CURATED BY CARL-OSKAR LINNÉ

“I think it was my fifth birthday. It was celebrated at Blåkullagatan, the third apartment that I had lived in. I remember my mother, my sister and I sitting around the kitchen table with a cream cake. I remember feeling sad whilst blowing out the candles on top of the cake, facing the wall where my mother had once spilled a large bottle of milk. To the left, there was a huge window through to another room, the living room, where I later kept my first bird, a yellow budgie called Jocke who died under unclear circumstances. My mother claims that I stressed the bird too much, I remember saying in my defence that I was just playing with him. The truth to this day is that I don’t know what happened, he passed away without anyone around, I found him after school lying perfectly still at the bottom of the cage.
Within a year he was replaced by two other budgies that I named Tea and Teo. I really don’t remember that much about them except that one was green and the other was blue and that they where a great disappointment. I did not find them anywhere near as amusing as Jocke, so a few years later we gave them away. With their new owner they grew to be considerably older than Jocke, and I really think it was a good trade for everyone involved. The very same wooden kitchen table is now kept in my brother’s kitchen. Every time I visit him I begin thinking about that apartment; the 50’s stone stairwell, the echoes of voices and people running up and down the stairs. I also think of the balcony from which I could see the tunnel where I once set fire to a dry grass field, and my first good friend, my neighbour Jovan, who I used to play videogames with. Twenty years later I secretly borrowed my friend’s Vespa whilst he was away, I was keeping an eye on his apartment , I decided to go off to see some more of his neighbourhood. After just a few minutes I found this project in the centre of the city where I misread the text on a window with balloons hanging from the kitchen lamp for “positivity”. That sad fifth birtday there where ballons hanging from the kitchen lamp was hanging just above me.

Zeus has got a point, sometimes it is your own stories that provide the greatest impact, but remember that they can come along when you read anything, not just your own stories.”