I did manage to give birth! Throughout the pregnancy I was afraid that I would either explode or that the baby would get stuck like a really bad constipation. For me the timeline of pregnancy was stopping at the moment of birth, when everything would be done. “That’s where it all begins,” said my sister in a compassionate yet nervous laugh.

A few weeks into the beginning Adriano opened a google doc and wrote:
“Andrea, can we please write something together. Can we make a little bit concrete or put into words what we are already doing? Can we pretend for a moment that if we name it we have some agency with it.”

I accepted the invitation and this doc is still being written. The topic of isolation came up early, as the practicalities of babycare were nudging us toward isolation as a unit of three. Later we understood that this was an expression of a much larger system of isolationism which goes by the name “family”. And we had the intuition that isolation in a unit of three would be detrimental for both childcare, artistic, social and erotic needs. 

Adriano had the very Leo idea to rent or borrow houses where we could invite friends, lovers and collaborators for temporary co-habitation. A way of sharing our resources–thanks to the Danish Maternity leave–which basically gave us a year’s salary to live from, something like 2000 euros. And a way of avoiding isolation.

We were looking for ways to learn about what we were doing while doing. In other words, we were very curious about how our relationships, with the people we love, would develop, while learning how to take care of a baby.

Mayo de 2021, Hinojales, Huelva. First cohabitation. My dear friend Elisa Grasso stayed for a week, she wanted to redefine her style as an illustrator which was a recent passion. We talked about queer non-monogamy, adhd and bullet journalling, we started recording our conversations as (never finalised) podcasts, she drew sheep in the fields of olive greens, made tiramisú. Adriano read Olivia Laing and together we fail-fully aimed for an ambitious programme where we would do sport, have deep conversations in Penelope’s naps and make art in some form.

I was breastfeeding every 2-3 hours still, my hormones were turning, and I felt mad about how different Adriano´s and my body were at work. We were sleeping little, we had the sun, the time, a small village of 40 houses, and a good friend. 

Then Juan, Tea and Britta came. The closest airport was Sevilla, an hour and a half away. It felt crazy to drive through the curves to pick them up and come back, when I was continuously occupied by Penélope’s seemingly endless needs towards my body, the steep learning curve of baby-care and organising our self-reflexive journey through it all. Often I missed just being fully alone again for a moment. I remember feeling both selfish and generous. Having several friends visit together was confronting too, because of how constrained by obligations I was compared to them and how impossible it was to socialise the way we used to. 

However, spending time next to Juan and Tea was incredibly sweet and I felt loved having them come all the way. Britta was helping us with Penélope in a way where I could finally relax for a moment. Everyone was doing a little part, which made daily house needs more compatible with personal needs I would say. One was cooking, while the other was playing, while the other was resting, while the other was working…

For Adriano and I these cohabitations were not just a holiday. We were trying to plot something. 

Julio de 2021, Montefrío, Andalucía. Something about the layout of this house, how it had nothing to do with my family (Hinojales was borrowed, and this was rented)… how the constellations of visitors combined, how it was so warm and picturesque, made this experience the most erotic. We had again a month there. There were four bedrooms, and one of the walls of the house was the mountain itself, leading to a small rooftop with a barbeque. From our house, we could not see the view that makes Montefrio a famously beautiful village because we were part of the view. I think the most extravagant feature was this jacuzzi sized-fountain in the middle of the patio where we dipped to cool down daily, and sometimes hourly. Here is where we started dancing naked solos for each other. A score in which one dances, naked, and the other witnesses by writing the dance; Poem-like texts emerged. Or perhaps small divinations. These would become instructions for the next dances. And in the midst of sleep deprivation, heat waves, the constant negotiation of who-does-what-when, and getting lost in keeping up with food, naps and playtimes of Penélope, these naked solos allowed us to practice abstraction, both in writing, dancing and watching, and introduced some much needed opacity. Opacity which felt nourishing, both in our relation to ourselves and to each other.  We discussed a possible (and never realised) TV dance show channeling our process, we spoke about notetaking, we spoke about the difficulty to not forget. We downloaded Feeld. We had matches. One day a couple drove one hour to meet us. We spent the night together. 

Then Lauren, John, Sabine, Pontus, Anna-Lea with Mats, and Sandra with Kalle came over. Not all at once, in two rounds. One was like an extension of an old date taking advantage of a new setting, whilst finding each other in the entanglements of new limitations and partnerings. The other was like the extended family taking distance together from the usual base. Now we live in the same city as Sabine and she sometimes picks up Penélope from school and spends the night with her, while Adriano and I can catch up. Lauren brought us to New York where we are sharing our work in an institutional context after we invited Lauren to Maastricht where we started translating all this research into more public art practices.

Septiembre de 2021, Girona, Cataluña. Very different setting. Another villa in a rural area. A small village, not even one. I can’t remember the name but it was 30 minutes to the beaches, and 30 minutes to the closest town, Figueres. The poolfloor had a dolphin drawn with mosaic tiles. I was taking therapeutic sessions with a sexologist and Adriano and I started couple’s therapy. There were mosquitoes in the nights, and the trips to the beach felt intensely endless due to Penelope hating being in the car. We had to entertain her and adapt to her commanding needs every one second. My parents, sister with children, pregnant Mie with Jacob and Elna came by in two batches again. The round with my family was taken over by one of the family dynamics of that moment (my sister’s husband would like this, my partner thinks that, and the rest of us don’t not have the tools to disagree). Then the Danish family visit brought some clarity in what I would aspire for in terms of emotional communication and sustainable relationships. It made me feel vulnerable in mine and Adriano´ s choice for non-monogamy, nomadic and artistic entanglements with life. i could see how the day-job employment, the mortgage and the expectation of a second child gave them a sense of security. 

The family script of property, monogamy and living in one’s ‘home’ land, has some advantages after all. Apart from the sense of security I imagine that its way less bureaucracy and time packing and unpacking. On a relational and regarding the sense of security we needed other strategies. We were for instance very rigorous with keeping the same temporal rhythm each day, as we sensed that this made travelling much easier for Penélope. And probably the love and sexual experiments we took time for gave us some of the relational depth and security that a shared mortgage and nestbuilding might otherwise provide. 

When I look back at this time I question the relation to place these co-habitations cultivated. We definitely created and deepened bonds with our co-habitants who come from many different places. But does refusing fixed address and fixed community also lead to an irresponsible relation to the actual places we were? I mean in a certain way we were tourists, or digital nomads without tech-jobs. We gave back to a select group of people coming from different places, but what did we give back to the places we were? The villages and the local communities, probably not very much, maybe that would also be too much to expect from a maternity leave, hopefully it wouldn’t.