runaway dream

I was in a war area last night, was it Cambodia?, was it China? And I had to run away...

I was staying in a house living my life, it seems... As I apply to so many residencies it may be that my dream was fulfilling somehow this aspiration of traveling and working overseas. Also I am very attracted towards South East Asia.

At some point we received the order/ advice to move out of the territory as we are in danger. There is none to protect us and we would be certainly executed if caught. In any case it was quite certain that I will die.
There was an ex boyfriend of mine hanging around, but at that point I realized I have to get rid off him in order to move and save myself. Now that I am going to die I can bare his presence any more... There was also some people from Camberwell who studied with me when I was doing my ceramics degree... I have not seen them since then, long time ago...What are they doing in my dream?

So there is a lot of havoc and people is packing their things and leaving in some direction, towards somewhere.
Someone gives me a bunch of pills in case I want to commit suicide...

I can easily connect that to the Horizon documentary 'Pill poppers' on medicines/drugs that I watched yesterday. How the diabolical pharmaceutical industries transformed medicines into a commodities, getting people hooked to pain killers, anti depressants, cholesterol eating pills, viagra..etc, the funny bit is when a bunch of eighty something is shown researching by themselves for a pill that will kill them peacefully. They are the only ones trying to take control of their own lives.

Back to my dream, I did not take all the pills as I did not wanted to die, I just took one expecting it to give me a high so I could get through the crisis in good spirits, wihout panicking and just having a laugh.
There was almost none left and I was proceeding in a slow pace, but I knew I could not stay in the house. It was quite possible I would have to travel/escape alone and by foot. At some point I focused my attention on this guy from Camberwelll. He was not in my class but we knew each other. Somehow he was delaying himself on leaving the house, I asked him for any suggestions or advice on where to go and how.
At this point in the dream, I am not sure if due to the effect of the pills, I was not scared any more, well, just slightly.
Camberwell boy was vague in his answers. I was a bit afraid of annoying him with my questions , but hey! this was a life/ death situation.
I decided I did not want to be alone running through the jungle, even if I was going to... so I asked him if I could join his group. He says yes, without much excitation, and we left the house. It turns out he had a car... so the trip was not going to be as I was imaging it.
We got in the car, had a look at the maps, discussed about the possible dangers and decided for a route.
As we were driving away my dream or memories of it blurred and I woke up.

things you can see from a bus

Two days ago in a bus, looking through the window, saw this message on a bus stop roof:
'Some things you just can see when sitting on the left side of a double decker bus'

It is no with regularity that I get into buses, I cycle or walk, but when I do I always benefit form the advantage point of view that double decker buses give you if you go to the second floor. I am fascinated by demolition/building sites. If going on a bus I have a better chance of having a good look at them. I am fond of photographing the huge holes for the foundations, the skeleton of the buildings the machines involved, some of them look like dinosaurs devouring the building. it is too suggestive to me. I am still not sure of what to make with all those images of construction and deconstruction. But it is not just the building sites, I like in general to take photographs from the bus. Most times I messed the image because the bus moves or there is a bump, this just adds up to the fun of it.

I have not yet took any photo from the art messages displayed on the rooftops of bus stops. But I am not a collector. So I just look for them and feel grateful to whoever is doing it. Some of them are like wake up calls to us, the people of zombie land. I wonder how many of us see them. Although they may just be some kind of attention seeking device...

Kienholz and Gill, Gaudier Brezska, Epstein shows

Last week I went to the National Gallery. I was in the area and had some time to spare. I like it there so much! all those paintings, I can spend hours walking and staring, dreaming, elaborating. What is it that some paintings have? they can transport me in a journey over memories, ideas, recollections.
But the main reason for my getting into the National Gallery that day was to see an installation from Kienholz: The Hoerengracht

