trajectos | passages | day 5

geoTAGGING


Using a map of Lisbon downtown that I downloaded from Google Earth I created a trajecto, a passage through, a roundish line of red dots. I don't have any idea about the correspondence of those places in the map and the real places. My assignment is to go to the marked places I made in Photoshop and take a picture. Then I will upload those pictures into the web using Panoramio so you can have access to my itinerary on Google Earth. I'll put the photos on Flickr as well, both are sharing applications.

This morning I was online signing up to Panoramio and Flickr as a painter would be preparing his canvas. Those applications will be my canvas. Doing a little research online I found out a name that fits this concept:

Says Wikipedia: "GeoTagging, sometimes referred to as Geocoding, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds, or images. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude and place names."

My photos will be a geo-perceptualTagging. This is a bit like a game. I'm curious.

I'll be doing that for the next couple of days, keep tuned!

trajectos | passages | day 4

LIFE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

After the text about the earthquake and the ruins from yesterday, I was thinking about the things that are under us when we walk on downtown streets. Then about what surrounds us, who’s next to me. A city is for me a playground of multiple dimensions. Different times and spaces condensed in a single place. I feel that on the buildings, the structures, the textures, the faces. When I walk around I have the feeling of entering many different levels, layers, nuances and I ask myself how do I absorb this changing reality. Architecture is not just stone and stable forms; it is a perceptual network portal for other things… When I walk on the streets I feel that consciousness gap, not unconscious at all, it is more like to enter a multi-track mentality. Sometimes, things are not exactly there but they appear on my way, my mind, by associative, disruptive, disseminated processes. I am writing this on my laptop in a downtown coffee shop (casa do alentejo) which already has so many different dimensions in it, popular culture from the south, a Moorish patio, a decadent ball room with signs on the couches ‘please not seat’, but what I am thinking about right now is something totally different. There's this intriguing woman I see almost everyday on a street corner. When I saw her the first time she was there with 3 or 4 travel suitcases like waiting for the taxi to take her to the airport or something. 2 days later I saw the luggage but she was not there. She’s blond and young, I couldn’t see her face well because she uses a hat, but she looks beautiful. Yesterday she was there again, standing up, waiting. It seems someone forgotten her. She’s there for 2 weeks already, in the same corner. Today, I saw her in the other side of the road, seating on the floor, hanging a written hand paper but I couldn’t see what was saying. That made me thinks about a man who used to be in certain places in Lisbon. He would choose a spot, sometimes a bus stop, and everyday he would be there waiving goodbye to people passing by. Usually he had a woman's coat in his arm as he was waiting for a woman. He was probably around 60 years old. He looked like an artist or some kind of noble intellectual and he smiled. I saw him the first time in Campolide, late at night, when I was going back home. After that I saw him there many times and also in some other places doing the same gesture. He was friendly and there were times I waved back at him and his smile was even happier in response. I think about this city figures with tenderness. It is like time has stopped for them and they are in a loop, performing the same moment over and over. I could think about this as a conceptual art performance, truly the art of the quotidian. Of course I wonder about their lives, who are they, what happened? In the last centuries space projection on time gave time properties that only space owns naturally, it gave it a direction, um trajecto, an itinerary, a structured and solid line having an ascendant direction, based on causality. One thing leads to the other, then something happens, which is to say: linearity. But nowadays we already live in a non-linear flexible time-space. Our lives are always under construction. The rules of the game are made while we are playing, objects loose their value very fast, human relationships are based on non-compromise, they are not ‘for life’ as before, love is confluent, a derivative satisfaction, eventually intermittent, independently of its value and feelings, just a mutant piece of a connected multi-dimension.

