motel de moka

Image: Untitled by Teun Hocks. Prints available here.

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“I tried to make an image about desire and about the strange feeling that something is missing, although everything seems so peaceful and romantic.”

~ Teun Hocks ~

It is probably no secret by now that I am often attracted to art – whether it’s music, film, photography or any other form of art – that in some way tries to express the feeling that Hocks describes in the quote above. Artists who are looking for that strange ambiguous sentiment that both our memories and expectations can often give us. Maybe a certain longing for something we don’t know or fully understand yet. In this particular image Dutch photographer, painter and performer Teun Hocks subtly creates this feeling with a combination of surrealistic colours and a carefully composed scenery showing a man sitting with his loyal dog and staring into the distance while playing on what appears to be a flute. To create these images Hocks sketches often absurd one-man stories and uses those as a blueprint to further complete the image by photographing himself against a painted backdrop and painting in oil on top of the resulting print. With this technique he creates a world completely his own, with the distinctive aesthetics and absurdist humour of his painted photographs also often reminding me of Swedish film director Roy Andersson.

What I particularly like about this image is that unlike most of his other work its surrealistic nature doesn’t alienate us but instead creates a peaceful and familiar scenery. An environment that despite of its surrealistic colours and strange formation of clouds instantly feels comfortable and trusted. I’ve tried to translate this sentiment and the feeling that Teun Hocks describes in the quote above into the playlist. Although not featured in this playlist I have taken its title from Vikki Jackman’s breathtaking debut album on Faraway Press as it fits so well with the theme of this image. The playlist is based on a selection of mostly strings and piano oriented tracks. Most notably the centrepiece of the list provided here by Hungarian composer Mihály Víg - a long-time collaborator of filmmaker Béla Tarr – creates the mood that I was looking for. The rest of the list further explores that theme with Sala-Arhimo’s saxophone adding some variation and a surrealistic touch and our daydream abruptly ending with Morita Doji’s enticingly lush composition.

1. Okkyung Lee - Sky
   Nihm (Tzadik, 2005)
2. The Valerie Project - Tree of Life
   The Valerie Project (Drag City, 2007)
3. Mihály Víg - Werckmeister Harmóniák - Öreg
   Filmzenék Tarr Béla Filmjeihez (Bahia, 2001)
4. Norma Winstone - Distance
   Distances (ECM, 2008)
5. Eluvium - After Nature
   Copia (Temporary Residence, 2007)
6. Sala-Arhimo - Ilmestys
   Pelko Pois (Time-Lag, 2006)
7. Cloaks - Improvisation for Guitar and Piano
   Serene (Students of Decay, 2008)
8. Bleeding Heart Narrative - As If Yearning Was All and More Than Enough
   All That Was Missing We Never Had in the World (Tartaruga, 2008)
9. Morita Doji - You are Trembling
   A Boy (Polydor, 1977)

Stream playlist
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Previously featured in this series:
- Is There a Way Out to Paradise?