To be honest I did not like it. This was my first contact with his work, I was very curious and excited to have the chance to experience it, so I was a bit disappointed...
The present work at the National Gallery was a reproduction or recreation of a segment of the red district in Amsterdam. The red district used to be inhabited by prostitutes who were offering themselves in the window displays of their workshops. I have not been in Amsterdam yet.
My problem with the work is that it looked in most aspects as pretending to be very accurate, but then there were those loose details, like the hands of the prop/prostitutes, so badly done, like if they were wearing gloves, it did not match the rest of the work. It catched my eye from the beginning but I did not see any point or remark from/to it. Another annoying thing to me was that after going through all the pain/pleasure of making molds from real people, the final figures representing prostitutes looked like mannequins, he could have used mannequins, why not?... There was nothing to it, no art, no interpretation of the chosen subject, or I did not feel it. To me it looked like a cheap reproduction of the red district that could belong more to a low budget theme park...
But I was impressed by the old paintings with the incredible almost science fiction landscapes and backgrounds of impossible cities, and the over the top religious art which is in focus this days at the National Gallery.
My other mission that day was to get to the Royal Academy to see Wild Thing, an exhibition featuring the work of three amazing and very particular sculptors, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Erik Gill. I was jumping with the excitement as I really like their work, I was going to see Rock Drill... I love their work, but the display of it was so cold...

It is frustrating the way sculpture is exhibited, you are not allowed to touch it. What is the point? Most sculpture depends on the tactile experience, and we are deprived of it

reflections during hibernation

Right, first of all, I wrote not long ago that I felt like writing the chronicles of the end of the world... but, I read this today: ' ...we are not working for the spectacle of the end of the world, but for the end of the world of spectacle' IS n. 3, 1959
Sweet...
I am kind of hibernating this days, after new years bash and with this freezing weather it feels like a sensible thing to do. I am kind of hiding in my room, the house has not central heating so we just warm up our individual rooms... 'We' is not accurate, I have been alone for almost two days, what a record!

To the point, I have been reading, listening to music and just a bit of writing as I was quite lazy ... these activities make me feel quite good and alive... but due to my general lazyness my main occupation has been to watch movies and soaps, non stop... Yep not just good movies, some crap and soaps...They normally sent me to the reign of darkness and depression, almost depression...
Even though, some of the movies kept me thinking afterwards and I got something out of them, I feel really thankful to anything which opens the doors for my brain to start elaborating with ideas. It is not the super well done movies the ones which make me think more, a lot of times is the nonsensical ones, the ones full of ideas, the ones which are imperfect so I keep going on and on around them, obviously I have to be interested in the story line. One good example is the movies from Julio Medem, not all of them are nonsensical juxtapositions of poetry and metaphors, but they all go around themes with which I can relate... I wish to meet him at some point and have a long conversation. One of the last Caotica Ana has have very bad critics and he has been justified due to his recent loos of a beloved relative, his sister... Well... it may be true, but the movie is not more crazy and illogic than previous ones, and who cares about logic, he does not. The movie has his usual themes, life, love, dead, war/violence the will to live against the will for power, and that there is something else not just plain biology ... and he has so much faith in women! in some women and in love, and the creation of our own individual values. I love Medem, even if his characters are just excuses to tell a story, an illogical story...

Another imperfect movie director is Win Wenders. I will summarize, I watched 'Untill the end of the world' from 1991, very long movie... I watched it long time ago and it left a good impression on me. Now years later I wanted to see how the movie would affect me. It was entertaining and I realized why I do like Win Wenders, there is a lot of traveling in his movies, normally. This one is a science fiction movie, it is not such an impressive round cinematic work as Blade runner. It is imperfect, it does not keep a tight rhythm, but that makes me to sympathize and to think about it more, how I would do it or why he did what he did, is open...I keep thinking on bits from the movie... There is in my opinion a critique to our addiction to be spectators of movies TV etc, I may be wrong... At the end of the movie Claire Sam and his father get addicted to watch their dreams on the screen, they isolate themselves from each other and they just watch their individual screens projecting their dreams which they try to perfect in order to watch them again. Claire gets saved by her ex lover, a writter who takes the batteries out from the screen and leaves her with a book of her own story written by himself, very poetic...
So this is why I started to write this blog... I was reading something from Raoul Vaneigem when I started to elaborate about all this, and then I felt like writing. There are movies and movies though... Chaotic, imperfect and poetic Medem makes me think and specially makes me to want to be alive, whatever happens... makes me fall in love with life, again and again