Agata // Bieke Depoorter (opened)

Dear Agata, I want to quit our project.

At least for now.

It’s become too close.

I feel guilty.

I’ve used this project as a way to better understand my struggles with photography and then everything got blurry.

Agata

Bieke Depoorter

Chapter I Paris, France

01.11.2017 — 12.11.2017

October 20, 2018 Dearest Bieke, When I met you, I was at the beginning of a massive transformation. I was starting to see reality differently and to question myself; trying to understand who I am and how to love myself. The Agata you created when we first met in Paris was the fuel for this self-inquiry. You flashed a light on many of my hidden identities. I never thought any of them were good enough to be brought to the surface.

You were questioning photography, questioning your life, suffering from a love that was coming to an end; Magnum asked you to do a project in Paris, but all you wanted to do was to pack your suitcases, return to Belgium, and never touch a camera again …

I remember you sitting at the bar of that infamous strip club in Pigalle.

It was a place out of time and space, quirky and sexual, dazzling with red light.

Only untamable curiosity could have brought you to that place. You smiled at me and you said your name was Bieke. We had a special feeling about one another straight away. Now I know that this is because deep down, you are just as crazy and weird as I am. I rarely open myself up to strangers but I was intrigued by your presence.

As it was almost midnight, you became the first person I would celebrate my twentyfourth birthday with. Several hours later we made the pink picture.

As we traveled to Athens and Beirut together, what was supposed to be your attempt to capture the real me and not “Agata the performer”, illustrated that between the extremes, there are so many shades of myself that disguise my identity. It made you wonder whether I am always performing. It is never either 100% a performance or 100% being real, a truth or a lie. My life is a movie. The reality I belong to transforms endlessly through my imagination and courage. And I live for those cinematic moments of awe.

Through your presence alone, you let me explore myself, you let me be inspired.

One time, I called you my psychoanalyst. Your camera is a mirror in which we both look at ourselves. You reveal very little about yourself, but I do not expect you to give me more than you want to. I trust you. We go around in the night, little by little we become closer to one another, and we make progress in our project every single time. I follow you as you follow me. You are using me to tell these stories of reality and truth. You project something of yourself through me, and I am using you to enact those versions of myself. I feel more real through your pictures than through the stories I could tell. I am starting to love my own chaos.

We have become so good at improvisations and I cannot wait to continue them. I will give you myself, you will wrap it with Bieke, and I believe that something beautiful can be created.

I love you, Agata.

Chapter II Athens, Greece

14.04.2018 — 18.04.2018

Wednesday 27.01.2021 I’ve erased the photos of that second night in Athens, when Agata stripped in that huge living room of the house.

From my mind, I mean; I haven’t actually erased them, but I haven’t kept an honest memory of that night either. Even though I’ve always selected a fair amount of images for exhibitions and publications, I’ve always only shown a part of that evening.

I had skipped the folder on my hard disk for almost three years.

Today I clicked on it again.

I took more than 1500 images that night. Maybe I was afraid to miss the best shot, but probably I was amazed and excited by the scene that was unfolding in front of my camera. I was probably grateful to be part of other lives, and to escape my own.

I see Agata dancing, almost entirely naked. She is performing and seems to seduce the camera. However, now I wonder if she is actually seducing the two men who are standing outside my frame. The two men whom I clearly avoid to photograph.

They are looking at her sensual dance. And most likely they are also looking at me, who is photographing her.

Agata is in love with Farid. I think she is using me so she can dance for him. He’s a refugee from Iran. She is thinking about how she can bring him to Paris. Would she do this if I wasn’t there to photograph her? Because I’m photographing her, she feels entitled to perform, a performance she seems to know so well and love so much.

The other disgusting man, who just bragged to us that he killed some people in the war, flashes a torch on Agata. On and off. On and off. I encourage him to continue, as it looks good in my pictures. The light that night is beautiful. I put candles on the table. I am the one who’s creating this dirty, dark, and weird atmosphere. I love the yellow light; I love the framed painting of the sad child on the right wall and the weird crooked landscape with the grazing sheep behind her. I love the peeling paint, and the old house with its high ceilings. I love the perfect scene that I have just created. The “murderer” suddenly takes over my camera.

I’ve never shown the images where I seem drunk. I’ve never selected the images in which we dance together. I’ve never selected the images where we kissed. I’ve never selected the images on the couch, where Agata sits in the middle, with Farid on one side, clearly confused, and me on the other side, skinny, laughing but actually completely wrapped up in my own destructive world.

