8pm. Without really talking about it we begin an impromtu cleaning of the dirty sticky-taped windows: methylated spirits and newspaper our weapons of choice. It's tough, but we're determined. We switch to cloudy ammonia after 30 mins of heavy duty scrubbing, and several metho spills. We continue this for another 2 hours.
It becomes a performance in itself. The more we keep at it, the more we see its value. We are learning the intricacies of the relationship between adhesive and glass. Our eyes sting and our fingers burn. Occasionally one of us will stop, thinking of giving up, but the others continue, and it becomes an obsessive determination, we are united as a group, silently labouring over the window. It is a cloudy ammonia dance! We move between indoors and outdoors, we are sometimes face-to-face, separated by the window, silently motioning to each other without realising as we clean. I can't stop! Long periods of quiet. There is a rythm. We swap specific cleaning techniques. We are up on ladders and down on the ground. We look like 'graffidiots' doing community service. "Missed a spot!" some bright spark yells from his car.
at 10.30 we stop and collapse inside, exhausted.
remembering what we intended to do that night, I do a quick live overhead projection with paint and water before we go home, but in my mind the cloudy ammonia was the standout event of the evening.
Laura summarised our collective post-ammonia hangover best: "i was worse for wear this morning possibly due to all the cloudy ammonia i inhaled during our two hour window cleaning ''performance'' last night"
Never thought i'd be voluntarily cleaning windows in the name of art!
Anna went to the steam room this morning to detox
3 comments:
I think if you use a hair dryer to soften the adhesive a little, it'd come off a little easier.
ehhh! great idea! thanks anonymous!
Ladies, just doing that has already changed the landscape of that part of the street.
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