Calibration targets

  This week we landed in Kanaleneiland to take in its social and built landscape for Expodium’s Sneak Week in preparation for a project to be realized in June. It is indeed expansive.

Jasper and I set out to find a way to mediate between the 1:1 scale of the street level experience and the scale of the master-plan of this massive housing project. Built in the 1960’s this neighborhood was already condemned as a failure however, morning till night what struck us was how quiet it actually was and the ways that the plan still provides basic functionality for its residents. This was one perennial antinomy of many.

We decided our work must find a way of binding up the scales and registers at play in this area. We found ourselves on the IRC chat of the UAPV project, an open-source unmanned aerial vehicle ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR5y8qZf0Y ). Visiting three mosques in the area brought to bear the way that the latent Islamic aesthetics play out in the communal and national pressure to clarify identity.  Visiting libraries we photographed books on desert expanses to concrete cosmic Soviet architecture and from modernist sculpture to traditional geometric ornament. These images were duly recorded for reference but the process of making them meant they would become ingredients in our concoction.

It occurred to us today how much our role resembles the feature of  the Calcutec, from Murakami’s novel (Hard boiled wonderland - the book I have under my pillow at the moment). The Calcutec has been trained to use his subconscious as an encryption key. The Calcutecs work for the quasi-governmental System, as opposed to the criminal "Semiotecs" who work for the Factory and who are generally fallen Calcutecs. The relationship between the two groups is simple: the System protects data while the Semiotecs steal it, although it is suggested that one man might be behind both. Converting the world into codes, corrupting the production of meaning. We eventually delve forever into the world that has been created in our subconscious mind.

One could say that the Calcutec is similarly detached from society. He prefers being alone, drinking whiskey, listening to music, and reading old novels by dead authors.

We did often go outside though, as the public area’s between the high-rise housing blocks at Kanaleneiland were the domain from which we were supposed to extract information. Information like the status of the weather, the amount of people on the streets, the cat meowing at night, the arrangement of receivers mounted on balconies, the various languages in which the word w e l c o m e is spelled out above the main entrance throughout the street, the peculiar design and cryptical functionality of the devices set up at playgrounds… the age-level of kids making obscure deals when leaning against these structures... etc. etc.

Digestion meant that the key points of interconnection did indeed arise. We found that the term ‘Horror Vacui’  was used for both open-space between the housing blocks and the last Orientalist reading of Islamic geometrical ornamentation. This translates to the fear of empty-space. Caravan’s crossing the endless sands finally arrived at city centers or sarais to feel the presence of being- social or divine. The space between the stacked dwellings became a place of dark possibility. We chose not to treat this concurrence as mere coincidence.

Our brains filtered though photo-archives of the city, picking up on a vision of an architectural future that now lays far behind us. Floating through computer renderings of a reality yet unknown, but ideal. We flipped through books on monuments in Timboektoe and Teheran, untitled modernist public sculptures and geometric patterns in the undulating fields of Morroco and those with which we imprint the land under our shoes. 

This week of encounter and inquiry brought Jasper and I into agreement that the contradictions of this place should not be smoothed over by ‘picking sides’ or by making ourselves useful in ways that seemed hardly appropriate. Instead we decided that we would bind up these contradictions in a work that incorporates a variety of perspectives at once. A work that absorbs all the narratives constructed to explain and explain-away the monumental construction that is Kanaleneiland.

The paradoxes of IKEA

As we stroll along through the film sets of IKEA, where everyday life seems to be waiting to take place; as we open the curtains to look through the windows where there is no outside; as we thirstily open the taps where no water ever runs: We try to break through the suspension of disbelief.

Semiotics can be a useful tool when trying to break through the fourth wall of a theater play.  But as we start reading it seems IKEA has created another diversion, the use of paradoxes.

We take acting crazy seriously.

Cheap but not at all costs.

Our wooden boards are your specialty.

The smallest price tag demands then most thinking.

There are always special offers at IKEA.

Great ideas for small spaces.

With the curtains closed, you'll have a better view.

Even the prettiest design is worthless, when it's not affordable.

We design mattresses for people who are awake.

Can the use of paradoxes be a clue in our quest for what IKEA is? A way out of the  dilemma of on the one side a corporate identity which says: " Democracy for all!" and on the other side a very obscure power structure, which protects it's decisions and expenses in a clamshell of affiliates and subdivisions?

NIGHT WALKERS #7 / Skinny Love

I stayed last night at the Auriollan apartment cause of the NIGHTWALKERS#7. 