Everything compels to movement.
To be still is to be desadequated. In that sense I see a parallel between tourists, emigrants and homeless people as metaphors of our contemporary culture. They are probably more visible in downtown streets exactly because they are on the streets, not inside some office building or so. Actually, we are all in movement, even in the same city, between home and work, but using different time tracks. Anyway these transitory lives have their peculiarities. A tourist doesn’t belong to the place that he’s visiting. A tourist in a new place just sees what he already expects to see, he always creates a security zone, it doesn’t matter to be on the way, it matters to arrive, take the picture and leave again to the next monument. The tourist is anxious for adventures, new landscapes, emotions, more space, who knows, so he wants to be moving around all the time. He has a map, so he doesn’t loose himself. With Google Earth you have the configuration of the space from above. But even tough, it feels something is out of pace, out of place. Displaced? How to connect the dots? In the opposite social hierarchy, the homeless. He doesn’t move around by choice, he simply doesn’t have a place. He’s impelled to move for necessity, but what he would like to do is to go home and have some rest.

trajectos | passages | day 3

THE WAVE and ORIGINS OF LISBON DOWNTOWN

Lisbon downtown as we know it today was created after a massive destruction. Although not the strongest or most deadly earthquake in human history, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake's impact, not only on Portugal but on all of Europe, was profound and lasting. Depictions of the earthquake in art and literature can be found in several European countries, and these were produced and reproduced for centuries following the event, which came to be known as "The Great Lisbon Earthquake."

The earthquake began at 9:30 on November 1st, 1755, and was centered in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 km WSW of Cape St. Vincent. The total duration of shaking lasted ten minutes and was comprised of three distinct jolts. Effects from the earthquake were far reaching. The worst damage occurred in the south-west of Portugal. Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, was the largest and the most important of the cities damaged. Severe shaking was felt in North Africa and there was heavy loss of life in Fez and Meknez. Moderate damage was done in Algiers and in southwest Spain. Shaking was also felt in France, Switzerland, and Northern Italy. A devastating fire following the earthquake destroyed a large part of Lisbon, and a very strong tsunami caused heavy destruction along the coasts of Portugal, southwest Spain, and western Morocco.

The oscillation of suspended objects at great distances from the epicenter indicate an enormous area of perceptibility. The observation of seiches as far away as Finland, suggest a magnitude approaching 9.0.

With an estimated population of 275,000, Lisbon was, in 1755, one of the largest and beautiful cities in Europe. The city retained some of its Moorish influence during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This may be seen in the design of the streets in the quarters surrounding St. George Castle and extending as far as Rossio, the central part of the city. The Rosario, or main square, was the commercial center of Lisbon. The Estatus Palace, situated to the north, was where illustrious visitors to the Kingdom were lodged. On the east side, Saint Dominic Church and the All Saint's Royal Hospital, with its magnificent façade, were erected. On top of the hill, an ancient royal residence was situated. To the west, the church and its Convent were among the most magnificent buildings in Lisbon. Other famous buildings near the city center include the Cathedral, St. Paul's Church, St. Nicholas' Church, and St. Roch's Church.

Soon after the earthquake, several fires broke out, mostly started by cooking fires and candles. Some of them were rapidly extinguished, especially in the densely populated areas. But many inhabitants fled from their homes and left fires burning. Narrow streets full of fallen debris prevented access to the fire sites. The public squares filled with people and their rescued belongings, but as the fire approached, these squares were abandoned, and the fire reached catastrophic proportions. Looters setting fire to some ransacked houses caused the belief that the fire had a criminal origin. The flames raged for five days.

Immediately after the earthquake, many inhabitants of Lisbon looked for safety on the sea by boarding ships moored on the river. But about 30 minutes after the quake, a large wave swamped the area near Bugio Tower on the mouth of the Tagus. The area between Junqueira and Alcântara in the western part of the city was the most heavily damaged by the wave, but further destruction occurred upstream. The Cais de Pedra at Terreiro do Paço and part of the nearby custom house were flattened.

