00:00 - 04:40 - Creating from the Core & Redefining Risk:

• Following conventional paths often leads to predictable results or feelings of being lost and unhappy.

• Creating your own path is a personal journey with discoveries at every step because it stems from your authentic choices.

• There is no rigid start or end to this journey; it is a continuous evolution punctuated by intentional pauses and segments.

04:40 - 08:23 - The Intersection of Hauntology & Technology:

• Hauntology is central to creating your own path because you hold a proactive role, selecting elements that resonate with your personal history/histories.

• New technology can blend naturally with old archives, offering vast potential when combined thoughtfully with existing tools to create living, hybrid archives.

08:23 - 20:15 - Hybrid Approaches & Gallery Representation:

• Relying solely on traditional gallery representation can impose unnecessary constraints and limitations.

• A hybrid approach that prioritises self-expression, play, and internal drive first - while treating external structures as secondary support - creates a more sustainable and resilient art practice.

20:15 - 24:12 - Expanding Mediums & Self-Publishing:

• Self-publishing artist books and participating in art book fairs offer a democratic, inclusive community that directly connects creators with their readers and audience.

• Books serve as art objects/sculptures that bridge form and content, acting as viable alternatives or complements to traditional gallery routes.

🛸　　　 　🌎　°　　🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀 ✯

　　　★　*　　　　　°　　　　🛰 　°·　　         🪐

.　　　•　° ★　•  ☄

▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▇▆▅▄▃▁

These three paintings for me are the perfect illustration of the ideas from the podcast above and of following your own way. They are part of our From a Seed to a Star exhibition at Vienna Art Book Fair 2025.

‘Your Own Way’ Personal Sessions

We have a small handful of spots for ‘Your Own Way’ personal sessions for August and September ~ held online via Zoom ~ focused on creative discovery and opening up as a human, using the exact tools that Christos and I rely on in our own art practice.

Previous sessions include:

• Working on overcoming fear and overthinking in an art practice

• Changing direction, navigating a transitional period in art making

• Finishing an artists’ book for project

• Establishing a resilient rhythm in making, adjusted to current life circumstances

• Building an audience for your art practice

• Collaboration: with clarity, co-creation, and a sense play

Working in an honest dialogue, we create a supportive space for you to reconnect: with yourself, your creative voice, and whatever feels blocked or ready to unfold in your work.

These sessions are shaped by our lives as full-time studio artists, our background in arts education, and our belief that art has the power to help us discover our true selves and to build meaningful relationships.

We are so looking forward to working with you. There are still a few spots available for August and September, please DM us to book or if you have any questions!

Werckmeister Harmonies 𓇢𓆸

Christos and I rarely write about cinema here. But this Monday, while everyone in Greece and beyond was watching The Odyssey, we went to one of the oldest open air cinemas in Athens, Riviera in Exarcheia – thanks to an invitation by Thodoris Saitis, a great artist and a friend – to watch a black & white film from a Hungarian director made in 2000. Only Greek subtitles on top of that, so twice hauntological for me (very grateful to Christos for brief explanatory notes during the movie).

Talking about time (or rather, the no-time dimension), the film is set in a very vague time-space. It is simualtaniously a very precise spatial context: a small desolate Hungarian town, and a very unclear historical period. Béla Tarr works with the ghosts from the past very well in this movie. A true example of a hauntological lens.

And then, there was the whale, the underbelly of dark things happening, the catalyst or the signifier of human subconscious. The whale arrived and made things moving. Rapidly.

A giant whale has arrived. This mysterious creature from the sea has come from the far-off oceans. … Just see what a gigantic animal the Lord can create! How mysterious is the Lord that he amuses Himself with such strange creatures.

The film made me think of another whale that got things moving. It was a creature from a story that happened to Christos and me in 2021 in St Andrews, a coastal university town in Scotland. The story was memorable, and I wrote it down in two parts, Christos made photographs and a drawing.

Here and here, you can listen to our writing from 2021 and see a drawing of a dead whale. I also pasted the whole story text and the visuals below in this newsletter.

A whale that contains things or fails to contain… Why are we as humans so attracted to these creatures?

A four year-old boy, a son of a friend, was telling me just two weeks ago how much he loves whales. He knew so many facts about them.

The boy asked me, whether I have ever seen a real one. I rushed to say yes, but then realised that it only was a dead one, and that he wouldn’t like it.

༘ ⋆｡˚

Here is The Whale Journey story below.

And what hauntological things have you experienced this week?

࿐ ࿔* :･ﾟ

THE WHALE JOURNEY

The House on Freddie Tait St

‘There is a dead hump whale washed up next to St Andrews’, said Sam casually on Sunday afternoon.

‘My nephews, Lucky and I are going to see the whale tonight and camp on Fife Coastal Path. Wanna join?’

Sam is our new flatmate whom we met after moving to this welcoming large house on Freddie Tait Street two days ago. Lucky is Sam’s dog: a big brown pitbull-looking one, perhaps, the kindest and the most loving dog I’ve ever met.

Lucky was waiving his tail in anticipation of the adventure.

‘Of course, we want to join! – I replied, pretending not to see Christos’ thoughtful look – It’s just that we don’t have any camping equipme…’

‘We’ll think of something, no probs!’ answered Sam.

And so the whale journey began.

East Sands Beach

We were six people and one dog: three grown-ups and three boys – Reef, Dylan and Josh.

Reef, the youngest one in the group, who just turned 7, was carrying a rucksack with a PAW Patrol sleeping bag inside, a portable pot for the vegan sausages, that was constantly falling out with loud noise, and a handful of Pokemon cards. ‘What’s your favourite Pokemon?’, was his first question to me. ‘Have you seen the Pikachu movie?’ was the second one. ‘Have you ever played Pokemon Go?’, you get the idea.

Walking along the beach, Reef and I discussed all the 59 Pokemon cards in his pocket and settled on the light green chimp-like Grookey being the cutest one, hence, the best.

