Greetings from Sapporo! It’s one week into my 2-month residency at S-AiR, although it feels like months have passed. It’s amazing how much living you can fit into a few days when you’re away from your usual surroundings. The city is beautiful – full of parks, flowers, trees and big sidewalks where you can bike around without fear of being run over. The pace here is slow and gentle, although the wind is much less so – it feels like it’s blowing down directly from the icy mountaintops!

What exactly is an artist residency? Everytime I go on one, I ask myself the same thing. Not that I’ve been on that many – I once read about a woman who had no permanent address because she spent her life going from one programme to another. I think she was a writer. A weird way to live.

A stream running through Nakajima Park, which is the closest park to my flat.

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I guess you just… reside. ‘Get inspired’ (whatever that means) by your new surroundings, and make some new work. There’s always an underlying anxiety about just how you’re going to fill up that generous, sun-filled studio that’s been provided. Sometimes I wish I was an idea machine that could spit out ideas like children: phtweh! phtweh! pthewh! (that’s the sound of ideas being spitted)… I hear people working in advertising are like that. Unfortunately art (at least for me) is a longer, labourous, and messy process; full of failures, worry and… waiting.

Here’s a quote by one of my favorite artists, Christian Boltanski: I come to my studio every day at 10.30, and I stay and do nothing. I go to Paris sometimes. I have a few ideas. To be very pretentious, sometimes I believe it is mystical. Sometimes you find nothing, and then you find some-thing you love to do. Sometimes you make mistakes, but some-times it’s true. In two minutes, you understand what you must do for the next two years. Sometimes it’s in the studio, but other times it’s walking in the street or reading a magazine. It’s a good life, being an artist, because you do what you want.

Spotted some cats playing in the grass. First there were two, then four, then five. They didn’t have a care in the world. This one gave me a ‘yeah? wattup?’ for 2 seconds and then ignored me totally. I want a Sapporo cat!

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Ok, enough emo-ing. A couple of days ago, I discovered a cool free application called Poladroid. I was pretty devastated when Polaroid announced it was discontinuing itself (technological suicide?). Poladroid takes your digital images and magically coats them with a sheen of nostalgia, turning the most everyday shot into something approaching poetry (great for me, I’m not the best photographer around). In this post are my first Sapporo Poladroids, during a long weekend walk around the city.

See you, until I blog again next week, and introduce you to the awesome S-AiR team. Today my dream comes true: I’m going to visit the Sapporo beer factory!

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The lake in Nakajima Park. With mountains in the background. That’s where that icy wind comes from. Brrr.

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Sapporo in spring.

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The observatory on a top of a hill. I love observatories – this one looks like it could have been belonged to The Little Prince.  It was built in 1958 and is the smallest public facility in the whole of Japan! Woot! Unfortunately, it was closed that day.

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As I was turning a corner in the city, I saw a pair of feet moving up and down quickly. It was so weird for someone to be doing that on the sidewalk! Turns out it’s the front of a sewing machine shop. I had to double take before I realized the person wasn’t real. Cool. But freaky in a grandma-in-the-attic kind of way.
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The main intersection in Sapporo City. It’s Sunday, so things are a little quiet.

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Some sweet graffiti. I wondered where the stairs led to.

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Walking back to my apartment along Toyohira river. It’s amazing to see a big, healthy river in the heart of a major city like Sapporo. People bike, jog and picnic all along the river banks. To think Klang river used to be like this…

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The river is pretty full and fast-flowing. Especially now because the of the ice melting on the mountains.

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Typical pretentious arty shot, of the type one is apt to take when the sun is setting and home is a couple of minutes away. Ah the transience of existence, etc… *next moment* mmm need dinner, beer and cigarette…

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… and here it is, like a prophecy fulfilled!  The produce in Sapporo practically cooks itself. So good that you don’t need to do much to it to make stuff taste amazing.

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