Arts Lab 6.0: Luca Horváth - Month 4

Hello Big Bună Ziua everyone!

Another month has passed, a month full of trying to sleep on the train or bus, trying to get over sickness, meeting up with familiar faces, spending time with my family, playing video games carefree, annoying my cat and, art.

I spent the first half of the month being sick and I was recovering very slowly, thankfully every one of my colleagues were understanding and checked up on me regularly, which was very heart-warming.  I was taking a lot of rest in bed; I even skipped the real Christmas Market that we did and the library exhibition in order to have enough energy to attend the MAF exhibition we held in the café Negru Zi. This exhibition I personally found really nice, I like the atmosphere of the café and I liked that our performers had a proper stage to show off their talents.

On the next day we revealed who was the Secret Santa to who and gave even more gifts to each other, it was amazing. Unfortunately, I was already really stressed at this point, because not even 30 minutes later I already had to leave the house and rush to the train station to catch my train to Cluj Napoca. From Cluj, I took the bus to Budapest, where my dad and my brother were waiting for me. Except… I never told them about my haircut, my new jacket or the fact that I was wearing a mask. I stood in front of my dad and he didn’t recognize me, which was really funny to me. My mom had a similar reaction when I finally arrived home after 24+ hours of travelling.

It was really sweet to be home, this is the first time I was away for a longer period of time. It was strange seeing my table covered with a white sheet so that it doesn’t get dusty, my bed not having a blanket and pillows, things like that. I almost felt like a guest in the home I grew up in, but at the same time, a lot of things stayed the same. We celebrated Christmas together with my family and later that week I spent time reconnecting with my friends.

The next few days I spent a lot of time just having fun, no stress, playing games, making a bracelet, going on walks and by the time I blinked twice, it was already 2025 and in 3 days, I had to return to Târgu Frumos. It was strange how I bought the exact same tickets I did 3.5 months ago but this time I knew exactly what to expect and where I was going, yet I was still really stressed and cried my eyes out just by thinking about leaving again. 

To everyone’s greatest pleasure at ACT House, my mom baked gingerbread for us to eat, so when I arrived in the house, I put them into a bowl and the next morning that bowl was already empty. Returning to the house was difficult, that excitement that I felt in September and October was not there this time, all I could think about was that “I have to go back to work”. Even though it’s the best work I’ve ever done, I still felt like I could’ve used one more week of vacation. Having to cook for myself again significantly reduced the quality of the meals I have.

On the first week of being officially back at the project, we jumped right into MARr, and this time we started with the personal artworks. For me, this meant I had to force an idea out of myself because nothing came naturally and then struggling to self-discipline. I got very used to not working in the past 2 weeks, I found it very difficult to work on my personal artwork. I also tried a new approach and mindset with this artwork and figuring out how it will function exactly was also difficult. 

I’m really excited about the next month, we will have the Mid-term training in Bucharest and some extra free days afterwards, more exhibitions and Cucuteni.

Report written by Luca Horváth, she's from Hungary and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.