Dylan, 9, and Josh, 10, were more serious than us. They were having a conversation about their experience in 3D modelling and possible future career paths. Josh, whose outfit was composed of a most peculiar combination of patterns – small blue bats all over the backpack, neon green and grey stripes on the jacket, patterned trousers and bright red and yellow football shoes – was determined to become an architect. And a part-time rugby player, in case he needed some extra money. Dylan found his choice more than reasonable. I secretly admired the ambition and long-term thinking.

As we walked past the cliffs and the hawthorn bushes, I came to realise, that the boys have already spent a very active Sunday and soon enough would feel exhausted.

Reef started picking up small spots of grass and suggesting we camped there. The sun had already set.

Kinkell Braes

‘Well, it’s well past 10 pm’, Josh announced when we were walking along the lonely landscape of the shore, further and further away from the town of St Andrews.

All the Pokemons had been already discussed and all the conversations that happen between the people, who see each other for the first time on an overnight hunt for a dead whale, had already happened.

We were getting tired but kept walking along the water. In spite of Reef’s hopeful suggestions, there were no good solid spots for setting a tent, only vast stretches of sand and rock in sight, with some occasional swamp patches.

Deep inside, we all understood that we made a mistake: walking along the shore was wrong, we should have chosen the trail on the hill. It was still right there, absolutely parallel to our beach path, just about 40 meters above us.

Suddenly, Christos discovered a conquistador spirit in himself: his voice got louder, his shoulders straightened, he moved quickly in the direction of the tall grass full of nettles and purple flowers. ‘Here! We’ll go up here and get back on the trail! Follow me!’

And we followed him, in quest of conquering the nettles.

Glorious Ascent

Most of all, I worried about Josh who was firmly clutching into my arm, and Lucky who really didn’t feel like going through the nettles, the thorns and the mud, following an uncertain path to an uncertain destination. He happened to be in front, right next to Christos, who was embracing his leadership personality, moving forward vigorously.

At some point, Lucky, standing almost vertically on the steep hill, refused to go up. He just stood there, with no intention to move. ‘Just pat him on his bum!!!’ – shouted Sam, the last one in the row, overlooking the children.

Speaking of bums, something interesting appeared in front of me – there he was, Reef, a fearless and determined boy – clutching into the grass with both his hands and legs, so hard and diligently that his once fancy-looking beige corduroy trousers went completely down, and his naked bum was now straight in front of my face.

It was Christos’ command at almost the top of the hill, where the climbing became seriously difficult: ‘Aaaand now, use both your legs and hands to go up! Hold on the grass!! Go on your knees!!!’… Reef seemed to follow the command in the most precise manner.

St Andrews Bay Golf Course

What an undertaking! Until now I have no clue how we managed to accomplish this task. The road is made by walking, I guess. In its literal sense.

Covered in mud and with spots of nettle rash here and there, the first thing we saw in front of us was a very clean, smooth golf course and a clubhouse on top of the hill, panoramic windows glowing. The warm light was beckoning us with a promise of comfort and food. Of course, Dylan, Reef and Josh were certain that we were heading now to the grill house and the five-star hotel behind it!

Then the boys understood it was not our case and started a brainstorming session between each other: ‘Does anyone have any money? A mobile phone? Do you even remember your mom’s number by heart? What shall we do?’ After all, Josh asked us to walk to the nearest village, knock on people’s doors and ask them to host us just for one night. Or, at least, to let us pitch a tent in their garden.

The golf course was endless and after all, we, the grown-ups, seriously were contemplating the idea of camping right there.

‘We can pretend we are French tourists and don’t understand anything… Or Australian…’, – was one of the propositions from the younger team.

Tired of walking on an endless golf course, Dylan suddenly started some serious thinking: ‘Ah, these people, who own the golf course!… It’s too big, innit? They must be very greedy to have all this land to themselves!’ He stomped on the neat lawn heavily.

The Buddo Rock – Outside the Tent

In the next 20 minutes, the boys started crying. They took turns. First, Reef. Then Josh. Then, very-very briefly, Dylan. Crying started quickly and finished promptly as well. Was it because we finally arrived at the desired spot? Yes, we did arrive!

The place that Sam referred to as ‘Nature’s playground’ all the way was not a playground at all. It was a gigantic lump of pink and yellow sandstone, with nooks and crannies and elaborate shapes and a semi-detached pillar on its right. The Buddo Rock was rising above the water and looked very ancient, wise and lonely.

‘Whoo, somebody will sleep in a tent now!’– Sam winked at Reef (already asleep on the grass in his PAW Patrol sleeping bag), Dylan and Josh. Like all of us, Sam was very happy.

He was also very confident that spending a night outside the tent was a great idea too. His enthusiasm and passion were contagious, as always, so I was looking forward to the night next to the magnificent Buddo Rock, the ocean, the stars. What could be better?…

Another sleeping bag! Or some winter clothes, perhaps…

Although the night was freezing and windy, I couldn’t help but secretly admired the situation. In a couple of hours of lying on the camping tarp under the starry sky, we started moving closer to each other in an attempt to warm up: Christos was on the one side, Lucky, who just two days before that was growling at me as a newcomer at Freddie Tait House, was now cuddling up against my back; somewhere on the other side of the tarp Sam was hugging Lucky. Such a scene.

I wonder what an old gentleman, who was having a brisk walk at 7.30 am at the Fife Coastal Path, thought of us there.

‘Good morning sir’, said Sam to him. He smiled and nodded.

The Whale

The morning was good fun. We had sausages and marshmallows on the fire. The boys enjoyed nature’s playground and explored the secret tunnels of the Buddo Rock. Reef jumped from 8 feet high and seemed totally fine. Dylan acted like Reef was passing out and expressed concern.

Soon we had to head back.

Something was missing though…

And we saw it! We saw it right next to the Buddo Rock beach, the Whale was there, washed up on the rocks! The boys were the first to see it. Moving quickly and skilfully on the uneven stones, they ran towards the large creature. We followed.

About 13 meters long, the Whale looked almost as ancient as the Buddo Rock, even similar in colour to it. The body was moving with the waves and the enormous creature seemed to be breathing. ‘It doesn’t though!’ - Dylan, acting as a news reporter, went on explaining how dead whales accumulate methane gas inside, when their bodies are decomposing, ‘Making them ready to explode any minute!!!’, he concluded. The story seemed bizarre, compared to how magnificent the Whale looked.