I performed too. By taking pictures. By dancing.

By letting myself be photographed. We both performed for those two invisible men.

Chapter III Beirut, Lebanon

31.07.2018 — 08.08.2018

Friday 18.10.2019 He is looking at her. She is looking at him. She looks at me.

He looks at me. I look at them.

She wants to seduce him. I sense it while we are outside drinking whiskey. She starts to act differently the moment she realizes that he wants her. He is a hairdresser in Beirut and cuts our hair. I don’t remember his name. He is showing off his guns and Agata loves it, while I am enjoying myself, having a drink and talking to his friend, a pilot. But I feel uneasy with Agata’s game. He is playing the accordion and is singing.

I can’t tell if I like him or not.

The scene takes place when we go inside to find a mirror to look at our new haircuts. We can all sense something will happen.

When entering the bedroom, I immediately take up a position in the corner behind the bed. Maybe I want to be far away from the action. Or maybe I do it for strategic reasons. Maybe this is the best place to stand to get a good photo.

I usually don’t take so many photos of one single moment.

I am excited and intrigued by the situation. At the same time, I also hate it. I am repulsed by the sexual appetite of the man. I am confused by the way Agata lets herself be touched.

I am confused by her gaze, and by her question: “Did you get ‘the picture’?”

Although I don’t want her to do this for me, I don’t immediately stop taking photos.

Suddenly, I do stop. I’ve had enough. Enough photos.

Enough of taking photos. Enough of this scene. Enough of having to watch them. Enough of this man.

I ask who the couple in the wedding picture is. I am too confused to hear his answer.

The following photos on my camera show Agata in a taxi, staring out the window, sad. Maybe she looks sad because she is sad. Or maybe she looks sad because she thinks I like the way it looks in photos.

Germaine †

28.11.1928

Outward appearance: calm, controlled, balanced, serene —

start by breathing deeply and slowly

—

slow down your movements

—

speak slowly and in a lower voice

I am able to control my temper better and better

—

don’t be impatient

—

don’t show your feelings on your face

—

never lose your temper

Germaine July 14, 1943 14 ½ years old Goussainville Unforgettable memory ...

Front (street “side”) 10 – 7 – 1993

The obsession with wanting to justify yourself — dependence on others — don’t betray your secrets — don’t justify all of your actions — act independently — don’t feel the need to justify yourself to explain what you do at all times, how you do it, and why you do it

The battle against letting yourself go • right dress code • straight posture

• firm voice • clear articulation • meticulous cleanliness

Every day I straighten myself up more and more

Chapter IV Road trip to Kall, Germany

04.02.2019 — 10.02.2019

October 18, 2019 Dear Agata, I want to quit our project. At least for now. It’s become too close. I feel guilty.

I’ve used this project as a way to better understand my struggles with photography and then everything got blurry. There are no boundaries anymore and I’m not sure if that’s good for me.

I feel like I am giving up. I’m sorry. Maybe looking at myself by looking at you is too confronting. Or maybe I need to do this second part by myself. Alone. For now.

We often talked about how we use each other, and we agreed on that. But at the same time, it creates confusion.

The beauty of this project is that it raises more questions than it offers answers.

I could not dream of anyone else I’d rather face these questions with, could not imagine anyone else who could have approached it all with just as much passion, dedication, and love to eclipse my fears.

We investigated together. We often lived the same fantasy. It was so special to have someone who understood what came to my mind the moment we walked into that hotel in Baalbek or the castle in Theux, where we happened to be the only guests. Or the moment we found Germaine’s diaries and we decided that you would add some of your own writing to the empty pages. In a split second you jumped into the story with me.

We assumed other people’s identities and didn’t even need to talk about it. We just created the story together.

You gave a lot of yourself to me. You allowed me to look at you so I could understand myself better. We became close friends and, at the same time, we questioned if our friendship only existed because of photography. I am so thankful that you allowed me to ask this difficult question out loud.

I thought the strength of this project was its collaborative nature, but then I started to wonder if this was a true collaboration. You told me I didn’t give much of myself to you. I was always quiet when we started to talk about me. After the exhibition in Antwerp, on the way back from our road trip to the Sufi temple in Germany, I decided to open up. To share parts of my story. Things changed after that moment. Maybe that’s when our true collaboration began, and that’s the moment when we didn’t need photos anymore.