We envited people to bring their own tea-cup ad promised to fill it up with warm tea. Starting this time inside, we screen a series of youtube videos related to tea drinking, we shared stories about how we got each tea-cup and walked in the park for an outdoors cup of tea. 

Eight people attended including me. Again not much but we are not quitting! It makes total sense to go on and Norna, Mai Lihnh, Calrijn and Koen are as persistent as I am. 

We scheduled  Night Walks all the way till February and we announced them as a WINTER EDITIONS. 

Designed by Norna Ross

We additionally created a survey for all of the attendants of NIGHTWALKERS sessions.  You can find it and fill it in here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L6VRMLZ

THIS MORNING

I woke up to post the group photo on the NightWalkers facebook group and put on some music. 

Strangely enough one of the neighbors is listening to same song as I!  I can hear it from the walls but cannot determine where exactly it comes from! Is it from upstairs? 

I posted an update on the Weiland 8 group on facebook asking to reveal him/herself if he/she sees this. 

I connected my laptop to the speakers and played the song again. I bet he/she can hear it from the walls. 

I could of course go out and knock the door of my neighbors. Could I? I guess I could. I am not doing it. 

I guess it's not one of my male neighbors. The song is too 'soft' to like if you are a macho guy. 

Stereotype after stereotype I exclude the next door neighbor, the girl on the apartment on the left with her boyfriend and so on.... 

Pretty lame way of going around it, I know! I bet a couple of years ago listening to that type of music coming from next door would have been quite a surprise. or wouldn't it? just thinking out loud. 

Is that the face of gentrification? Is that breaking stereotypes or building new ones?  

I get worried about it. 

Birdy music started again coming from the walls.

Hacks

waiting for the restaurant to open

It starts to feel like work. We notice some people who come here every day. And they notice us too.
There are the city workers, who, we suspect, check in at their work and then go directly to IKEA to have breakfast.
There is the elderly Greek looking man, who seems to wear make-up, who brings his own additions to the breakfast. Under a serviette he hides a tupperware container with feta and olives.
The woman who looks like a librarian, who always brings a book or a newsletter.
The group of 7 who all come by themselves to meet up here, always on the same table. Two of the women are bald.
And there are these Turkish looking men who look at us very conspicuously. They seem to be talking about us, do they know we are spies? But aren't we also part of this?

From an artistic point of view, it's interesting that the IKEA breakfast is such a participatory project: You fetch and combine your own breakfast and you clean up after yourself. In a lot of places there are messages like: "make yourself comfortable, grab a baby seat".
When a message asks for a certain behavior, there is always an explanation. For example: "When you clean up after yourself, we can keep your breakfast cheap."
Or: "When you keep the toilets clean, we can offer you low prizes."  The latter one is stuck on the bathroom mirror, so you can read it and look at yourself at the same time.

Because there is no surveillance in the restaurant, except for the man collecting the racks of used serving trays, we notice that people have developed hacks for the breakfast.
Of course when the second cup of coffee or tea is free, you can also take a third. Now what you do when you first had a cup of coffee and then you want tea from the same cup is: you press the button for tea, but instead of filling the cup, you rinse it with the hot water. When i's clean, you simply push the button again to fill it up.

If you can have a cheap breakfast, why not have a cheap lunch? Some people prepare and pack up their lunch, same as their breakfast.

Like the Greek, to bring your own additions, to lively up your breakfast and bring in some variation.

And when your breakfast is finished, instead of following the arrows through the whole store, you simply wave your hand in front of the laser and exit through the entrance.

half-way-Wednesday

We're starting to become real breakfast professionals.
Today we discover that early in the morning there are not only white, but also brown mini-buns. I feel a certain thrill while I help myself to this early bird delight. Then I have to stop and wonder; when have I stopped observing and started participating in this IKEA experience? In just two days we have created our own little rituals: One of us looks for a good location in the restaurant while the other collects the breakfast. When other people leave, we move up towards the more wanted seats near the window in the sun. As we will notice again and again today: It is not easy to look at IKEA without being absorbed by it.

We decide to spend the rest of the day in IKEA; to spend 12 hours inside the store without buying anything. 
The first difficulty we encounter is that when we walk around, we immediately get drawn to this or that product in the racks, saying:  "Wow, this is really well thought of.", or: "This is just outright crap!". We try to look at IKEA's cultural and political influences, but all we see are products which look nicely designed and consumer friendly.