It was the ‘breathing’ whale.

It was us spending a night under the vast open sky next to the mighty ocean.

It was Dylan with his newscast.

It was all strange and beautiful.

It was the feeling of being alive.

Seaview Caravan Park

At the very end of the whale journey, the boys got really tired. The sun was high in the sky, the bags seemed heavier than the day before and we all looked exhausted.

Around the Seaview Caravan Park, Josh exclaimed: ‘When I come home, I’ll spend the whole day watching YouTube and won’t even go outside!’

‘Come ooon!’, answered Sam with his usual enthusiasm. ‘When we go back, we’ll be telling this story to our friends in a pub! And you… you guys will tell yours at a playground!…’

‘You tell them!!’, his passion was supported by a passer-by, an active old lady. She was heading to the Fife Coastal Path, embarking on her own Whale journey.

Here is a long Morley House conversation about the hauntological lens for the arts and some ideas that still linger on our minds after the course.

This dialogue can be useful for everyone feeling a sense of melancholy and lost future in their work and daily life. Listen to it and learn how to start using hauntological framework for your creative practice.

⚘ Timecodes:

00:00 - 00:58 - Intro

00:58 - 3:06 - How we discovered hauntology (Burial, Basinski, The Caretaker)

3:06 - 4:12 - Lost Futures

4:12 - 5:54 - Nostalgia vs hauntological lens - core difference

5:54 - 8:23 - Where is HOPE? Automation vs reclaiming your narrative

8:23 - 11:38 - No-time vs ‘living in the present moment’

11:38 - 17:28 - Aesthetisation of everything, ‘Perfection’ by V. Latronico

17:28 - 18:10 - Reflecting on our latest Hauntology course

18:10 - 18:55 - Why use family photos for art making?

18:55 - 20:25 - Interested in hauntology: where to start your exploration

20:25 - 22:08 - Importance of creating new things, misconceptions

22:08 - 24:10 - Music and moving image recommendations

24:10 - 25:19 - Afrofuturism in relation to hauntology

25:19 - 26:20 - Anselm Kiefer

26:20 - 28:18 - Your own style in relation to other artists

28:18 - 29:49 - Works by Hajar and Nadya from the course

⚘

PS. The pink make-up on me in this podcast cover is by Christos 💖

A 3-step poem by Hajar:

A video piece by Nadya Sidorko:

⚘ ⚘ ⚘

This is for Michel.

Habibe, the doctor, the funcle,

The dearest friend.

You don’t go to the movies to watch a horror film, because you grew up in Lebanon, and as you said, you watched it in 3D already.

I am writing a poem dedicated to you,

to your generosity, your dignity, your positivity and your care –

But I don’t really need to write it,

Just to jot down things you say to me and the GIFs you send to us in our WhatsUp group.

Cakes and candles.

Remember that dancing little boy GIF? Or a Dumbo one?…

Michel, I want to say to: please don’t change. Thank you for being you.

I am aware, habibe, that I am saying it publicly, that we are taking it out very openly,

And yes, it is

intentional.

Michel, we might not win the Euromillion, we might not move to that Chicago loft apartment all together and get a really big dog… I don’t even know if we will ever travel to Lebanon together, or to Russia, you know how these things are.

But you are a British citizen now, imagine, no more visas really, and an amazing doctor, and have so many more wonderful roles.

And there are topics we do and we don’t talk about,

we don’t have to, and we tiptoe around some of them just to be careful.

But there is always this buttery baklava, and zaatar, and labneh from Lebanon, and we are good, habibe, we are good.

In a way, I am writing a poem of optimism, of reassurance, of acknowledgement. And there can’t be too much of that, dear funcle.

Remember, we were all walking in Hyde Park and you shared that clinical study with me, saying that people lived the longest when they had deep and meaningful connections? The most significant factor to longevity, that is.

Michel, I want to thank you for showing me that friendship can be deep and profound, while easy at the same time. I am aware, we are sharing it publicly, habibe.

Because, you know, what? The world deserves to know it too! It’s the time for exclamation marks, habibe, for the dancing boy GIFs and for one cheeky Avatar episode on Netflix. Maybe, we will even buy a lottery ticket or finally smoke that hookah… Because when, if not now, my friend?

Keep this poem somewhere around, and let’s look back at it in 20 years at least. Let’s see what they will do with these politics, these borders, this inflation. Cost of Living Crisis.

Meanwhile: we will eat another mango or two, make a short trip to a Greek island, finally decide which element bending power we all gravitate to. Yalla, pame, let’s go now. Enough being said, enough vulnerabilities… but you will keep the poem, right?

Gorgeous or not, briefly or not — here I exist. And Christos exists. And you exist. There is aways something larger than us out there, but we are large too — large and alive.

— Morley House, ‘UNTITLED. Act I: MANUSCRIPT’

On Thursday, while in London, we started teaching a course about hauntology, opacity, and imperfection in the arts. Hauntology, according to Mark Fisher, is about ‘the sense of yearning for a future that we feel cheated out of’ – the lost futures, the possibilities or promises that could be, but never were.

Fisher also believed that this concept is particularly applicable to the contemporary British social and political context. ‘Haunting happens,’ he writes, ‘when a place is stained by time, or when a particular place becomes the site for an encounter with broken time.’ Bulldozed brutalist buildings as a sign of a future that did not arrive.

Perfect place to begin the course.

I am running to the Fitzcarraldo Editions annual summer party, navigating an unprecedented heat wave that London was not prepared for. The mighty dark grey concrete walls of the disused car park in Peckham, where the party is hosted, make the event feel like an actual greenhouse. Despite this, all the people look very smart and well-dressed.

In general, in the British art scene, I have always encountered the most effortlessly and impeccably dressed people. Always looking around and at each other with some self-consciousness… Britain, the best electronic music ever, the best painters I know, the coldest social interactions.

