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THE LAND CHAPTER 5

Beatrix (Bix) Fife

THE LAND in English
2020.03.21

Collage and acrylic on paper 14×10 cm

 

When I lie down, I often fall into the black gap between the memories of my life before and the images of my life now. My body feels so heavy and I cannot do anything. One day, I feel it coming.

Might it help to draw something? Maybe I should try to represent the sea, as my friend was doing.

I start to trace a few lines with a pencil, on a piece of paper, realizing that my hand holding the pencil is the same hand that tries sometimes to play the piano in a slow inner rhythm.

I look at the pencil, at the hand, at the paper and at the grey colour of my pencil supposed to represent the blue sea. They all start flickering in front of my eyes. Too tired to continue, I put down the pencil and lie down on the blue carpet of the room.

The sky is blue, another blue than the sea.

The blue carpet under me is yet another hue.

My pencil is grey.

There is an indefinite number of lines I can choose to draw, which makes me confused.

Should I use the pencil or a blue colour pencil ? All messed up and at the same time emptier and emptier inside, asking myself more and more what to do, I become unable to move.

Stumbling into the darkness of my own emptiness, as if there was a path further into myself, a voice inside tells me to continue.

Exhausted, I fall asleep on the blue carpet.

Beatrix (Bix) Fife
Beatrix (Bix) Fife プロフィール

Born in Stockholm, Bix grew up in Rome in a Norwegian, British and Italian family, speaking 3 languages. At the age of 7, her family moved to Paris, where she completed her secondary studies in French schools and also learned to play the classical flute.

While studying at university and management school in Oslo she also started to paint and to do theatre. She was a trainee for 6 months in NYC at the New Dramatists’ studio. She then studied art in Oslo and at the Fine Arts Academy of Budapest. In 1990 she won a prize in an art competition in Austria, giving her the opportunity to come to Japan. In Kyoto, she studied Japanese calligraphy and worked with performance art between 1995 and 1999, with philosopher Michael Lazarin and musician Mamoru Katagiri (Marki) and played music for dance companies in the Kansai area from 1997 to 1999. She moved to Brussels in 1999 continuing to paint, to exhibit works and to give concerts. As well as learning to play jazz at the Music Academy of Brussels, she played in the Bix Medard electropop group and founded the Brussels Language Activities, school of language and culture. She received a Master’s degree in Sciences du Langage at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, in 2008.

After moving back to Tokyo in 2010 she started Bix&Marki, a musical duo of original French songs. Bix is a painter, a singer, a musician and a linguist. She sings, plays the flute and writes the lyrics of all the Bix&Marki songs. While working on her music and painting, Bix teaches French at universities, specializing in role-play and language through art and personal expression.