30 Years Later, 400 People, And One Dreamday From Oaxaca

It is late Monday night and time to tell you the story about my trip to Oaxaca.

At around noon on Thursday the 23rd of April I said good bye to my plants. A couple of hours earlier they had been my first audience for the presentation and by lunch time I think they knew the story about the Dreamdayproject pretty well. When I closed the door to the patio I took a last look at them all. They stood taller than ever and looked at me as if they wondered why I hadn´t asked them to come along. I guess they are just plants, but in that moment I almost felt them wishing me good luck.


Six hours later we (not me and my plants, but me and Juan) arrived in Oaxaca. I had taken pictures of all the cacti on our way there and the fact that I was going to stand in front of a big crowd later that night seemed very distant.


When we got to the hotel in Oaxaca I realized that my soap bubbles that I had planned to blow on stage didn´t work. I asked the man in the reception just before leaving if he could help me and so he added some extra soap and shampoo. But somehow the bubbles just wouldn´t form. (I guess that is what happens when we stress our dreams too)


After that we went for pizza and beer until it was finally time to go to the Museo de Filatelia de Oaxaca where the presentation was to be held later the same night. In the last minute I decided to skip the soap bubbles after all and instead hand out my new stickers to the audience at the beginning of my presentation.

An hour later I was up on stage, with a microphone in my hand and over 400 people staring at me. A couple of days earlier I had decided to do my presentation in Spanish and so there I was, trying to communicate what had been the most personal work I had ever done, on a language I couldn´t even speak very well.


However, during my presentation I realized that maybe language was not the biggest challenge after all. For years I had been giving speeches at different museums and about some artist who wasn´t me. But never had I told my own and personal story to an audience. Never had I spoken directly from my heart and from my own inventions and experiences.

Images of people and places were projected behind me while I kept talking. Some where about places I had visited, about dreams, some of myself, and some of my family. One of them was from our house in Greece, and another one of the house where I grew up, both taken in 1978. I guess my dad never could have guessed that 30 years later 400 people in Mexico would look at them.

Six minutes and forty seconds later (which is the Pecha Kucha time limit) I walked down from the stage and went back to my seat. I felt like crying. I don´t know exactly why. The presentation had gone great, my pictures looked fine, but maybe it was the tension and all my expectations on those six minutes which just made me feel so empty all of a sudden. My instinct first told me to get out of there as quick as I could, but as the 31 year old that I am by now, I tried to act maturely and politely listen to the rest of the presenters. After a while I started to enjoy it. Maybe they were actually as nervous as me and maybe their presentations were as personal as mine. I had completely forgotten that this night was not only about the Dreamdayproject, it was also about eleven other people who had dreams to follow as well. Sometimes being mature is a good thing.


After all the presentations were over people started to mingle around the patio. I was supposed to be one of them, but ended up hiding behind a cactus with a beer in my hand. "So you mean we came all the way to Oaxaca for this? Juan asked me. I got upset about his comment, but sometimes anger makes you act.


I said "fine", grabbed the rest of my stickers from my bag and began to hand them out to the people around me. I noticed one guy who gave it away to somebody else. Some other people thought they were drink coupons. But when there was only a couple of stickers left, a woman I hadn´t noticed, came up to me and asked to have have a sticker (I still would like to believe that she didn´t think it was a beer coupon...) and when having my first sip of the famous mezcal from Oaxaca a guy walked up to me.

"I liked your presentation" he said. I said: "Really???" And then we talked for a while. He told me he liked the simplicity of the project. I don´t remember what I told him back but he said he would be in touch and yesterday he emailed me the link to his blog and the post he had written about me and the project.


Towards the end of the post he also described his own dreamday which would be a cloudy and rainy day, wearing a raincoat and a pair of rain boots listening to music, jumping the pools of rain, and then drink mezcal and have popcorn: (For the clouds and rain part, I can highly recommend Sweden to you!)

El mío amanecería nublado, con una ligera brizna y en la tarde llovería. Con música que me guste, algo en vivo tal vez. Unas botas para la lluvia, un impermeable. Amigos que gusten de saltar en los charcos. Mezcal. Palomitas.

...and with this note I felt that my presentation in Oaxaca had been worth all my efforts and the story about it ready to be written.

Thank you all for your support and encouraging words!