The reading is very clever and runs smoothly. When it is over and I exit the venue, I notice a small nature installation with purple-blue Sea Holly flowers, dry herbs, driftwood, and a rusted metal sculpture: it is a fragment of Derek Jarman’s garden. I think of him and of Deo art exhibition in the Greek island of Chios, where I saw a tribute to Jarman’s garden last summer, also – of all that amazing culture that Britain has produced…

Up the stairs, at the large scale rooftop bar, I suddenly notice two things: a bright red sunset on one side of the roof, and an extremely black and active smoke coming from a building right next to us on the other side. It is a supermarket on fire.

‘We are watching both the sunset and the end of the world,’ says a person next to me to their friend while taking a sip of a bright orange Aperol in a thin glass.

I am afraid to leave this beautiful scene. Downstairs feels like an apocalypse.

Who comes to my mind just before the smoke reaches our disused car park, our arts venue, our large-scale open air bar, is a platform attendant in Balham, whom I had asked for directions earlier on my way to this poetry event.

Just before leaving the platform, looking straight in my eyes:

“Hey, miss. Clapham Junction is the first stop.”

“Oh, thank you!”

…

“Yeah…

But keep an eye, innit.”

*

And so,

I

Keep

An

Eye

Inside our studio, I write

Inside our studio, I dance

Inside our studio, I cry, and laugh, and argue with Christos, and have fun with him.

Inside our studio, Christos paints

Inside our studio, Christos shows to me, what he paints, and hides what he paints from the world

Inside our studio, he thinks, and reads, and sketches, and tests ideas.

The studio sometimes is very soft, very fluid, and sometimes very limiting.

We’ve been discussing recently that Putney Heath, this newsletter, is a little window into our studio, but what is the studio, really?

Very soon we will have a very solid, one could even say, a very permanent physical studio space of our own in Athens, a space where we will belong, or will it belong to us? This upcoming prominent occasion as well as our flexible lifestyle of many, many years makes me think of what the studio is and what it’s not.

For me, with my very much writing focused background, a studio is an open, multidisciplinary sketchbook. At some point of my life, it is a literal notebook. At other times, it’s a container that holds my numerous notebooks, papers, publications and writing printed out on A4s.

For Christos… let’s read in his own words then:

a studio is a place for translation. Where ideas are decoded into something else. Where cobwebs are collected and encrypted in different coded languages. In the studio I aim to translate what I think into something that I can perceive in matter.

A studio is the place where I translate all my thoughts into things. It’s a place where I translate feelings into paintings, where I make sense of things in a nonsensical way.

It’s the place that runs in parallel to everything else: always runs in parallel and in different directions from the rest of life. In that place I am in control of things. As if I am the narrator and the conductor of it all.

the studio is a hot mess

the studio drifts away from being pinned down by outsiders

the studio is not a refuge, it is a front

the studio functions in parallel not in sync with the outside

the studio runs apart from everybody else

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In other fluid studio news, my dance and body exploration practice has had quite an epic unfolding. I had four very empowering and soul-stirring dance improv sessions, wrote thorough notes after each of them, and suddenly woke up today with a sharp pain in my knee. Which is to say, that I must have dislocated it yesterday, in one of the cathartic floor moves, and that, since we’re leaving for our London trip very soon, the dance practice goes completely on pause.

But, in the words of my teacher, Nikita, movement practice is always about confronting the vulnerability of our bodies (not only the strength and flexibility).

Here is one of the last moments before the pause:

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Lastly, in parallel to the studio, there is always teaching and learning for Christos and I as well, but that is its own big story. With others, next to others and in sync with them, we test new ideas (and old ideas too). Like the idea of lost futures, that we are currently exploring. There is a very exciting course we will teach from next week, and below is a screenshot from an essay What is Hauntology? by Mark Fisher, that is one of the key texts for the course.

Very excited for the start of the course, for our new/upcoming studio in Athens, for healing, and hopefully soon!

Xox,

D

⚘ Me eating a yogurt with goji berries on Kerkiras Street during rush hour, thinking about digital gardens, looking at these exact, very plastic flowers next to me:

⚘ How remarkably dirty and gritty Kypseli, our neighbourhood in Athens, is in summer, and how incredibly tender, sensitive and humane it is for me simultaneously. How grateful I am for living here and feeling a sort of belonging to it.

…These are a few of the numerous contradictions that make up my life and keep me awake. Why awake? Because they push me to be more flexible and to take life less seriously, not to chase having it all figured out.

Rather, to pick and choose: to focus on what feels invigorating, hopeful, encouraging. So many wars and so much violence in the world, yet the degree of sincere kindness, human connection and dignity that I see around me all the time is almost proportional, if not greater than suffering.

Hard and unnecessary to speak for all, but I genuinely want to be the force for joy, for good, for positive action. I have been thinking about individual agency and the influence we can all have in the world a lot over the last few years. Here is a thought that occurred to me in meditation on Monday, June 1 2026 (perhaps, I am introducing it more pompously than it deserves, but still, I vividly remember the moment):

If every person truly strives to take responsibility for their self-awareness, their attention and the thoughts they habitually think about themselves and the world – then collectively we can live in a better environment.

It is not a very new idea, but I have been feeling it deeply recently, because it allows me to be both more in touch with my inner self and to be a better companion to others (at least, when I don’t slide into a rabbit hole of noticing only negative things around me and feeling small, miserable and puny).

One can find a million flaws in my little theory (I am already coming up with five to seven of them myself just now), but on the other hand, it is pretty low-maintenance and easy to practice. Most of the time, the things that make me feel better (more energised, more hopeful and helpful to others) – are very simple – they are not even things! Or, at least, very small ones:

⚘ Remembering how Christos and I met in Cambridge and immediately had so many topics to talk about.

⚘ Looking at the enormously big and lively eyes of Oscar, the-street-cat-of-our-building (or our polykatoikia cat that prefers to live on the street), when he smells food and peeks into our open apartment window.

⚘ Feeling the sun mixed with shadow from the mulberry tree leaves reflecting on my skin and my summer dress.

⚘ This music video, I watch it a lot.

⚘ Drinking fresh cold water.

⚘ Dancing, dancing, dancing.

