Artistic residency on Tove Jansson's island

Dear Friend,

“If I could wish something good for someone, I would wish for them an island with no address.” — Tove Jansson

The adventure

Have you ever dreamt of staying on a desert island? With no wifi, no running water, no electricity?

What would you do there?

Me, I would write.

Will you help me, please, to get there?

I am Katalin Trencsényi, a London-based theatre-maker. With my project, entitled Palimpsest on Haru, I won a rare artistic residency to spend a week alone on the island of Klovharun (Haru) in the Baltic Sea, from 8-15 July 2024. This is the island where Tove Jansson, the creator of the Moomin stories and her artist partner Tuulikki Pietilä spent their time for nearly thirty years.

This is my fundraiser towards this artistic residency to kick-start my site-responsive new writing on Haru.

The fundraiser

Building on the success that my previous play achieved at a national drama competition in Hungary, this prestigious residency is a good opportunity for me to continue writing and realise a project I cannot do elsewhere: to create a new piece of work, inspired by this very special place, its habitat and layered stories.

Having tried for a year to secure funding for this work with no result, I am launching this fundraiser to raise the rental (€800) and media permission fees (€400), so that I can create and share my new work with the wider public.

Your contribution will cover approximately half of the expenses, I’ll pay for the other half, including research, equipment, transport of equipment, land-travel, water travel, and everything else that I’ll need in order to live safely for a week alone on this remote island.

The artwork

Through the direct connection with the island of Haru, I aim to reframe ('rewild') elements of Jansson’s work that I feel are often overlooked but highly precious. Subtler topics in her writing such as aging, mortality, gentle presence in nature, and the rhythms of lived life often remain invisible but are nevertheless a crucial part of a fragile ecology. Superimposed on these themes I would like to tell the many other stories this island holds.

In preparation for this adventure, I am rewilding aspects of my own practices: learning to attune to the wind, the moss, the sea, the hut on Klovharun, the shoreline. Not as a tourist, who extracts entertainment and takes souvenirs to retell their version of the dominant narrative, but to approach this island’s many voices and Jansson’s writings with thoughtfulness, presence, curiosity, attunement, and spontaneity.

Although I am a published author, up till now, there was a separation in my writing: I wrote my academic work in English and my literary and dramatic works in Hungarian. This time, I would like to challenge myself to write in the language that I adopted when migrating to the UK twenty-five years ago. It seems apt to use my adopted language for writing when musing on an island that is a place where the Siberian migrating birds stop for a rest on their journey towards south.

This week on Haru will challenge me mentally and physically, but I hope the findings will result in a unique piece of writing.

Our relationship

Upon return from Haru, I will send you a letter, illustrated with photos I took at the island — so you will have first-hand experience of my week in solitude shared with the habitat, memories, histories and ghosts of the past of the outermost island in the Gulf of Finland.

If you wish so, we can further stay in touch, and every now and then I will also update you on the development of this new artwork, which I intend to complete a year after this residency.

If you consider supporting my work, please be assured, there is no small contribution — every donation will bring me one step closer to writing Palimpsest on Haru.

Thank you for supporting my work.

Yours,

Katalin

PS: If you want to read my essay on Jansson’s Summer Book, which is set on such an island, published in the Hungarian literary journal Élet és Irodalom, you can find it here: Meditáció egy sziget mikrokozmoszáról / "Meditation on a Microcosm of an Island".