Now back in Oz with postcards ‘sans’ plants. I wasn’t allowed to bring them back into the country – they did deliberate a little, as the plants are ‘dried’ – as in dead! But the crux was that I didn’t have a permit – even though I had been trying to get one, or get a clarification of the situation. I could have left the cards with customs and sought to have each plant identified by a botanist, and then the decision would be regarding whether the plant is dangerous or not. This would be expensive – and if I ...

Now sitting in Reykjavik at a very nice AirBNB in the old west part of town. I was lucky to get a lift back from Isafjordur to Reykjavik through the rideshare page – Facebook is used almost exclusively for people to message each other and share news about what’s going on in town. This is a good use of Facebook, I think, although it’s a bit annoying to have to have it open all day – particularly if your phone is not working outside of wifi. The few days in Reykjavik have been useful – I’ve caught up with Ines, ...

Nearly at the end of our stay and the water has turned off in the house. Something went wrong yesterday, then it was fixed last night, and now again, we are without water. Beautiful Annska from ArtsIceland has given us bottles of water and bucketsful to use in the loo… Ironic, really, in a country with so much water. The dilemma is, though, that this afternoon Ruth and I were going to give an artist talk as the conclusion to our residency, and it was going to be here at Engi. Well, we can’t invite people here without a functioning ...

So the question is – can I bring my postcards home? Since they now have the addition on many of them of dead plants. I was going to post them home in a box, but the post-person in the Post Office says that he doubts they would arrive in less than a month. And since these are my contribution to the Crevice Communities exhibition, I need them available at the beginning of December. So – no posting! Also, can I bring plant materials back into Australia. The customs website says you can’t bring in live plants, and seeds need to ...

The last three days I have been voyeur to an online conference coming out of the University of Stockholm. It has been quite interesting from a number of points of view – particularly in relation to the online presence we maintain with the Creative Practice Circle. I participated in an “elsewhere” exercise, which I wrote about in a previous post, and I joined in on some interesting presentations that were quite thought-provoking. I’m presuming the recordings of sessions will be made available soon. There were some interesting ways of presenting in Zoom, which was also interesting – with the ‘pinned’ ...

I’m just continuing to work on the postcards – the ones I’ve included today, might be close to finished. All day I’ve been attending a European conference which is totally online: Alliances & Commonalities 2022, and it is coming out of Stockholm University. The first session asked us to do an “attention” task and record it and send to them – they will show something with the recordings on Saturday, the final day. Here is what I recorded: “My colleague Ruth is also zooming, quite loudly as she negotiates her future work. Unbelievably I am sitting gazing at the troll’s ...