a thin chain down between gravity’s clavicles, nearly grazing the floor. I like to think he wears the other half of the heart underneath his cropped sweatshirt while working at the studio. I don’t remember which day we met; it’s like we just bumped our bikes into each other on Kottbusser Damm. Actually, if I’m being honest, It’s like I purposefully bumped my front tire into his rear end at the stoplight. It’s what we call a “friend crush.” I think he and I speak exactly the same level of German: we get the sound but not the rules. Once we spoke German on the phone together. It was the only time I’ve ever felt fluent.
I was first enamoured by Elvia’s “My Girl” charm when we met amongst the nicotine vignettes at the basement of Times, or was it within the mix of the social cocktail of the Schinkel? Perhaps most likely over a communal wine bottle adjacent to the Spree, I think we both feel most at home there. Whichever the truth, no matter as our friendship began seamlessly as though it was willed into existence. Elvia offers an effervescence that, whether it be a familiar face amongst the crowd or her diplomacy during a Knödel crisis, never ceases to amaze me. I am always in awe of her productivity, bouncing through one professional field to the next, all the while with the ability to squeeze in creativity and to start back at it again when Monday rolls around. We both hate Mondays and we both have a knack for anxiety during the best of times. From organizing panel discussions, composing digital literature and criticizing architecture to rom-coms and chicken wings, Elvia is still able to make the distinction between pussy drama and pussy logic while swapping dick picks over a pinot grigio. There was this one time when Elvia hosted an impromptu pre-game birthday celebration for me in her white cube apartment (seriously a cube), and in the height and heat of our boogie woogies, at the strike of midnight, a bottle of champagne on the table popped all on its own, ushering in a new year for me as me, and as a sign for one of many more with Elvia. This summer Elvia will be participating in a two-month residency on a secluded island where there is no internet, she will be greatly missed, R.I.P.
Photo by Clemens Jahn