The trip was terrible. You knew how you wanted to be photographed. I knew how I wanted to photograph you and you understood how to pose to make me happy. But we were uninspired. I was angry at you because you were too self-confident, on your phone all the time, and tired from your three-day party trip to Brussels. You were annoyed because I was too motivated and because I wasn’t excited by the temple.

We started to play Barbara, the owner of the castle we happened to sleep in. We ended up in the castle alone, and drank wine and lit 100 candles. We found Barbara’s fur coat, smelled her Chanel No. 5, and tried to become her, like we did with Germaine in Paris. But we didn’t succeed. All the elements were there, but it was fake.

We stopped taking photos. You went to sleep and I drank a bottle of red wine in front of the open fire, asking myself what had just happened and what to do next. The nicest moment of that trip was back in Ghent. We felt relieved by our conversation, and were dancing and drinking champagne in my bathroom, applying a beauty mask. The photos I took that night stand out to me. They are far better and more honest than anything we tried to make the week before.

During our most recent trip, in Lebanon, I said “no” to you for the very first time, a few hours before my birthday. I disliked the drunk men you met in the hotel garden and whom you wanted us to join so badly. I didn’t want to drive around town with them, drinking whiskey. I didn’t want to see the Agata who laughs slightly louder than she normally laughs. I wanted to protect you from that part of Agata, but maybe that’s not my responsibility. Or maybe I’m seeing it all wrong.

As a photographer, I would normally have joined you, but as your friend, it didn’t feel right. And as for myself, I was uncomfortable. It feels like the complexity that I so badly wanted to explore has somehow caught up with us.

For the next exhibition, I have decided not to show photos from our road trip to the Sufi Temple. I hope you understand. They would not tell a true story. We were investigating whether truth is a possibility, but these photos would still be a lie.

With this letter, I’ve included some of my thoughts and photo grids of your encounters with those men: the old hairdresser in Beirut whom you made out with after he cut our hair and the customer in the strip bar in Paris who asked me to join the lap dance. I want to show you all the photos I took those nights so you can see these moments through my eyes. We often talked about these two particular scenes. You never completely understood why they bothered me so much. Neither did I. I think I didn’t realize before that my role in these scenes was undeniable. There is no such thing as being a fly on the wall. Selecting only one photograph gives a distorted and unfair picture of the situation. You can see clearly that both of these men and you are aware of my presence. Often, you are looking straight into the camera.

Would any of it have happened if I had not been there? I can hardly look at these photos anymore.

We have more in common than we ever thought. It’s confusing. But I look forward to dancing with you again to ‘Only you’, our favorite song, outside of our rental car in the mountains of Lebanon on my birthday, throwing nuts into the sea, swearing we will return soon. Those moments are more important to me now than the “serious” photos I took that trip in Lebanon. I don’t think we need to continue forcing ourselves to make them.

Agata, take care of yourself. I am trying to do the same.

Love, Bieke

Chapter V Paris, France

02.03.2019

Friday 18.10.2019 I sit in the corner of the club. I probably stand out with all of my clothes on. He calls out to me. At first I’m not sure how to respond because I don’t want to distract one of Agata’s potential customers.

He requests a lap dance from both of us, together.

He offers to pay Agata much more than she would normally get paid, and will even pay me on top of that. I’m beginning to think that if we just get this over with, we can leave this place and do something else for the rest of the night. I consider giving her my share of the money too. I don’t want her to do this job.

Agata loves the idea of the joint lap dance. She sees it as a new chapter in our collaboration. He orders some more champagne for us. They both try to convince me by saying that I can leave my bra on. When they see me hesitate, they suggest that if I don’t want to dance, I could also take my shirt off and just stand there and watch them.

I ask 500 euros for each of us, about 12 times more than the normal price for a lap dance.

I keep my shirt on and photograph them cornered in by the transparent curtains.

November 30, 2019 Dearest Bieke, What a time it was, this exhibition in Dusseldorf. Definitely less stressful than the exhibition in Antwerp. I was happy to watch you be more confident about the whole process. You are growing as a photographer, and I am honored to be part of this journey, to be able to witness the hard work of the great artist that you are. It was your second major museum retrospective, and for me it was an invaluable firsthand experience: how exhibitions come about, what the environment of art institutions is like, how you worked together with the curator to conceptualize and organize your ideas.

I had always been interested in this environment, at least, when I still had faith in that world. I thought I was perhaps going to work in the cultural sector. Museums and galleries were like temples, art was like religion, art was hope. Art was an escape from the bleakness of reality that, as you know, was continuously chasing me. But then I realized that the art world is not even half as wild compared with experiencing art or making art. Gallery internships showed me the world of bureaucracy, fake politeness, and of shallow, normalized conversations - in short, everything I hate.