We decide to follow customers and try to look through their eyes, in this way creating a distance between us and the products. Our first unknowing victim is a middle aged man with a long brown coat, who is apparently looking for a new kitchen. He is opening and closing cupboards to feel the click. Slowly his hand slides over the sink, smooth and warm: it looks like stone, but it is made out of chipboard.
Looking from a distant living room, we see him opening the fridge and looking for a beer. It is almost like in a dream, like he projects his own life in this filmset-like environment. Could I imagine coming home to a place like this? How would it feel and how would that life be?

Maybe this is a reason why it is so hard to look at IKEA, it doesn't feel like a store, it's more like visiting a fictional person or a lot of fictional persons, which could be you. Instead of a customer you feel more like a guest and it's not easy to critically question your host.
Also the feeling that the environment is not real, but more like a dream state, makes it harder to perceive  IKEA as company that actually influences it's environment.

At 18.00 h, after 9 hours of IKEA we are too tired to even try looking through the surface and with another 3 opening hours to go, we allow ourselves to go home. Without buying anything.

Letters to Verónica: Believe in magic

Note: Names have been changed to preserve personal privacy.

Verónica answers: 26^th November 2011

(Letter 2: V. Answers)

Su!

I’m very exhausted and your letter made me feel like crying. I feel a “YES” to everything you say concerning magic and fairy tales. Coincidences enchant me. I call angels those people who arrive to relieve me or coinciding to my needs in each moment of distress. From September until now I had many visits from angels. So my happiness is in good shape. It’s just a question of resisting from trying to hold them. Because angels come and go and are happy as happy as us to see them being angels.

“Believe that it is on it’s way” it’s all I can tell you about my magic formula. You know that already.

Tomorrow I will paint the bus stop. I will paint people’s houses during summer, right now I will only design the drawings, that might be simple so that people will feel that they have capacity to paint them, or even re-invent them. 

Yes, I have to believe the project and get out of my comfort zone. Painting walls for me is out of my comfort zone. To paint, the brush, the wall and the paint are some of the most sensual discoveries that I had recently. The will and the slowness like caressing a body, that’s the brush on the wall. It’s magic. I can only wonder how is that someone who used to paint can stop doing it. I still haven’t explored the colour since I have to follow the existing one so when I will discover that this caressing leaves a trace of colour… I will freak out!

I’m scared I anticipate a storm.

Yesterday I saw the sunset in a very horizontal line of trees that seats in the top of the village. The sky was pink. I thought about you. If I wouldn’t be running to pick up the acetates to make a mask, I would have written you a text. Now it’s here.

I really liked reading you. I will practice painting like the Indians from the articles I sent you. I’m sure here technical rigor is an aesthetic criterion. I have to fill in the local needs.

I love the coincidence of the girl you talked is also involved in a project of wall painting there. It seems another friend from the group. (Forgive me the freedom) and tomorrow I will paint “Don’t come late” the fado in the bus stop. Today I will have a couple meetings so I will have to postpone the apinting and only do a few tests.

I really like you. The story of the fado and the shoes reminds me of the duck care taker. Yesterday I saw Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev. I’d love to see José e Pilar. I would also love to be a business woman, I guess I’m terrible in management I really admire you; now you’re really growing up…and I’d like to end leaving you with a poem that you already know but that shows how I feel, I feel like this child:

The function of art / 1

Diego did not know the sea. The father, James Kovadloff led him to

Discover.

Trip south.

She, the sea, was beyond the high dunes, waiting.

When the boy and his father finally reached those heights of sand,

After much walking, the sea burst before their eyes.

And so great was the intensity of the sea, and its light, that the child was moved from

Beauty.

And when I finally managed to speak, trembling, stammering, he asked his

Parent:

! Help me seeing!

Kisses and good luck for the next few days!

V

I now answer the questions from your email:

Read bellow

November 25th, 2011

Location: Rotterdam

8:07 pm

(Letter 1: Su writes)

Dear V.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t answer your emails before, I will answer a couple of things at once…I don’t know if it still goes on time…I won’t publish your images, their yours, it’s your research and your work, I don’t want to invade that. I still think you should try more fonts. And I don’t see what’s wrong with heterogeneity. I find the text beautiful, it reminds me of the Book of Embraces.

:)  Why?

(Letter 2: V. Answers)

 I think it’s nearly for you to decide what to do with them. Just collect them. Trust your project and trust that you have to do what you have to do, you can’t guess what is going to be the result. And after painting you see, and you’ll keep seeing and finding things. Give it time.

