WALKING WITH J

J goes to Elephant&Castle


We meet in my house on a saturday. We arranged previously this shooting day and said we would improvise. She needed a few pics for some agency 'cause, you see, she's trying to get a new job, a new life, I could say. Starting over is always hard. All the practical things you have to care about and then all the emotions coming and going in so many different directions. The freedom and the loneliness, the excitement and the vulnerability... Anyways, J. is a dancer and have many jobs. Homeless now, almost, surfing in friend's couches, looking for a way to get a cheap flat in the expensive London. We know each other for long. She danced in one of my films like 5 years ago. Then she was my masseuse and made me discover shiatsu which I studied as well working on it for a couple of years before both went on the road. Now we met in London again. For a walk in my neighborhood. I realized it was the first time I was taking pictures around my house, my new home. and it felt really good to photograph a friend, I was getting bored of empty spaces, trees and landscapes... I only live here since September. All so new still... We started taking pictures at home but we felt the need to go out and see what could happen. We went into streets and places right next to my house which I've never been. We had many ideas together. How to get it better, what could we do more, do different? the experience of a city with a friend and a camera is much different from the one we have in our daily walks, when we are alone...









more walks soon...

THE LAST PARTY IN THE WORLD

this is south London underground art scene. I've been working so much since I moved into London last September and recently I was introduced to these squat parties. Feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderlands. it reminds me an apocalyptic dream I had long time ago where I was seeing a huge wave covering the city, I saw it coming and I dreamed about the after wave, mud, angels dancing in a trapeze, harsh music, but there was also something good and meaningful between people, some very human feeling. I have that same feeling in these parties full of raged and melancholic clowns and fallen angels floating in bended dreamy beats... smiling.


I just opened a book called 'Gravity's rainbow', can't really understand the story line yet... read this bit!

" All over Europe, it came to him one night in a flash, at this very moment, are hundreds, who knows maybe thousands, of people walking around, who have been struck by lightning and survived. What stories they could tell! (...) Well, it's a matter of continuity. Most people's lives have ups and downs that are relatively gradual, a sinuous curve with first derivatives at every point. They're the ones who never get struck by lightning. No idea of cataclysm at all. But the ones who do get hit experience a singular point, a discontinuity in the curve of life - do you know what the time rate of change is at a cusp? Infinity, that's what! A-and right across the point, it's minus infinity! How's that for sudden change, eh? Infinite miles per hour changing at the same speed in reverse, all in the gnat's-ass or red cunt hair of the ∆t across the point. That's getting hit by lightning, folks. You're way up there on the needle-peak of a mountain, and don't think there aren't lammergeiers cruising there in the lurid red altitudes around, waiting for a chance to snatch you off. Oh yes. They are piloted by bareback dwarves with little plastic masks around their eyes that happen to be shaped just like the infinity symbol: ∞.
(...) Between congruent and identical there seems to be another class of look-alike that only finds the lightning-heads. Another world laid down on the previous one and to all appearances no different. Ha-ha! But the lightning-struck know, all right! Even if they may not know."

little notes from London

please read the COMMENT by Margarida, she wrote some notes relating my project TRAJECTOS ...about psychogeography & dérive in situationism

little notes from London

Today D. came over for lunch with N. They brought music instruments, a sax, a flute and an accordion and they played in the kitchen while I was preparing the food. Later we had coffee outside in the sun. N. was telling us about the magic moments when she plays sax live, also the fears… she prefers not to know where she’s going to play tonight.

little notes from London

26 july
I met John, an environmental architect to whom I’ll be doing a video for the internet. He told me about when he made a trip, sailing, between Açores and England. He told me about being in the ocean. An empty space, he said, like a desert, there’s no birds anymore, birds stay in the shore where’s food. He left and I was thinking about that image, it must be very silent. He’s friend went on sailing since America, alone. After that I went to the garden. Tried to read, but my thoughts were disperse and I could not concentrate. I stayed there just watching the clouds moving with the wind.