Travel

PROVENCE

Marseille

My camera is dying. It’s a Yashica T5 that my parents gave me for my birthday nine or ten years ago. I’ve just got the scans of my latest roll of film back from the lab, and many of them are out of focus (both the T4 and T5 are known to develop autofocus problems eventually, so I knew this was coming). They’re the pictures I took in Marseille (Provence!) last week.

The end of August is always dedicated to art there, with Art-O-Rama and Systema, and friends flocking in, trying to hold on to summer one last time: swimming at generic beaches or in the Calanques, having one too many Pastis or glasses of wine, and sweating through the humid heat of this very specific city in the south of France.

One of the peculiarities of this week is that everyone pretends they’re having a good time, when in fact they’re working. I got lazy. Sometimes I didn’t feel like taking my camera out, didn’t feel like looking like a journalist or an artist. I actually just wanted to be on vacation. I shot just one roll. My camera usually manages to squeeze 37 images out of it.

I mostly took photos of artworks, but looking back, I’m not sure why I did, since you can’t really see them properly in these pictures anyway (focus!) so I decided not to share them. Here’s what I did include: a photo of the flat F let me stay in, with my shirts drying on the window; a gloomy moment after a swim at Vallon des Auffes; a photo taken in bed; the baby blue curtain that, I believe, the people behind Juliet in Berlin brought for the performances they hosted in the courtyard of Palais Carli / Systema; and finally a photo of the palais’ entrance.

Travel

PROVENCE

Tramezzini in Riga

Piens? Which means “milk” in Latvian. I get an immediate allergy when I hear that, not because I necessarily prefer oat milk, but because Piens is a relic from the early 2000s: a crumbling villa that has served as the backdrop for numerous “Survival Kit” exhibitions, before eventually becoming hipster territory for bars and nightlife.

Let’s forget the context of the venue for a moment. In what may once have been the concierge’s room, artist Daria Melnikova has created an Italian-inspired, or perhaps Italian-obsessed, tramezzini bar.

The bread is flown in from Palermo and freshly prepared every morning by the artist herself. A lousy 1990s television, mismatched furniture and the entire setup create the uncanny feeling of an Italian sports bar sometime in the late ’90s.

Daria is an artist who has perfected trompe-l’œil in many ways. Here, she takes it quite literally: step into a tramezzino. Egg and tuna? If you’re heading to Riga, don’t miss this.

Dario’s
℅ Piens
Aristida Briāna iela 9a
Rīga, LV-1001
Latvia