Project

New Project (2024)

[ONE DAY IN MY SISTER'S HOUSE] a Photography:

pictures by  © Nuril Basri, 2024

my nephew is in his bed playing a mobile game after finishing the prayer

hanging out in my niece's room, reading her diary of things she wants to have

the victim of TikTok's discounted cheap skin care...

my older sister told us she was exhausted as she had to get up very early to go to the wet market to buy the fish and cook it all day. she's virtually dating a guy from Pakistan. 

casually cool and cruel. in my sister's house, I found this jacket that I wore when I was talking at the Frankfurt book fair

my niece was praying. her room is the definition of a sinking Titanic  

I'm moulding something different.

A moody, chaotic personality, [perhaps the mirror image of the worst of yourself can be]: 

I'm serving myself on a plate. 
For you to feast on me.

 This year I'm just presenting myself, and if my writing (or you) wants to come along, I welcome it. 

I have been troubled accepting myself, my origin, and how my surroundings made me. 

Right now, I'm in need of just laying out what I truly am. Scattered, unorganized, and shameless [but still pretty?]. 

 I will present myself the way my muse knocks on my windows, and if it is unpleasant enough for your eyes, don't feast on it. 

Feast on your comfort.

Tomorrow this year I will recite bad poems, make them when I feel like it, take some pictures, and post them sporadically. I will show more of my skin (in the spirit of Nan Goldin with her work "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency"). Perhaps I will be forging some short stories, some anecdotes, a novel? About a loony in a city. I will lie and tell truths fearlessly.  All this is unplanned. Just examples. And I am my own project. This is the year of freedom of expression, not the year of being crestfallen. This is my new artistic statement, with my artistic temperament. 

just
Feast
 on
 me.

Photograph project: THE WILDER STORIES OF LOVE, June 2024 [click the title]

past project (2023)

Hello, I'm Nuril. 

Or you can call me Casper, the friendly bandit.

"You Japonese? Chinese? Tunisia? Pakistani?"
"I'm Indonesian, Sir."

"The Sewer Rat, expiring in the glow of a telly."

I'm writing an autofiction. 

Through my lens. Looking at lives, people, cities and more of myself, during this season of my life I called 'on the road': a working-class writer from the corner of Java island discovering things in the streets of Europe and Africa.

This project for the novel was started with the help of AIR Litteratur Vastra Gotaland, part of the Gothenburg UNESCO City of Literature writers residency program, in Sweden. 

I made my way to continue the journey to steal stories by sleeping on the benches, asking for a roof from strangers and support from friends on my Patreon.

The working title is the sequel to "The Sewer Rat" (published in French under "Le Rat d'egout" -Perspective Cavaliere, 2023)

.

"Why did you steal from the poor? These guys must have small dicks."

Here is a human story:

I started in Gerlesborg, Tanum, in Sweden. Learning my worth. Making new friendships.

"I cannot witness pain. Witnessing pain was very painful for me. And for me, the only way to subdue the pain was not to medicate the wound─because it was impossible─but to just eliminate the source of the pain altogether. I felt like the death of my mother would be like amputating a rotten limb from my body."

- excerpt from chapter 4.

Sachertorte

To Vienna to have a plate of cake with daddy Freud.

"Have a toast with me, but with a sweet blackcurrant tea."

To Istanbul, Turkiye, to write a chapter called "Oto-man" (was it the Ottoman? or "Auto-man?" The notion of myself as a vessel). Read this chapter here.

"Masallah, what you do is haram, brother."

Dehydrated in the desert.

"I don't have any lover,
I spent too much time in the Sahara, messing about with camels so that I eventually forgot how human relationships actually work."
(The Sewer Rat)

Sold myself for dirhams in Essaouira.

"In Morocco, sex is cheap."

"But I Indonesia, I not Morocco."

And to tell you the tale of my life in my village in Java.

This project will end when I have the first draft. Maybe today maybe next year. Only clouds could tell where I'm going to dream tomorrow. Maybe I'll be swimming in your head, because you can't stop wondering about me. I'm thinking about you too. So don't worry. You're invited to my journey.  

More samples of the novel are in my Patreon, together with my journal while I'm on the road. 

Days elapsed from when I left the village: 80 (by 25 Dec 2022)

Update:

The journey on the road has ended on the 31st January 2023. Making it about 117 days, or 3 months 25 days. Currently I'm in Tangerang, back in the small rent room and writing the draft. Full post soon.

*if you're publisher or literary agent interested in reading more, please send me a message.

Pictures by: 

© Sam Jenks & © Keanuril Basreeves, 2022