Format: residency

Topic: collective learning formats

Time: April 14–26, 2025

Place: Robida, Topolò

The Tablecloth.
Tablecloths can take many forms. But often, they are white. A tablecloth can conceal stains, protect sensitive wood and mark festive occasions. They can seem like a blank page. My white tablecloth already bears marks that won’t wash out. The ones my mother and grandmother use are spotless. Keeping them that way takes work — careful tending, repeated effort. A white tablecloth is a fragile companion. 

When is the right time for a white tablecloth?
How many guests make risking a white tablecloth worthwhile?

For me, white tablecloths are tied to a certain fear: they remember where I sat. I find myself quickly rearranging plates and glasses to cover the stains I left behind — only to be revealed later, after I’m gone, by the host. In this way, the tablecloth becomes a collector of traces: of shared meals, of celebration, of hours spent ironing, and — inevitably — of my own clumsiness. It carries the weight of all the pots and pans, plates and glasses; listens in on the conversations that unfold above it, and brushes gently against full bellies and sleepy guests. 

Perhaps the tablecloth isn’t so fragile after all, but rather a bearer of abundance — holding, gathering, and bringing people together.

Kartoffeldruck
(potato print or potato pressure) can be understood in three phases: the potato, the printing, and the afterlife.

1     the potato: This technique begins with noticing the shape of the potato — much like uncovering the wooden core before carving a spoon, a bowl, or perhaps a chicken, if that’s what reveals itself to you. After listening with curiosity, you carve out what the potato has to tell you. Each potato carries a unique truth, revealed during the process of printing. The process could therefore also be called potato truth. With this method, you commit to speaking the truth — to printing what is already there, waiting to be seen.

2     the printing: Cut a potato in half and carve into it what feels truthful to you. Apply paint to the surface, then press it firmly onto your chosen material. Keep in mind — the print will appear mirrored. 

Printing with potatoes creates wonky and imperfect shapes with irregular surfaces and blurred edges. It is therefore essential for practicing the unlearning of internalised perfectionism: the “tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what’s right” (Tema Okun, White Supremacy Culture). This pattern is rooted in and continuously shaping white supremacy culture. Unlearning perfectionism, the potato-printing way, means to trust the process, loosen the pressure and let oneself be surprised by the imprints, welcoming the unexpected. 

3     In the final stage of Kartoffeldruck, it’s important to honour the potato’s nourishing versatility. If you had to choose a single food to live on, the potato might be the perfect companion — you can boil it, roast it, make chips, gnocchi, soup, mashed potatoes, and even the peel has its appeal. What more could you ask for?

Muskelkater describes the feeling of sore muscles and translates to ‘a cat inside the muscle’ or ‘a musculous cat’. It shows up through repetition — uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill — and brings awareness to (un)familiar corners of your body. Some of these cats you might already know; others may become new companions. Either way, they demand attention.

In Topolò, these attention-seeking cats guide you not only through your body but also through the village. If you follow one for a while, it might lead you to unexpected encounters and new perspectives — and perhaps to Muskelkater the next day. The cats in Topolò might awaken muscles you’re not yet familiar with: hill muscles, carving muscles, weeding muscles — though for us, no bike muscles have been involved so far. They are physical traces of lived experience — reminders of where you’ve been, what you’ve done, and what your body is still learning.

As Sara Ahmed might suggest, Muskelkater could be understood as a (temporal) imprint — a lingering trace of knowledge, affect, and place in motion. Such experiences settle into the body and shape how we orient ourselves in relation to our surroundings — both human and non-human.

It’s often easier to sense these imprints when there are cats involved. Relaxed muscles hide well. So — how long do we have to stay before the musculous cats stop visiting us, before we truly know Topolò with our bodies?