It was all so similar to the “corpo” universe which repulsed me. The way to the top, towards more exciting responsibilities than sending emails and counting the gift shop stock, seemed to require a lot of dedication and willingness to play by the rules of the game, which seems very cruel and terrifying.

I had no money, I had no contacts, and I was not yet good enough to suck my way up to the top. My grades were average, my education was quite irrelevant to the sector, I was tired. I was tired of working, of having to study so hard, of having to go without the comfort zone to grow and find out what I actually wanted to do, of lacking the resources and the courage to make a start, full of self-doubt. Suffering from the small-town syndrome of coming from a shithole and arriving in a big city, discovering a variety of worlds, but feeling unhappy about my position in its maze.

The institutional art world did not seem to contain any of the transgression that art itself evoked in me. And I wanted to be a wildfire. I wanted my life to be beautiful and meaningful, like the art I found stimulating, putting me through the whole array of emotions. I was not rich, so I had to become a rebel, because I did not want to be like sheep. I felt there was more to discover if I did not choose the safe path.

I have been realizing that my exploration, firstly of striptease, and secondly of sex work, was an intuitive research on the nature of femininity, an attempt to learn about female sexual power, which is mysterious, ancient and inexplicable.

This alluring yet threatening power pushes the egoist male race towards the desire to control it. They want power and they try to justify their pursuits, by claiming that they are doing it for the sake of a greater good. Their desire for order imposes boundaries and wants to determine feminine power. Every existing thing was born out of this mystical, feminine chaos. Its sexual magic plays with their instinctive behavior and disturbs their sense of control, associated with the hegemonic masculine ideal. There is something dark about feminine power, so it seems. Perhaps that is why firstly religions, and then societies, have tried to delimitate it by all means, to make it invisible and inexistent, by hiding it under a veil of silence and putting it under taboo …

Or is it both religion and patriarchy that have created this concept of darkness?

So many questions, so much hostility between the sexes. This hostility, this exchange should be allowed. Communication and openness should counterbalance violence.

Everyone should be allowed to engage in this eternal war between the sexes as one pleases. However, on some deep instinctive, primal level, if you consider it to be a game of prey and predator, involving submission and possession - what to do if you are playing by the rules of your own impulses, when you infringe on the boundaries of others? Where to draw the line? The line is blurred. Can submission equally mean that you are actually in control? Is it ethical to play this game of illusions and humiliations? Or is playing this game perhaps at the very core of being human?

Agata

Chapter VI Road trip to Baalbek, Lebanon

27.08.2019 — 31.08.2019

October 22, 2019 Dear people at Huawei, Bieke and I went to Lebanon in August to celebrate her birthday. I love the cyclic aspect of our time together. We first met the night before my birthday, almost two years ago, in the strip club in Paris where I worked at the time. And exactly one year before our most recent trip, we had also traveled to Beirut together. During our first journey there, something sparked off. We discovered and transformed ourselves in one another’s presence and through the lens of the camera that separated us.

I wrote a lot during that time. There was something universally introspective about Bieke’s pictures, paired with the excerpts from my texts. Our first big exhibition at FOMU in Antwerp felt like an existential movie. Together we were searching for my identity and at the same time we created a metaphor for the struggle between fiction and reality, the present and the past, the self and the other.

Bieke was unsure about going back to Beirut to make new work for the Huawei assignment. On the one hand, she didn’t want to give away such an intimate and personal project for commercial purposes like that; on the other hand, she was unsure whether she still wanted to take pictures of me at all. Perhaps something was finished for her. We created Agata, but we didn’t know where to take it next.

After our first exhibition in Antwerp, our adventure lost focus. Any attempts to create a continuation of our story were unclear, compared to the first chapter.

At the same time we didn’t want to sacrifice the special friendship we had built while working on the project - how could we imagine our relationship without photography? Photography was an excuse for spending time together, an excuse for this search for our inner selves that we had embarked upon, with the camera lens serving as a mirror for both of us.

Apart from this assignment, it was me who pressured Bieke to join me in Lebanon.

I had reminded her of how we had promised each other last year that we would return the following summer, how much we loved being in that place on earth, and how joyful we were back then. And I also loved the idea of being paid for our project.

Working with Bieke during four days could cover my one-month holiday over there.