This list of things that make me feel better can go on, and, as you can see, everything quite achievable, yet so effective at helping me restore faith and hope… I am not sure where this text is heading, but the contradictions at the top of the letter are kind of part of the list, it seems.

Do you have a list like that? What are the contradictions that make you awake?

Xxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Signing off,

Dinara

I wrote the text above on June 3rd by the window seat, sipping a cold Freddo espresso - affrato - in my favorite bar in Kypseli, the one and only Alaska bar.

I am now very far away for a few weeks, but here is another contradiction that I faced and loved.

I have been practicing dance improvisation recently, and the best feeling that I have experienced so far was a feeling of a dead end.

It's a fascinating experience when you move and connect to the music only to reach a moment at some point when your body truly refuses to come out of a position; it just doesn't know how to move. According to Nikita, my brilliant teacher, this happens when the body finds itself in a situation where familiar patterns of movement do not work. Either you have exhausted all the familiar moves, or they don't align with your body’s current position or the music rhythm.

You feel quite helpless, like a baby learning to walk, yet, if you don't give in to fear or shame, you step into absolutely new moves, and it feels extremely fresh and exciting! More on the dance improv experience in upcoming newsletters.

A few of exciting dead ends are captured in this video by Nikita:

Lastly, here are five of the photographs taken by Christos in Budapest last week, the title of this series is 'Whipped Cream’

Thank you for reading Putney Heath! Please share your thoughts with us, we love reading them and reflecting together.

Leave a comment

A pause you feel
A pause is the place where we all make something

A pause is the only moment for making

Painting is a pause and looking at a painting is a pause too

Thus, we all have to pause.

yesterday

This newsletter has been on pause for a good three years now. Looking back to hundreds of years ago and looking back at yesterday is the same thing. That’s because all you see from history is what is available right in front of you. There, present. As if it’s on pause. Shao Fan talks about this so beautifully in his studio. As if inside that space, right in front of you, all times have emerged into one long pause: the present moment.

That’s how I, Christos, on a micro-scale of that paradigm perceive our newsletter. What I will be publishing now will later be just a part of someone else’s pause. Someone else’s moment in time.

Dinara and I will continue to pour new thoughts, ideas and moments from our studio practice in this newsletter. As always, we hope that what is shared here, could be inherited as useful seedlings for your own journeys, art practices or lives as a whole.

the perfect plate

For a while now I have been contemplating what a pause is. While actually having experienced a pretty hefty one.

I always make plans and think that they are important. When they are implemented, I feel content and at times grateful, while during other times, plans make me more anxious for what’s coming up next. In all this life limbo and strong currents, I have noticed some far more precious places: those, that are small, insignificant (temporary) and often unnoticeable. To the readers who already are familiar with my paintings, sculptures etc: these are among the core themes in my work.

I have made many plans over the last few years and many more ideas have come to my mind than ever before. Some of them happen, but many are left behind or manage to embark on a different path somewhere else. Often I’ll encounter those thoughts being implemented and built in my friends’ work or other people’s journeys. What happens to the ideas that have taken shape and a life of their own? How does their mental and physical space feel? And where do these ideas go after all? What place do they live in? This place is the pause. The pause to listen to someone or a pause to look at four pigeons forming a perfect square by sitting in each corner of it.

A pause is how your plans change when a government administration puts on hold an already frozen and clogged immigration system. Or a pause that can happen while you’re cooking: you look around for the perfect plate to put the vegetables you’ve just chopped, and later start wondering whether this plate even exists.

ps: feel free to change ‘I’ to ‘we’, if you wish

insight

After this three year long pause, I can now share with you, that the perfect plate indeed does not exist, and even if you look for one, it will surely be a compromise in the end.

books on the radar (mostly architecture ones this time)

Magic Architecture: The Story of Human Housing
Totems: Selected Essays on Architecture
August Blue

invite

This Thursday, 4 June 2026, we will be performing at TV Control (Κέντρο Ελέγχου Τηλεωράσεων) in Kypseli among other writers and artists. We will start gathering around 19.30. See you then!

Sometimes on Sundays we take bus 91 and go all the way to Trafalgar Square. It is a melancholic journey.

55 minutes to unpack the weight of the week, to digest it.

The red bus comes empty. You climb to the top deck and take a seat by the front window. 

From up there you will see all sorts of things happening in the world.

A young woman is sitting on a park bench, cross-legged, staring at the bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi next to her. His legs are in the lotus position too, his bare head is slightly inclined to one side. They are contemplating something. They are alone in the Peace Garden at Tavistock Square.

Next to the crowded Kings Cross station, a man in a formal outfit with an expensive silver suitcase is diligently shoving a takeaway container into an overflowing litter bin. The bin looks dirty, with patches of food and grime all around. He keeps touching it everywhere.

On a street crossing, there is a person, waiting, among others, for the green light. His manners are different, he appears to be not here, but somewhere deep in his mind, he looks around cautiously, his body twists and moves, it seems, he is trying to shake off unpleasant and intrusive thoughts. You note how his pace and rhythm are different from that of others waiting at the crossing – conventionally, we’d call those the “normal” ones.

Inside the bus: a guy comes in, he is well-shaved, smelling of a fresh shower gel, his hair is still wet. It seems he has a good day ahead of him.

Somehow the combination of these people and the voice of Paul Simon going to Graceland in my earphones makes me want to cry.

An emotional cry of feeling alive,
alive in the month of March.

And all these blushing magnolias, and cherry blossoms,
And yellow forsythias blooming
And the pinkish carpet of tiny petals covering the empty blue paddling pool.

Somebody could walk into the room and 
Say:
'Your life is on fire, 
It’s all over the evening news.

All about the fire in your life.
On the evening news'.

But then
When was it without fire, Mr Simon? 

And what is it – being alive 
with no fire?

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In an attempt to resurrect this newsletter, which I enjoyed writing so much before, I have been looking at its earliest entries. 

We started Putney Heath in 2021 in St Andrews during one of the numerous lockdowns. It was an attempt to reach out to the world from a tiny studio room next to an endless field – on the edge of a tiny town – the studio was 30 minutes walk away from the centre, and I was not even sure it was actually part of the town. At night the field would be so dark that it felt like our window was facing a pitch-black wall. Stretch your arm out of the window, and you can touch it.

