LOCKDOWN DIARY PART 7. MEL & STEPH HAUSBERGER
Our plan for Spring 2020 was to be in Milan where we can stay at a friend’s house with a huge studio to work on large scale paintings. But obviously we couldn’t go there, so since early March we are stuck here in the Tyrolean alps, where our family lives and where we grew up. But we would lie to say we don’t enjoy it too - it’s really beautiful here. Because of Corona the ski area had to prematurely close and all the tourists are gone way earlier than usual. So its really quiet here which can be nice for a while and good for focus but we are beginning to miss some motion and movement...
We get up embarrassingly late (we are trying to change that...) but we also stay up embarrassingly late. For some reason we tend to get quite productive in the night hours. In New York, where we lived for more than 5 years it was fine, everything just starts later than here in Austria and of course it ends way later too.. So in fact, it was a benefit to not be tired at night. We both love the time of the day when the sun slowly goes down, the Golden Hour in NY - earlier in the day the light can just be a bit too bright for our eyes...
On some days, as soon as we get up (and yes, we get up at the same time, actually we are tired or hungry always at the same time. It’s quite rare that we don’t. Probably, to some degree, goes back to being twins…) we go outside. We are surrounded by great hiking trails but in the last weeks it wasn’t allowed to use them. But we have our favourite routes, and walk those. It’s super important to us to have our ipods with us - by now there is a huge collection of music on it.
On the other days, we try to climb creative mountains instead of the physical ones.
Right now we work on lots of drawings, we either work on one together or we switch around. Though we have our own apartment we set up a table in a corner at our parents house. We enjoy being surrounded by them and other members of our family, making conversations while also, for the better or worse, getting some work done.
Usually, we have spoken about the theme and the ideas behind them and sometimes we choose the colors before, but most of the time we very much work by intuition. We tend to do the work which needs to be done on the computer more at night. So generally, as artists, our schedule didn’t really change since the crisis started. But everything around of course did.
We have the same taste with food of course too. We like simple food, nothing too exotic. And we tend to eat according to the place we are. So in Austria, it’s Austrian food. Something we eat a lot here (which is a couple of times a week…) is a sweet dish called Topfenknödel. It’s basially sweet curd cheese dumplings, covered with caramelized bread crumbs and cinnamon (recipe below). We often eat it with stewed plums.
Our love for sweet foods gets balanced out by lots of vegetables. Even as kids, we prefered vegetables over other foods. We also like to eat meat (knowing it comes from a good source), and Gulasch is also one of our classics. Though we eat completely different when we are in New York where our diet is almost macrobiotic with Souen and lots of japanese food, or in Milan, where Gelato places and La Latteria is around the corner, the Tyrolean kitchen and especially our Mum’s, will always be our favourite.
Recipe “Topfenknödel”
(12 small dumplings)
350gr Topfen (farmer cheese or curd cheese)
50gr Butter
100gr Breadcrumbs ( we use spelt flour instead)
100gr Butter
1 Egg Yolk
2 Eggs
optional: 2 spoons of powdered sugar, lemon zest;
for the garnish:
220gr Butter
130gr Bread Crumbs
Powdered Sugar
Mix all the ingredients for the dough together and rest the dough in the fridge for at least an hour.
Form small dumplings and let them simmer in boiling water with a pinch of salt for around 15 minutes.
For the garnish, melt the butter in a pan. Add the breadcrumbs, flavour with cinnamon, and fry until golden yellow in colour.
Lift the dumplings out of the water, roll carefully in buttered breadcrumbs, sprinkle with icing sugar and serve.
And - quarantine or not - we watched a lot of films and TVseries.
Films we (re)watched during quarantine:
The Piano Teacher by Haneke
Fat Girl by Catherine Breillat
A nos Amours by Maurice Prielat
Opening Night John Cassavetes
Parasite by Bong Joon Ho
Lara by Jan-Ole Gerster
Normal People (TV Series)
The Americans (TV Series)
among others...
Music we listen to at the moment while drawing/painting or hiking:
- "Inner City Blues “ Marvin Gaye
- “Dreams" Fleetwood Mac
- "You dont know know how it feels" Tom Petty
- “Luka" Suzanne Vega
- "Trying to get to you" Elvis Presley
- "Hold On" Wilson Philipps
- Tracy Chapman “One more reason"