people

Making Room

Among lost objects, furniture, empty rooms, empty boxes and empty safes, a troupe is working. Feeling the fake wind of a huge fan and drinking corn whiskey people raise a small and colorful stage’s curtain. We are in the underground of an imposing building in Wall Street. The show is about to start!
Nearby while I’m sitting with other spectators a lady wearing a hat comes in and tells a story of her theater built by digging up the earth at the bottom of a bar. Few minutes later a performance with a blue atmosphere begins. I see anything unreal on the scenario that reminds me of Bob Wilson’s plays. It reminds me my own fears too.Some artworks are exhibited in the basement of a “once upon a time” factory. A photograph is fixed to the wall beside rests of an engine. Low ceiling, brick walls and layers of former activities lye on the floor. I feel a kind of freedom of this people who try new things and to lose some esthetic rules; either from upper class or bourgeois. I can actually see the complexity when the layers of the past are left to join the present to have fun together. I think it also points to a constant move. I went to a work in progress building and I’m sure that this is the ground for a creation. I hope this spirit be kept alive and kicking and marketing and commercial business free.

Hearing

I can hear different languages spoken in the streets and still the spoken english with many kinds of accents. I hear fast or slow tongues, open vowels or not, small tune variation or huge, low and sibilant whispers or an unexpected throaty excuse-me. Maybe I listen a southern accent in a subway speech and definitely incomprehensible syllables coming from the mouth of some kid. I’m sitting in a bench in front of a deli and I hear old lady’s long chatting beside me. One lady’s talking is full of exclamations and I catch lost phrases about relationship. In the corner of the other street I hear a familiar vocabulary.

As I walk slowly in the streets capturing as much as I can with my eyes and ears, I listen monologues with or without earplugs; people walking and complaining to themselves or mad at someone who I can see. I do talk to myself in loud voice once in a while but I keep walking and suddenly I’m lost…
I have to stop and ask some of those citizens for direction to the Brooklyn subway or Washington Avenue. Then I'm surprised for hearing my own voice an accent among all those sounds. I think to myself: this is New York and I am here... I’m just one more beat in this club.

Loosing subject

After 2 weeks in this city I felt a conflict between belonging or not, being part of the city or just being a passenger. I enjoy staying in the flat doing things to myself as I was in my own house. I read, I go to gym and sleep as much as I want. I feel very comfortable, good and calm alone having so much time to myself but I also feel lonely. Getting out of the flat is like jumping into another world starting up from the corridor until elevator; there is always someone who obviously was not born here. Inside the elevator some people smile, some say a discrete hi but some just keep the eyes to the buttons or the door. Get in such a small room like an elevator is an instant intimacy which some of us just can’t manage. Last week I met twice a lady who was getting repair in her party dress for the marriage of her daughter. Yesterday she told me the wedding was just fine!

It seems that every time I go to the streets something new is going on. The more I pace to watch my surrounding the more I notice unseen details. I ’m not sure but I think I may be reacting with some kind of camouflage instinct. I catch myself trying to wear in the same way people do, paint my nails with the same colors suiting the colorful summer clothes. I even tried to speak faster but the result was a messs.

I was told this residency was intended to work as a break in the artist work but it’s so hard to leave home the huge luggage one carries in his head. But I think something is happening; I already see things from outside myself and maybe, who knows I could stop fighting myself and be easy going. Just like a walking on the streets… relaxed but with attention and all my senses on.