Recently, we were trying to remember all the recipes that we started cooking in the studio: homemade mayonnaise, BLT sandwiches, tuna melt, roasted leg of lamb, ‘herring-under-a-coat’ (a peculiar beetroot salad), saffron risotto, olive oil cake, rustic apple pie. The list is long and awkward, a bit mismatched. 

Although our studio was cramped, thanks to the regulations for student accommodation, it was equipped with a full-sized kitchen. It was the same size as a regular two-bedroom flat could have. Our bed was almost touching the fridge. It felt like we lived in that kitchen. As we were joking, looking back at that year: we went to St Andrews to cook.

Somewhere around the kitchen, between the olive oil cake and the tuna melt, Putney Heath newsletter started. No wonder, the plan was to include a recipe in every letter!

Then, in keeping with our tradition, we moved countries, I got enrolled in a Pratt MFA program in New York. And in less than we made another transatlantic journey – to London. As easy as I found it to write about New York (given my long history with this city and its openness to newcomers), as hard it was to write something about London. In fact, I still haven’t written anything about it myself, only in collaboration with others.

As it happens, Putney Heath is an area in London. I haven't been there yet. The last year had been difficult, so I take one day at a time. There will be new entries to come now though, maybe, about visiting the area!  

Meanwhile, here is that studio, where everything started, through Christos’ eyes:

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But it was a peaceful day in a city unaffected by war, not-directly-affected-by-war.

We were walking, we refused to stop, from the big river we were going always forward and we were looking at buildings, beautiful and ugly buildings, they all were intact, and it was good. Half of the day it was raining, and then the sun came out, and we watched it dry the water on the black and grey stone.

And here are some photos that Christos took that day:

I am a sky where spirits live.

– Rumi, Like This (trans. by Coleman Barks)

There is so much I want to say, and I can’t.

I’m reading The Reactor by a London-based therapist and writer Nick Blackburn, on grief and beauty and feeling. And I can’t say what I want to say.

There is so much pain spilled out in the spring air, so much beauty.

I’m watching La Grande Bellezza for like 10th time, and I’m crying. About death, and love, and beauty.

Love, not a feeling, for a feeling is bodily, too temporary. 

Love–state. Love ‘which surpasses all understanding’. 

Lately I am told that it is impossible to differentiate between my socially constructed identity and the state beyond it, behind it. It is always behind it.

I’m reading The Reactor outside of Velasquez and Van Wezel, our local coffee shop. A guy with curly red hair and football shorts asks me: ‘Excuse me, where did you get this lovely coat of yours?’

The coat is very bright orange. Christos got it for me last spring when we where in lockdown in St Andrews. It’s supposed to be a classic English coat but in an acid colour. Some well-mannered lady from south of England was selling it on Ebay, just for 10 pounds. And we couldn’t really afford even that. But Christos got it, because we were going crazy, stuck in one room for a year, for two years. We were quarreling a lot, and we were discovering each other and the connection was getting deeper and there was something behind it. It is always behind it.

St Andrews is a tiny university town in Scotland, not many people live there, and this lockdown after lockdown… Our tiny studio room had a tiny window facing an endless field. Two of us stuck in a room, and a view of an endless field. So he got that orange coat, and it came as a surprise, and added something to our time in St Andrews.

How do I tell this to the guy in football shorts? I don’t. I just say ‘It’s from Ebay’ and the name of the brand.

He says, he has been asking people lately, where do they get their clothes from. ‘And it’s always from somewhere overseas, or Ebay…’

He writes down the brand. He sits on his own facing the sunshine, holding a flat-white. I look at him, feelings of terrible loneliness, existential loneliness, and the great beauty overflow me.

There is so much I want to say, and I can’t.

Before leaving, he smiles at me. ‘I think I found the brand!’

What makes him ask people where do they get their clothes from?

This writing is not exactly about the guy. It's about me, and how I feel hurt, hurt by people I didn’t expect to be hurt by. How do they call it, safe space? Is it an illusion – a safe space? A manageable, maintainable illusion? When we meet with people, when we create a circle, a human circle, and we decide to call it a safe space – is it really a safe space? We come into it, bearing our own feelings, and contexts, and coats and the stories about them… Is there something behind our stories?

I feel pretty safe in my psychotherapy group. Apart from other things, we share a mother tongue, it’s so much easier to express my thoughts there. Someone said to me recently: ‘It must be harder to establish understanding between Christos and you, since you don’t share the first language?’ I bet, it is.

Something made me move though! From home country across five other countries, one after another. Maybe, it happened because the mother tongue was never really a mother tongue, it was a father tongue – a language of my father, that is. I never learned my mother’s mother tongue, same as I never managed to get to know my father. Partially, that is why there is so much I want to say, and I can’t.

When do I stop this text? When will you stop reading it? Who are you? Are you listening? Are you following? Why do you choose to read this?

Can I really tell, if I’m speaking to you or myself?

The answer to the last question matters to me a lot, but I don’t know what to say.

There are not many words I can share myself now, but spring is persistently here.

So:

Flowers of Crouch End, North London

Today we went on a long walk around that area, and Sydney took a photo of us enjoying the giant sticker a lot. It is melancholic and scrappy – the storefront, the Broadway subway entrance, the gas station and auto repair shops next to it.

Yesterday we were walking around Brighton Beach and Coney Island, and Sean was talking about a book he had bought, written by a Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, called A Coney Island of the Mind.

Perhaps, that pixelated storefront in Williamsburg is A New York City of my mind.

We are leaving it, at least for now. A new chapter is beginning! And I don’t want to sound too nostalgic, but what if I am already very nostalgic and I will miss it very much.

It is not really about romanticizing this city, although a great deal of romantic and memorable moments of my twenties have happened here. Being in New York during the pandemic felt insane, stumbling upon subway crime scenes on a daily basis was upsetting, and the list goes on and on. I am not sure where this train of thought is taking me to.