Using the Huawei phone instead of the bigger camera presented us with a new way of making pictures on this trip, and it eased the pressure on Bieke and on the situation; it made everything feel less serious. Bieke was afraid that it would upset me if she would take fewer photos of me, so the change in approach made it an easier transition for her. Now the assignment gave her an excuse, and the fact that what we were doing was not so serious. I could see she was more keen to make pictures of the landscape than of me, but it wasn’t hurting my ego. We had such an interesting time. Me too, I preferred focusing on our conversations and on reaching the next destination on our road trip than having to stop in order to make pictures.

It was no longer about the photos. It was about us now. At last, we realized it was possible for us to exist beyond the camera.

Agata

December 3, 2019 Dear Bieke, I do not exactly understand why (though perhaps it is obvious), but I feel the urge to justify myself, to convince you of what I do, even if you are essentially not really against it. Still, we have our own very different way of looking at sex work.

Or perhaps it is not even about the sex work, but about those old disgusting guys that I was interacting with when I was drunk. And you have had the occasion to see it twice, or three times if we count the men in Athens as well, the ones who saw me stripping. The one who killed people in the war. The old fat one, who had a huge dick painted on the wall of his room, even though I am sure he was not gay. He was sick. He was injecting hormones; I think it had to do with his prostate. Let us not mention his name, even though I have forgotten it. I inquired about him when I returned to Athens this summer, just before we met in Beirut. Angelos told me that he is in prison and he did many weird things. It came out that he was lying about his identity … Who knows who he was, Bieke … We both felt his energy was not good …

And those stories from the warzone, how he was killing people. Apparently, he was a police officer, or some UN guard … I tell you, he was a piece of bastard. He took pleasure in killing people … We felt this, didn’t we?

I did not have much interaction with him, as you know. I was with Farid; I was feeling in love with Farid. The striptease was for Farid … And for you.

Actually, this striptease was meant for you. The fact that I had a story with Farid just helped to create the context, made this act possible. Made it real. But the presence of the other man also helped create the context of my performance. It was not a cozy situation between lovers. The darkness and desolation we created in this derelict villa, the old furniture, the two men watching me from a distance: my beloved and some old pervert, an acquaintance of my beloved, whose presence there I accepted.

But the performance was for you, and the presence of Farid had helped not to make it awkward. It was supposed to be natural in front of your camera. You wanted to take pictures of me dancing or naked. You expressed that with unconfidence. We were in Athens. Our relationship was just developing, but artistically speaking it was at its peak. The beauty of the first time, of initiation, testing each other’s boundaries, trying out intimacy and the possibilities of communication. This intuitive aspect of initiation, nothing is more pure …

Our initiation as photographer and subject was beautiful. Perhaps you are nostalgic for the inspiration of that moment. But that moment was precisely so beautiful because it will never happen again. Beyond the mystery we were for each other, we are now faced with too much information, unable to synthesize it all, and execute all ideas. What works best for me is to have no expectations.

Perhaps I was equally surprised with what I did. I do not remember much except that I didn’t really know what you were expecting from me. You wanted me to dance. I did not know what to do so I created this whole concept. What else could I do? I am a stripper and this is a part of me that you knew. It is how we met.

At first, I danced in the window. I was stripping for Farid who sat on the chair beside me. He was invisible in the frame. You were making pictures through the window of another building. Also from a distance, sort of spying on me. On us?

In the exhibition, this big photograph looks like a painting. It reminds me of Edward Hopper. I am in the window. Almost naked, only wearing red panties, my body bent and blurred in movement. I love this picture. I love how big it is. I almost want to enter inside. Because I am posing in the window, it is almost as if I were exposing my body to the public, and you are a voyeur. Am I even aware that you are there?

It would make more sense to include the preceding pictures in the exhibition.

So we established a hidden pattern of sexuality. I sensed that this was what you were interested in, even if you were avoiding the cliché of a strip club. I knew that this was what you were searching for. Unconfident yet assured about the subject …

It unmasked you, for example even in our private time you were asking me a lot about my relationships, remember James and Seven? You wanted to enter my intimacy, but you did not want to enter into intimacy with me. People confuse that, thinking that we are in love, but there was always a clear line. We were not lovers, but a mirror for each other.

Now I understand better what you were searching for, you were searching for yourself.