You’re so right

Get out of your comfort zone. No fear. Ah, and you didn’t tell me: you painted the little house that was on TV, the bus stop and now you’ll paint the houses from the locals, right? And can you continue the project after the end of the residency?

It will be during summer

I loved your description of doing the painting and the amyor that was a hip hop dancer ahahah too good! Which are the pictures that you want me to send you as postcards?

Your favorite ones

I’d like you to send them to the cloister, if it’s all right

In fact I don’t know when I will sleep there again, I think it would be a good way for them to know you and how close you are to the project

It’s my way to introduce you.

You have the blog, I’d have the postcards

I guess I’d also like to have you here and not only in my head or by email

Think about it and tell me what you think

Otherwise it can also be my address in Lisbon

http://www.oficinasdoconvento.com/ (check here while I was looking for the address)

Where to? Now this is a bit hectic but of course I will make some time for that. Would you like me to publish those? I like the reactions of people, the Santa Claus plus the other one that was afraid you’d paint her house without permission ahaahah!Like a spy, in late night ahah! 

So much to say…

Were you sad that your tandem left?

Yes. I really liked to be with him this last time and he showed me that he liked as well. And that if he wouldn’t have gone back something else could have happened but it’s ok it was one more angel

Do you miss Lisbon? 

no

My news…last weeks I had a lot to do and couldn’t focus on writing you. Well, where to start…so many thoughts…So I went to the Fado schip. I worked on Saturday. It’s fun to be on a boat and also because it’s something I never done before. It was very tiring because on Saturday I was the centre of attention at the same time I was trying to focus on learning all the details. For being on a boat everything as a place and everything as a specific way of being done to be functional. The owner of the boat is learning Portuguese and she was also curious to meet me so we used every little pause to chat in Portuguese. A strong woman. Then there was her son, that must be around 15, the captain, a kind of entertainer that speaks on the microphone and immediately introduced the crew to the audience, explaining that I was Portuguese and that I couldn’t speak Dutch: it immediately sounded exotic to the clients, then another man that is like the chef, and that was making sure I was doing everything right but at the end was also smiling a lot coming to me with some Spanish words, asking if it was Portuguese. I made a bit of everything. When I was serving at the tables, making a huge effort to make the best use of the three sentences I can say in Dutch, clients were delighted by that kind of “so cute she can say that”, well at the end I was exhausted. Its’ hard work, but at the same time I feel like a character, I assume that and try to do my best and to take the best out of it. My night ended watching a movie, from which I can only remember a close-up of Jude Law’s face with the glasses of an aviator and I fell asleep on the sofa with this heaven’s image.

:)  I like the image

The lady asked me to make the flyer and I was working on that during the week. It was fun and I realized how easy it is for me to create an image that communicates a Portuguese environment, it’s just so natural, it sounds stupid but I was surprised. That part is great. From the other part time job they haven’t called yet, which was actually good because I had so much to do this week…I went to the accountant to learn how taxes work here: it’s incredible to think that what I really have to learn from this country is to be a businesswoman, something that I never learned in Portugal, I guess our culture doesn’t help. Well, and last Thursday I also started my Dutch classes with Diana, a Portuguese friend that lives here for a while and speaks very well, private classes is very, very good, a lot faster. She says that as I learnt German, I can learn the rules a lot easier and that for the first class we could move forward a lot faster than what normally a starter can. It was so hard to decide for that but now I’m, really decided, I really think I will learn. And that day, as I was coming from Utrecht, I had the real Dutch experience: I rode the bike without hands =D uau! Wildness!

lol

Well, remember I told you I’d like to make a project with the kids? I don’t inow if I told you but I convinced my friend Silvia to go to the aerobic classes with me. Silvia, besides being a person that made everything and even more, she collaborated in two projects of mine last year and she made gymnastics for many years, figure skating and lots of stuff and the teacher loved her. At the end of the class, she went to talk to her, made her some questions and proposed to her to give some classes to the kids. Can you believe this?  Too good! I really want to follow her classes. Today I’m stocked in Beethoven, piano. My consultant is in fact an artist and his first consultancy work was in Kanaleneiland. Meanwhile, I had asked my friend Diana to translate me some documents so that I could apply for the funding here. She saw it and said it was quite complicated and that it would be better to ask to a native and that a colleague from her office has offered to do the translation. The documentation had the motivation statement and some stuff on my projects. You can’t imagine my surprise when she sent me an email with the translation, saying that three years ago she worked in Kanaleneiland, she was envolved in a project where they painted some façades and that the “welcome” was also part of her project. Can you believe this? All the roads lead to Kanaleneiland! I will meet her next week. This made me so much happier than if I would have known and would have gone after her! Because this is coincidence and as Agamben says, coincidence is magic =):

