HABITAT:DAY 17

HABITAT – Yering Station, 2016

Flossie Peitsch

The Last Leg

 

Neal Nuske and Flossie have been in dialogue vis-à-vis her art practise – casually, since 1975 and intensely, since 2004. A monoped since the age of twelve, Neal takes special interest in HABITAT and its featuring of various disconnected and ‘poised’ legs. Neal offered to contribute his own no-longer-used ‘detachable, bogus leg’. This proposal presented a problem.

Peitsch received the following email from Neal (now edited) soon after she arrived home from a recent, demanding overseas trip….

‘Bad luck about the snubbing welcome from your faithful and loving dog. So much for the notion of canine faithfulness and love. You sound discombobulated, ethnically confused, and suffering from nationalistic uncertainty, badly in need of an existential compass which works.

 

My only struggle has been trying to fit my other leg in a box. I went to a box factory which looked at me askance when I told them I wanted to post my leg to Melbourne. It was only then they looked down and realised I had been defeeted. They offered to reorganise their box making machinery to cut-out a box to suit. When I asked them the cost to do a special run in this gigantic, industrial type, (expletive), box-making factory, it became clear they could cover all their overdraft and back-dated superannuation bills in one sale. The salesperson smiled sweetly and was in no way aware of how close she came to being stuffed into one of their miserable and inadequate boxes and posted forthwith to New Zealand.

 

 

It was also the day I got horribly lost in the industrial area of Brisbane, a simple trip took me two hours. When I asked Australia Post how much it would cost to post one leg to Melbourne it soon became clear that nowhere at all on their filing system did such a postal category exist, the system jammed. I felt lost, alone, isolated and disjointed in the cosmos, without even a dog which had the honesty and integrity to reject me. ’

 

Such is life. With mirthful pathos, this story in itself, recapitulates the essence of HABITAT.  Once again, for these words, Peitsch admits that she owes Neal.

MY DOG PRISCILLA WHO SNUBBED ME WHEN I RETURNED HOME AFTER HAVING LEFT HER.
MY DOG PRISCILLA WHO SNUBBED ME WHEN I RETURNED HOME AFTER HAVING LEFT HER.

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