photo Simon Beckmann
“During the lockdown, I got my saxophone out again after way too long. Amongst a pile of music, a half-finished drawing of a landscape slipped out. It’s not very good, and I am not just saying that to seem humble. I am not an artist. I couldn’t remember if it was somewhere I had been, or just a random image from my imagination. A rough sketch of a perfect triangle-shaped mountain, loose rocks and a big round sun. It didn’t spark joy in the confines of my dark Berlin room, so it was banished back to the pile. Months on, in the closing days of summer, the bad drawing crawled back into my consciousness. I was sitting in my studio in Joya: AiR, drifting away from the screen to look at my favourite part of the landscape, the perfect little point of the mountain.
3 years ago I came to Joya: AiR as a volunteer. I painted the house, weeded and cooked, walked Fou Fou the goat, chatted with Donna and Simon and wrote a few sketchy poems about plants. I came away feeling very inspired and told myself that I would make it back to Joya: AiR, but as a writer in residence. It has taken quite a bit of work and a lot of random life events to bring me to this point three years on. So here I am.
This time around at Joya: AiR I have been working on a book project titled ‘I Keep My Shadow Light’. It is creative nonfiction and it is about an integration course in Berlin. After I left Joya: AiR in 2017 I attended a state-funded integration course and wrote a series of essays, interviews and short stories about integration. Now I am transforming them into a story. I Keep My Shadow Light received funding from the Gwaertler Stiftung, which made it possible for me to return to Joya: AiR as a writer in residence.
In the last three years I also created The Intimacy Project, which is a series of interviews and short stories exploring the nature of close, shared experience. I have also been writing features, interviews and guide pieces for the Berlin magazine LOLA. Aside from writing, I’ve dabbled in documentary film making. Here is a short doc I made with Leo Hyde: Poppe Gerken.
When I was working on my project at Joya: AiR, sometimes I took small breaks in my studio. I would watch a couple of wasps fighting or fucking (I couldn’t tell which), lie on the daybed (dangerous!) or doodle in my notebook. I have come away with another badly drawn outline of the perfectly shaped mountain that stands behind the residency.
This time there are 3 lines, each one attempts to replicate the shape of the peak, all of them are just not quite right. There are also 3 accompanying keyholes. I have no idea why. This is a daydream doodle after all. I labelled this drawing ‘Joya: The beautiful line of the mountain’ to make sure that I won’t forget what it is this time, which must be a sign of progress.
Returning to Berlin, I stuck the original bad drawing above my desk. Now that I know what the unfinished sketch represents, I find it inspiring. It’s inspiring because it is on its way to being something better than it is, and it’s gorgeous, because of what it represents. I look forward to seeing what my impressions of the perfect mountain will be in 3 years from now”.
Fionnuala Kavanagh is a freelance writer based in Berlin.
In Melbourne Fionnuala worked for Amnesty International and Save the Children Australia. Her time in Berlin started as a content writer for Studio Olafur Eliasson's Little Sun. She has since worked on an exhibition about gender equality for the V&A Friday Late, written for the Berlin magazine LOLA, and created FATMAP'S adventure guidebooks. Freelance writing certainly brings you to many interesting places.
Fionnuala studied philosophy and psychology in England and Australia. Her studies shaped her way of thinking and influence her writing on how we observe, introspect and connect. She has been working with words in Berlin since summer 2016.