here is the first intro video for the project "Finding Mom"

and this is the picture I inserted. Taken in in 1974 (or 1975) in Boston, Massachusetts. We lived there for nearly a year while my Dad was doing post graduate studies at Harvard. My Mom stayed at home and, I think, was really lonely. She made friends though with a Belgian family that lived in the same building. I became friends with one of their daughters, Bénédicte. They were from Louvain la neuve and were very catholic, but modern at the same time. A combination that always puzzeled me ...
With Bénédicte I went to the MIT kindergarden. She didn´t speak a word of English.
I was lucky that my Mom hab made sure that I understood and spoke the language ... A lot of Richard Scarry books helped ...

dome "Still"

 

first try out picture of the "stills"
playing around a bit. the "stills" are metaphorical, the symbolic part of the project.
from the "A" will move into the real world. hence the necessity of the figures that look like me. I want to have a pretty flawless "layering" and moving from "fanatsay" to "real".

mom and me

mom and me, 1971

beginning this project now. working title "looking for mom", i have no idea how it will be called later on. i might switch languages in the middle of this project, I might stop suddenly and feel insecure about it, i might fill it with nonsense, i have no idea where this is taking me.
anyway, mom, this is you, Paulette Michaux-Neys, or shall I say Marie Paulette Germaine Bernadette Nicole Neys?  As multiple and confusing your names were, so was your personlaity, at least, that is what i felt and still do. elusive. until the end.

there is no way i can ever make sense of you in the past, so i will try to do in the present .... you will never come back in the "real" world, so i will try to re-create you in the virtual world ....

mom, me, dad 1971