Collective residencies / HUMANITIES / Olot
ERGA NETZ
From Monday, 12 September 2016 to Monday, 10 October 2016
Bio
Erga Netz (1957) started her professional life as a TV producer. Later she became a TV documentary director and in the last 10 years she’s producing theater performances and events. This was also the time when she started focusing on her writing, which she aims at making her sole occupation within a few years.
Project
Mrs. Gulliver’s Secrets, a novel in four parts, is an erotic, historical and satirical novel. It is introduced in the first voice of the woman who claims to have found the diaries of Mary Burton-Gulliver. In her diaries, Mary writes all the stories which Gulliver didn’t dare to publish in his Gulliver’s Travels (1726) because they would be considered at the time pornographic, and would have cost him his life. Mrs. Gulliver and the Secret of Size is complete. At FABER residency I’ll do final edits and will prepare it for weekly publication on the Internet, with numerous illustrations.
Mrs. Gulliver’s Secrets revealed in Olot
I feel as fortunate as Mary Gulliver did, when her husband, who was considered dead at sea, came back to her over 300 years ago, bringing with him the most amazing stories one can imagine.
Here, in a setting that feels as eternal as eternity, and maybe even longer, I dive into the soul of a rebellious woman and give her a voice that juggles realities and defies fantasies.
We’re seven residents in total, over a period of 4 weeks, pampered thoroughly in Riu Fluvià, where they spare no effort to make our stay both productive and inspirational.
They are successful.
Though I don’t join my colleagues in their long excursions on foot and by bike, I savor the views from my balcony and feel the landscapes seep through every pore; the warm weather – just warm enough for one who escaped the heat (physical, mental, moral) of Israel – comforts the yearning of one who has settled years ago in cool (physical, mental, moral) Netherlands.
In Olot and in the surrounding villages, history shows up on every street corner, alongside bustling 21st century images.
Over delicious – too delicious – dinners, I hear of the hiking adventures of my colleagues, and just like Mary Gulliver did with her husband’s tales of Lilliput, I am inspired by their life stories and weave them all into my whimsical interactive literary adventure.
Suspended in space and time, I bring a quirky story from a long forgotten history, and give it a modern jacket, a crooked jacket, smiling all along, and collecting the smiles of my test-readers from all over the globe.
I feel like a pioneer myself. As far as I know there’s no other novel set as an interactive reading experience in a website, which combines hard facts, ridiculous fiction, impudent satire and absurd eroticism.
Can’t wait to share Mrs. Gulliver and the Secret of Size with you, world!
2017, here we come!