Perhaps my words will make you angry, perhaps they are too invasive or perhaps I am not even right. So let us clear it out of the way. I was not aware of how much of yourself you project on me and maybe I am still guessing. Or maybe we are taking it too far …

You say you are feeling guilty. Somehow bad about yourself. You say your friends have asked you why you cannot just be honest about the project … I understand less and less … Perhaps I shall stop overthinking it …

Perhaps what pushes us to research sexuality is some underlying confusion about the subject. How confused are you? Is it perhaps a similar confusion that you have seen in me? Because I was very confused at the time you met me. I was searching for my sexual persona. I was discovering myself together with you because this is what you were interested in. You found a girl at the point of initiation. You put me through initiation.

Sometimes I wonder if we were really collaborating. Or if I did you a favor, very purely, out of fascination with this whole thing … Or was I perhaps expecting you to return the favor? Perhaps I saw something to gain with this whole thing? Well, I received instant gratification, appreciation and validation from your side.

I started to exist by you, through you, or in you. It was naive on my part. I did not know how much you were projecting on me. I thought you were interested in me and that I was so special. But in fact, I am an emotional sponge. I followed your lead.

You wanted to see sexuality. And I was all about that, in some weird, quirky way.

And now I could fit your narrative, and fit with your visual language. I took on an identity; I became a subject … The more I was getting to know your photography, the more connections I was seeing. It felt like you wanted to continue some elements of your project from Sète with me. I felt connected to that transwoman you photographed back then … Subconsciously I embarked on this mission of coming up to your expectations.

The fact of having a photographer following me around was like being prompted.

It made me feel like a character, someone special. It was self-imposed. There was no scenario, no agreed upon narrative, but you noticed yourself how I started to be involved, wanting to create something for your camera.

I am good, aren’t I? So intuitively. But then I stopped being pure for you perhaps.

I took too much of you on me. Perhaps there was never anything real about me, I am a performer. You wanted a real Agata that does not exist.

Perhaps in my previous performances, the ones that I was doing when we met, I was expressing myself as strongly sexual and transgressive but almost too scary for men.

I was too powerful, too weird for them to even dare touch me. Only the most savage ones would dare to try … And that resulted in a real clash of power back then.

Nothing sensual. Pure bestiality. Something people fantasize about. There is nothing intrinsically bad about sexual acts; anyone should be allowed to pursue their inclination, if it happens in the atmosphere of openness and acceptance …

How about respect? Can Our sexual behavior is or just two people who We can only talk about

we talk about respect in any other context than sexual? defined by the specific circumstances between the lovers, have sex. I do not believe in a larger notion of respect. respect between lovers and parents and children.

Perhaps you will say that I am jumping to conclusions too quickly, but now I am pretty sure why this picture where I am being embraced by an old man in Beirut came about. We will never be able to answer the question whether I did it for you or whether I wanted to do this somewhat infused by drunken playfulness, or because of my integral or desired sluttishness. It was both; it was the intertwining of our minds that led to this. Perhaps our whole collaboration was supposed to lead to this picture, because through this picture, the curtains were drawn, and I have unmasked you.

It was too disturbing. You could no longer hide from me or you would have to hide for good, sacrificing our friendship. You were obliged to tell me your story. Or was it even before that, in Beirut, when we were getting closer, and our conversations deepened, perhaps then you mentioned your past.

When months later, during our road trip in Belgium, you told me more and how you have been dealing with this trauma throughout your life and photographer’s career, we started to speculate if I might perhaps also be a victim of trauma. You said you sensed it that night when you met me in the strip club; you sensed that we share a similar story … But was it a truthful sensation or just an intoxicated mirage, a projection?

Truth, as we know, does not exist or perhaps it is what lies somewhere in between.

We are all shaped by our childhood experiences. Yet isn’t it very easy to jump to conclusions? Did my perverted mind transform this information? Is this what inspired “the Agata narrative”? You know why I actually also feel guilty about it, or not exactly guilty but ashamed? Because I have created a cliché.

I started to believe this story. It provided easy justifications. It was comfortable.

I thought it could assure the continuity of our collaboration because this is what you wanted to research and I was happy to play this subject. I will perhaps never know if it is true … There is some evidence for it and there is some evidence against it, or maybe it all comes from somewhere else … I should go to therapy, I know … You are not the only one saying this, though I also treat our collaboration as therapy.

Perhaps that is why you started to experience this as a heavy project. You do not want to take the responsibility …

I understand. You saw me in situations you did not want to witness. Like those men I was drinking with in Baalbek. It was the drop that filled the glass …

Dearest Bieke, When I met you, I was at the beginning of a massive transformation. I was starting to see reality differently and to question myself; trying to understand who I am and how to love myself.