Like creatures in fables, children know that in order to be happy it is necessary to keep the genie in the boule at one's side, and have the donkey that craps gold coins or the hen that lays golden eggs in one's house. And no matter what the situation, it is much more important to know the exact place ancl the right words to say than to take the trouble to reach a goal by honest means. Magic means precisely that no one can be worthy of happiness and that, as the ancients knew, any happiness commensurate with man is always hubris; it is always the result of arrogance and excess. But if someone succeeds in influencing fortune through trickery, if happiness depends not on what one is but on a magic walnut or an "Open sesame!"- then and only then can one consider oneself to be truly and blessedly happy.

(Believe in magic shoes)

That is the ultimate reason for the precept that there is only one way to achieve happiness on this earth: to believe in the divine and not to aspire to reach it (there is an ironic variation of this in a conversation between Franz Kafka and Gustav Janouch, when Kafka affirms that there is plenty of hope - but not for US).4 This apparently ascetic thesis becomes intelligible only if we understand the meaning of this "not for us." It means not that happiness is reserved only for others (happiness is, precisely, for us) but that it awaits us only at the point where it was not destined for us. That is: happiness can be only through magic. At that point, when we have wrenched it away from fate, happiness coincides entirely with our knowing ourselves to be capable of magic, with the gesture we use to banish that childhood sadness once and for all.

Agamben, “Profanations”

It reminds me of your first letter, Fitzgeraldo’s excerpt and the sentence: “believe in magic, it exists”. I started making some drawings where I trace in a simplified way the paths of these coincidences that gravitate around Kanaleneiland.  I still like the story with the shoes and I want to research on stories with shoes. I like the idea of these stories, about a magic object that brings happiness. I thought what in life I found magic…well, three things come very fast to my mind: fall in love, see fantastic art projects/make work and coincidences.  I also thought again on the question of immune system and defences and I think it’s about adaptation, before anything else and that maybe most part of my work has to do with that and I never considered it as such. I saw the movie “José e Pilar”. Everyone was telling me about their story, the trips, how essential she was, I don’t know what. What really surprised me was the strength of that woman. Unbelievable! Apart from what I might think of their relation and how the trips and it all became so much, you can only see them having some rest when he goes to the hospital, it made me think of that perfect recipe. What Agamben calls the genius, the child, the creative force, that is him, who has an extraordinary ability to think and an incredible sensibility, but that also makes him really fragile. And her astonishing strength that takes anything through and doesn’t aim so much to think in a fair (“juste” it reminds me of Derrida), like him, but that thinks what she thinks and is a woman of really strong convictions, that makes things happen. So many times this dilemma: to think through things one needs to embrace that philosophic thought, but to make them sometimes one needs to take everything in front and be brave. How to marry those two ways of being. Through the letter I had dinner, was drawing and talking on the phone, it’s now two o’clock in the morning! I’m going to sleep.

Thousand kisses,

Su.

I forgot to tell you

Here in são cristóvão there is a place called "calcanhar do mundo" (world’s heel)

Of course I already dream of writing in the bus stop

“do you want to go to the wordl’s heel with me?”

“would you take me to the world’s heel?”

“let’s go to the world’s heel?”

But it can’t be because it’s a private place and since the owner changed it’s no longer to go there without being received with some bird gun

Even the city hall had some problems with them because they were organizing trips and they had so many visitors with the escoral’s grotto’s

When it all ended and it seems they are now in court

Although it reminds the importance of names

What a name does

It’s so strong that one believes that place is the world’s heel

And that is there and not next to it

When it fact what makes the difference is that someone on a certain moment

That could have been two minutes ago had the idea of giving it that name

And as no one knows anymore who was it or when

It’s as if the name was already born with the place and so

It becomes credible special unique and desirable

And in that instant one doesn’t even need to make the effort to forget it’s not like that

Name and place are the same thing and no one was born first, there was no trick

Nor production, time took the scaffoldings that take it to success away

Apparently it’s a beautiful place

And one day I will be seating on that heel.