I guess, I am trying to say that many things, cities included, are multidimensional, complex. More complex than the pixelated sticker with the Brooklyn Bridge on it.

I guess, sometimes one can be content with just A New York of one’s mind.

People are a different story. Although I’m not sure it is very different: take my mother, whom I haven’t been able to see for 2.5 years – in comparison to her very familiar face in a Zoom square window, to whom I talk to almost daily. Do these two have anything in common?

It is all very new to us and very universal at the same time.

Anyway. Here is to a New York City of my mind!

And to yours whatever-place-you-wanna-be-in-but-are-not-there-now of your mind.

PS. I haven’t read Ferlinghetti’s poems! Neither had Sean. Let me know, if you have. Maybe the book has some answers to our shared questions.

— Dinara

Like in that sappy video on the benefits of sunscreen: you receive a call at 7.32pm on a regular Tuesday night, and the news displaces all the rest in your life. Like a nasty gas, it permeates all corners of your existence. So much so that nothing else seems appropriate to think about or to direct your energy into.

That thing is now here, it is large and frightening, hard to look at, and it constantly demands your attention.

This was us last week.

And at times it felt (and still does) impossible to endure.

But in parallel with the thing that happened, there was also NYI — a 2-week linguistics and cultural studies School that I’ve been part of since 2010.

And the School (professors Polly Gannon and Leah Lowe specifically) offered me two poems, that are in conversation with one another.

And the poems have been a great deal of support for me.

And maybe somebody else out there needs to see them as well. They are at the end of this letter.

P.S. Last night, scrolling through the Facebook feed, staring bluntly at the screen, I came across two photographs in a post about someone’s mother, who passed away at 95. The first picture was a black and white portrait of a young lady, standing up straight, with her cheeks blushing, her lips in a charming smile, and her eyes full of eagerness and mischievous curiosity. The second, recent photo portrayed a elderly woman, very small and fragile, very frail, with a kind gentle face and short grey hair. It was the same person.

Struck by the visual contrast, I spend a long time switching between the two photographs offered to me by Facebook algorithm.

I will be a similar woman one day, perhaps. Not guaranteed. But now I am not her. Most definitely, I look more alike with the first black and white portrait.

It is not quite clear to me, what to make out of this observation. It has been living with me for about 15 hours so far.

I put a winter jacket and go for a walk around Astoria. The sun is shinning very bright against the sharp blue sky.

I listen to ‘I am the Spring’ by Morcheeba.

To the Young Who Want to Die

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.
Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

Sorrow Is Not My Name

by Ross Gay

—after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

      —for Walter Aikens

Dinara

In Search of Lost Time

- Who is this girl posting memes on Instagram? - I ask Christos, while we are still in bed.

- I don’t know, a random profile.

I want to find out more and persevere with questions.

- Okay, look, I do this - I’ll show you, it’s very cool. I open Instagram search section and type a first letter. It gives me list of profiles and I check their Stories! I find all the coolest people like that (art critics, designers…)
I think the algorithm knows my interest in art by now, so I entered this art scene of New York and I’m up-to-date with it.
And I also see other people’s stories (their friends’) from Paris or in London… it’s exciting. I do it every day.
I don’t know any of them though. Neither they know me.

(a moment of pause)

You see, now I’ve seen all the stories that are available. There is nothing else.

- Perfect. Shall we go buy the Christmas groceries? - I ask him.

We both get sad that it ’s already noon, and there is not much time left for making the chocolate truffles, but we agree on other dishes we’ll cook today and leave the house.

And here are 10 photos from 2021 that I’d like to share with you! I neither have a strong camera, nor strong photography skills, but these are just a few meaningful glimpses (there are way more memorable moments from this year that will stay in my heart):

Putney Heath will take a break and return in January, possibly with a new exciting project.

Meanwhile, copying a line that Professor John Bailyn wrote to me today:

happy whatever you celebrate!!!

We love you and thank you for reading Putney Heath!

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Hello! Here is one of my favorite prose poems by Czesław Miłosz. I present it, being inspired by two things: a recent project we’ve been working on (more on that some time later!) and conversations with Anna Moschovakis, my writing mentor, about the boundaries and definitions of poetry. And prose as well!

The drawing is by Christos, 2020.

Christopher Robin

In April of 1996 the international press carried the news of the death, at age 75, of Christopher Robin Milne, eternalized in a book by his father A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, as Christopher Robin.

I must think suddenly of matters too difficult for a bear of little brain. I have never asked myself what lies beyond the place where we live, I and Rabbit, Piglet and Eeyore, with our friend Christopher Robin. That is, we continued to live here, and nothing changed, and I just ate my little something. Only Christopher Robin left for a moment.

Owl says that immediately beyond our garden Time begins, and that it is an awfully deep well. If you fall in it, you go down and down, very quickly, and no one knows what happens to you next. I was a bit worried about Christopher Robin falling in, but he came back and then I asked him about the well. "Old bear," he answered. "I was in it and I was falling and I was changing as I fell. My legs became long, I was a big person, I grew old, hunched, and I walked with a cane, and then I died. It was probably just a dream, it was quite unreal. The only real thing was you, old bear, and our shared fun. Now I won't go anywhere, even if I'm called in for an afternoon snack."

– Czesław Miłosz (1997), translated from the Polish
by the author and Robert Haas

The time of Christos’ panel (which is Materiality and Form) is 1.15pm BST - London| 8.15am EST - New York |3.15pm GMT+3 - Athens & Moscow

Please register for the event here!

Anselm Kiefer: Wounded Pages of Memory

In a conversation with Tim Marlow at the Royal Academy, the renowned German artist Anselm Kiefer mentions that sixty percent of his work is primarily based on small-scale books. Their scale, materials and methods vary, while the fundamental purpose remains the same: the embodiment of trauma. Their essence is different from a literal sense of a book, as they cannot be touched or flipped through. The spectrum of their materiality ranges from light watercolour books to lead sculptures, immovable and hazardous for human contact.

