The project evolves around the text Undying Love; or Love Dies by the thinker Jalal Toufic written after his wife left him, and is a close collaboration between an architect of lively spaces and night conversations from Lisbon and a writer/curator that spent eight years there to grow up in all senses (and spices), and now encountered herself suddenly in Slovenia (blown by the wind).
Some excerpts of the Jalal's text follow (though I recommend reading the book, which is sold out, or the excerpt that can be found on his webpage):
“All love affairs happen in the foreign cities.”
“Two of the greatest cinematic love stories [here I agree with Jalal whom I never met] Resnais/Duras Hiroshima mon amour and Marker's La Jettée take place against the backdrop of destruction of the city and possibly of the world. Every love of a man and a woman takes place in seclusion from the world: every love of a man and a woman has for horizon the destruction of the world since they can restart the human race (this is one of the ways love is linked to death).”
“Since they usually stayed up late, they called each other around midnight. She did not ask him:
“Did you dream of me last night?” He did not, with the provocation of seduction, tell her:
“Tonight, you'll dream of me.” But rather: “Have pleasant dreams.” He was relieved when she answered: “I don't remember my dreams.”
“While writing this tonight, am I not serving to advance some other persons desperate waiting for his beloved?”
“In waiting, time is for the most part not mine but others'.”
The project includes also two poems written in the year 900 by acclaimed japonese poetess Ono No Komachi that will be read at the finnisage.
First poem:
Is this love reality
or a dream?
I cannot know
when both reality and dreams
exist without truly existing.
or a dream?
I cannot know
when both reality and dreams
exist without truly existing.
Second poem:
Did she appear
because I fell asleep
thinking of her?
If only I'd known I was dreaming
I'd never have wakened.
because I fell asleep
thinking of her?
If only I'd known I was dreaming
I'd never have wakened.
The project is dedicated to long and envolving relationship between the two cities, Lisbon and NYC; related since the 2nd WW through massive migrations from “neutral” Portugal to the States that took one month by boat at the time. One of such passengers was Hannah Arendt, that found a refuge in Lisbon before departing to New York.
A live piano performance of Keith Jarret's Tokyo Encore will have a special space in this exhibition on impossible love, seclusion of lovers, spectres of a kind, and dreamstates with eyes wide shut. And above all exile.
Proposed artists:
- Walid Raad (The Atlas group), a close collaborator and friend of Toufic
- Wolfgang Tillmans, work Peaches (a very sensual photograph)
- Resnais/Duras: Hiroshima mon amour
- Chris Marker: La Jettée
- Emily Jouvet: One Night Stand (a feature film by a parisiene filmmaker)
- Sara G, the architect that gets carte blanché, main collaborator of mine that will deal with all spatial issues in the exhibition
- Stanley Kubrick: Eyes Wide Shut (optional)