A total of three waves struck the shore, each dragging people and debris out to sea and leaving exposed large stretches of the river bottom. In front of the Terreiro do Paço, the maximum height of the waves was estimated at 6 meters. Boats overcrowded with refugees capsized and sank. In the town Cascais, some 30 km west of Lisbon, the waves wrecked several boats and when the water withdrew, large stretches of sea bottom were left uncovered. In coastal areas such as Peniche, situated about 80 km north of Lisbon, many people were killed by the tsunami. In Setúbal, 30 km south of Lisbon, the water reached the first floor of buildings.

Marquês de Pombal was the man who became responsible for the specifics of reconstruction of the current simple ordered grid design of Lisbon downtown. The story goes that when King D.José I first heard of the disaster he asked those around him what was to be done, and Pombal is supposed to have replied 'Bury the dead and feed the living'. So under downtown streets are the bodies of thousand people buried.

That, roman ruins and water, makes it a very fertile earth, but nothing grows there, just a cement grid with no organic life. Time has stopped there. Is it?

trajectos | passages | day 2

Half an hour in Praça da Figueira. No trees, a deadly sun, no benches to seat down. I look at people passing through the square. The subway disabled elevator is out of service. 3 young black men help out a young girl in her weal chair, without being able to make the ascensor to work one of them carry her in his lap. Moving. They laugh. Some young kids skating. A few turists seat on the ground by the statue shadow. Homeless who are usually inside the little iron fence are not there, they just left a few bottles and a bag. People walk slowly, as they were very tired, exhausted. They queue on the bus stop standing up under the sun. I focus at the movement, deleting the background I see someone flying.

time: 3:45 - 4:15pm

trajectos | passages | day 01

here some pics from day 01.
My walk started in Praça do Comércio, I went through Rua dos Douradoures to Martim Moniz to buy batteries for my MP3 while I was recording sound and conversations on the street, then I went to a few places and went home by bus. Along that passage I was writing about time, space, turists and homeless. I will upload that text later.

time: 15h - 20h

NEW mobile narratives project: TRAJECTOS | PASSAGES

Since my last mobile narratives project while I was living in Philadelphia, a lot happened... You still can get the book of the previous project online. Currently I am living in Lisbon.

Answering an invite by C.E.M (an art center in Lisbon) I will be performing a new project called TRAJECTOS (in portuguese), PASSAGES (in english). The project is integrated in the transversal arts festival Pedras d'Água and it is about and in Lisbon downtown.

It is a quest about place and non-place. A psycho-active-geographic documentary made on the streets and online. A site specific work-in-progress diary. I'll apply the same quests in 2 different cities.

currently LISBON Downtown - 26th June to 15th July
next LONDON 22th July to August

synopsis #1 - Lisbon downtown
my passages through Lisbon downtown will be presented in person (on the streets) and online. Photography, video, street-actions, performances, a blog and a diary will be some of the means used for this project. Besides my own passages, I will create difuse and disperse performances / actions which will be integrated in daily life, things that suggest rest or things that act directly or subliminally with people passing through. Little surprises can happen. If someone gives you a flower on the street don't say no, if you see chairs and sun-umbrellas on the street or in a bus stop, just seat down, chill out, slow down.

context:
landscape harmony has been fragmented, that's not news! where before there was continuity and explicit causality, nowadays we have discontinuity, ruins, passages for opposition to fixed places. A place is experienced as a non-place. Movement and tiredness multiply themselves. Physical passages and electronic flanneury at the same time, reconfiguring our notion of space-time. Old traditional static social rules gives way to a permanent being in transit, in between. In a global world, cities are made for movement. How to stop? How to slow down? what about here? and now? where are we? what place is this? who am I in this place? who are you?

Being Lisbon my home town, I now discover it with new eyes, maybe I'll find some answers, maybe I'll get new questions, anyway what interests me is to be on the way.

This project is a work in progress and you can track my passages here. I'll be uploading in a daily basis. Keep in touch!

london | 8-12 june

marocco | feb 07