This research proposal aims to address how painful and dramatic incidents of history are reflected through the use of books in Kiefer’s work. How conflict and post-war memories are embodied in the pages of different weight and material? These sculptural pieces are constructed with materials, heavily charged by history, such as lead, straw, photographs and occasional written phrases. Words that come from mythical figures of Germany, Jewish mysticism and the poetry of Paul Celan.

The process of making is formed through layers of history, where in a reversed archaeological manner Kiefer excavates fragments in hope to find the truth and the origins of human pain. The presentation will introduce the audience to a retrospective journey of book making as a fundamental aspect of Kiefer’s work. His iconoclastic method of removing and discarding parts of an art-piece manifests itself as a way of unveiling truth or bringing the trauma to the surface. Thus, the books will be presented as archaeological sites, where a building or a landscape carries meaning only when human events have occurred there. The presentation will focus on Kiefer’s attempt of using healing as a method: the artist’s mourning over an open wound that never heals itself on the sculpted pages.

Join us, ask questions, see you soon!

Register for the event

I don’t know how to form an opinion about it. There is a medical issue that doesn’t allow me to get vaccinated. The only thing left for me to do in NYC at the moment is to consume. All the places I can go to are those where one is supposed to spend money: department stores, grocery stores, bookstores (some of them).

Participation in weekly testing (negative-negative-negative). Compliance with all the doctor’s guidelines. Yet, here we are: my MFA course mates go to Whitney Museum to see a new exhibition that came up in class – it’s on oppressive domesticity and ‘unsung labor of women’ (the website says). I join them afterwards for an ice cream. Two scoops, brown sugar cookie dough chunk and pumpkin cinnamon roll, and a party hat on top, please. A bit too sweet, but that’s okay.

Partially, that’s okay, because we live in New York, the wonder city.

10.20pm. Sydney, Christos and I are on the 1 train, going home to Astoria. It’s late. The conversation revolves around the expectations from our new expensive MFA program and the household chores.

‘I was supposed to mop the room, but nah, too tired', I say.

‘I was going to fold the laundry, but I feel like this is not happening tonight either’, Sydney replies.

'Do you know this grocery store next to your station? United Friends, no, Brothers – cheap and fresh produce, write it down, maybe?’

‘What’s it called, again?’

‘United Broth…’ NEEEEEW YOOORK I WANNA WAKE UP IN A CITY THAT DOESNT SLEEP AND FIND IM KING OF THE HILL TOP OF THE HEAP!!!!!!!!

On the right, at the very end of the train car: is it a group of artists after a gig? A bunch of friends after a celebration? Sinatra’s loud voice is coming from their corner, it permeates the train, interrupts the slow conversations and usual phone browsing. There is no speaker or microphone in sight, but the strong sound gradually absorbs us all.

Sydney starts filming the artists and is singing along in a beautiful voice. I’m clapping like I’m in second grade and cannot help dancing. Next to us, a stout lady in a bright blue sari and her very tall husband are laughing with each other.

A drowsy musician is sitting right in front of me, he probably just finished a performance downtown, a large guitar case leaning against his body. Kind tired eyes, a paper cup with coffee in his hand and a black scarf with white skulls. He looks like he knows the best rock and roll bands, and possibly plays in one of them. The musician listens carefully, eyes half-closed, following the rhythm. His face gradually lights up with a smile. Next to him, there is a young woman with very long eyelash extensions and lip fillers, she is leaning forward and carefully observing the people.

THEEEEEESE LITTLE TOWN BLUES ARE MELTING AWAY ILL MAKE A BRAND NEW STAAAAART OF IT!!!!

A group of tourists with touristy caps and t-shirts are looking around, smiling tentatively.  The song ends in screaming ovation.

I haven’t felt so 〰 together 〰 for over two years.

The show continues: WHAT’S GOOD SITTING ALONE IN YOUR ROOM? LIFE IS A CABARET! Alas, it’s 42 street. ‘Oops, this is us!’ says Christos, and we leave, waving goodbye to the rest of the train.

Despacito melody hits us, while we are walking up the steep stairs. Next to the bright smalti mosaic by Jack Beal, something even more vibrant attracts everyone’s attention. We see a big yellow sign saying ‘Dancing is happiness’, a talented saxophonist playing - a young black man in a white shirt and a dark red fedora hat, and… his crew. Which is…. 16 moving plush animals! They are the size of a newborn baby, perfectly synchronized with the music and each other. Some of them dance in pairs (a cat is rubbing a ginger tummy against a white rabbit, a dog is flirting with a bear), others, like a panda in pink glasses facing a large speaker – are happy on their own. As it would turn out later, each of them has a name (e.g. the ginger cat is Spike, there are also Congo, Sandy and Penny – the back up dancers).

What is it – an experimental performance? A happening? Did MoMA PS1 move to the subway station?

We laugh and we celebrate, and life feels like a holiday.

It’s 30th Avenue, Sydney’s station, she has to leave. I ask her last minute: what station it was, where we got on the 1 train in Manhattan?

‘Christopher street. Are you mapping life?’, she smiles.

Yes, I am, dear Sydney. Like Hilton Als, I cannot resist a habit of ‘half living life so I can get down to really living it by writing about it'.

‘What time are you going to the book fest tomorrow?’

‘We could grab a coffee at the espresso bar and go together’. She leaves.

Christos and I are here. And here is that feeling:

of being alive, being connected, being together.

It is true, I don’t go to museums and exhibitions, but it is not only 〰 consume 〰 left for me. David Hockey said, ‘they cannot cancel spring’. Neither — fun! New! York! New! York!

— Dinara

The last few weeks have been overwhelmingly rich in new and unfamiliar experiences

– and tiredness has absorbed me.

The Pratt course has been very compelling, thanks to the people who make it this way – through their presence (and who might be reading this now! 👋)

My mind is too full to be able to reflect on what’s happening daily

– and I give it time.

Instead of reflecting, I thought to share with you a couple of pages from an assignment this week. You’ll see the idea yourself.

That’s it. It is raining now in New York, it’s Thursday night and I cannot wait for the weekend to watch a movie and to catch up on some sleep!

Tell me how are you and what neighborhoods are you in right now?? How does it feel to be there?

Best as always,

Dinara