“The maid who lives in the attic room above me can barely make it down the stairs any longer. She has been in my service for twenty years, so I can hardly dismiss her. But all night I hear the creak of her bedsprings as she tosses about, unable to sleep. The room is too small, her back bent from stooping. Her little mouse feet scutter about the floor nervously. She does not know where to go. I can call on her to do nothing. I imagine her growing younger in sleep, growing younger, until one day footsteps are heard on the attic stairs, and  a small child enters my room and draws the curtain.”

So begins this haunting stay at the Hotel Ortolan. We are drawn in slowly, seduced by the poetic text. We are at turns frightened, amused, disoriented. We move through these rooms, these impossible spaces like captive guests. The hotel itself cannot possibly exist, and yet evidence lies before us in a series of evocative photographs by Michel Varisco.

We invite you to experience this surrealist collaboration.

Your room is waiting…

Hotel Ortolan
Text by Tom Whalen /  photographs by Michel Varisco
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 19
Edition of 125 copies.  $12.50

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