Letters to V.: Verónica answers

I came decided to write you a short but concise email. And I faced the curious sintony of the importance of music in our letters…how beautiful. Sometimes I also listen what you were listening when I want to think, or look serious. I carry a rare feeling and by reading our correspondence I also notice what is to be in a residency and work with people…I’m dislocated so there are new things, that even in my country don’t stop surprising me: words, habits, foods (today I tried black pork’s cheeks, excellent). There are new people to meet always, although you want to establish a special relation as they are your work mates, but above that, they are people from the place, that make the place, and that can also result in being friends. And you still have a goal, in my case my project as a very defined goal from the beginning (unlike yours). And I’m far from everyone, communicating by skype and by phone. (I write at the same time to Miguel that says he would have loved to come and film my painting today).

I’m both curious and with tourist distance at the same time. Crazy focused on work. So it is hard to process in useful time something concrete to day…besides memories and disperse connections with myself or fantasy…I don’t have time to read or quote…or even check the references you sent earlier…maybe tomorrow, It is very cold and the working conditions are not the best… in my room the books are getting waved by humidity…I hope the heater will make them straight again…It rained all day with a few moments of pause. I started painting at the beginning of afternoon in one of those pauses but it soon started to rain again. Strongly. I couldn’t even take more pictures. Suddenly I was on top of a garbage bin with the guys that clean the streets, with three man around, one holding the garbage bin, another passing me the paint bucket and the third one watching (besides the typical Portuguese “problem solvers” improvising the lack of the ladder, not even the rainy day was missing…) this scene is at the level of a real anecdote that happened a few years ago in São Cristóvão when it snowed in Alentejo (South of Portugal):

A very irritated man came and asked the mayor: “how is it possible that the roads are possible and the city hall doesn’t have a truck to clean the snow?”

Yes, painting in November with rain is at the same level of probability than snow blocking the roads in Alentejo or even less…But we do what we got to do for the façade to be ready for the TV. In this case I hope to have managed to make the circumstances, if rain hasn’t washed the paintings during the night…I thought that the only thing I know that holds with humidity is the glue to stick the denture to the gum…I tried once in the tongue just for fun and didn’t want to believe (detail).

Thanks for the correction with Napoleon, I don’t know which one is true or if he would have said both. I keep the good mood that we can change the return in our favor. I will then tell you for which side did luck fall and in which quote did the project end.

And small notes that keep my attention and that later on will be in my head for a while. I keep collecting events. ..I don’t know if you ever saw my diary of events in Odivelas, where there was a bath on the road, it was for some geese that a man was raising in the garage. Or the “saint of shit”, an image of Virgin Mary above some concrete sheckles, illuminated at night and painted with color and drawings… decorated…well, and that was on a pedestal next to the church under construction. Things that could perfectly marry with this marble computer that decorates the grave in the cemetery that I see from the window of my room. And that always wakes my up with a smile of black humor…I can’t avoid although I already know that is the grave of a kid that was always playing on his pc and his parents asked to make this sculpture in his memory…(memory and monuments…I will comment on your email later on)

The same kind of stuff is the stories of the people from the village. Today the mayor told me that he was a hip hop dancer during ten years and that he even travelled as a dancer… and dance again in our letters…by the way I have to send you a picture that they took while I was painting, where my feat are making points, I couldn’t believe…so ridiculous and so mine…

I’d like to send you pictures of this part and ask you (if it’s ok with you) to print them in the form of a postcard and send them here. It would be a way of bringing you here as well. Would that be possible? It wouldn’t be many, but I’d like to see the evolution of my work connected to postcards from you printed in the wall of my bedroom…

I’m very tired and I have to sleep. Today it was the radio interview where at the end of everything I said the journalist asked the mayor “Mr. President please explain as if I were a child…”. I hope there won’t be problems with what I said. I told the purpose of my proposal, I said it was a proposal of freedom, a moment of affirmation that I thought to be important for the locals while Portuguese people and recalling José Gil that says we are afraid of existing… to place on the walls whatever one wants and whatever one wants to propose for the community more than being stocked in memories (I said if we would keep it within the territory of memory I would be sad) it’s an act of affirmation.

See what comes out of that. They placed the posters for the opening without sending the flyers, so no one knew very well what is going to be done and one lady though I was going to paint their façades without permission, during the night, that I would paint tiny flowers and another one that I would paint Santa Claus on the windows… God…they are very far from seeing themselves doing whatever…surprise, surprise…

It’s cold and my books are wrinkling… No, and on top of that one of them is not mine, it’s borrowed from Pedro…

Thousand kisses

V

Tomorrow I comment on your email