14th Meeting - Hotel Garderobe

For the past few days the sun has bombarded us with streams of photons, so we hid away in a dark hole in a half-abandoned building to conduct experiments. This time around the whittling-club was hosted by "Hotel Garderobe" - a secret cinema run by whittling-club member Adam in a hole through his wardrobe.

Specially made poster for 14th meeting

Photocopy hand-out and whittling by Jack.

Tooth by Jamie J J

Flower by Lawrence

Nothing

The Swedish writer Biger Vikström wrote in 1958 a short-story called 'En Kofés'. He describes a man who enters a lumber-workers camp and finds them busy at work whittling small objects. Surprised at the abandonment of usual activities like card-playing or story-telling, he asks the cook to explain what is going on. The cook says that they are whittling Kofés, which are objects that need to be executed following two rules:

A Kofés may look anyway.

A Kofés may not resemble anything but itself (it may not resemble any dead or living thing).

The challenge seems easy at first and the man gets totally absorbed whittling. The first rule is easy enough, but the second one starts to pose problems as the man cant keep forms from materializing in his piece. No matter what he does he keeps seeing limbs or objects take shape in the wood. He slowly realizes the futility of his attempt and gives up.

Cut of the week

This cut is not sustained from whittling. Jack´s quick development in the art of knife-sharpening has turned every blunt piece of metal into a razor. I was just cutting some lettuce.

Chairs show