From the workshop

A narrative walk Imaginary Hypostases [experimental texts]

COLUMBARIUM [timeless?]

[column 3, position 2, right]

A random alley, row 7, position 32. I wander among the names. Some seem extremely familiar. They wander around characters, names, numbers... different and all the same... or names with a magnetic resonance whose origin is irretrievably lost in the mists of time... Ghica, Bibescu, Cantacuzino... often photographic representations, in black and white, patinated, in shades of sepia, sometimes imperceptible... figures in various positions, postures... some pensive, some pensive, some fierce, never cheerful (as if they knew where it was all going to end)... verses, quotations, beliefs, opinions, recommendations... about life in general, about gods, goddesses, about the departed, about those to come... and who will probably transit by chance, my case, or contextually experience reading the lines below for a split second of their lives...

(Everything) is math... sometimes complex, sometimes extremely simplified...

We're often looking for something! A number, an address, a name that in one form or another conveys to us something that stands out significantly, beyond deceptive appearances, and that we are tempted to (re)know... That name could be on alley 7, row 5, plot 21... I arrive at my destination, seemingly in error... it doesn't exist! In the immediate neighborhood, an unknown place, no name, no number... probably just passing by... could this be a Number?

The traces transpose the loss of materiality.

The place is the same as last time (last year) and yet different! I find familiar places again, fragments that I try to forget in order to relive again the fascination of rediscovering them.... It's fall, it's yellow, it's red... I don't know anyone in alley 9...

[ allegory/alternate reality ?]

[5th window, 2nd row , left]

It's snowing with big, icy flakes... It's the first time in weeks that I step out of my cell and look at the sky. It's so near and yet so far away... I try to escape each time and I still end up there... I go back to where I started and recreate in my mind the same scenario 1,000 times, different in approach... I propose this time to use the kitchen chisel and apply the escape plan! The approach must be simplified! I look (carefully) at the details: each fastening piece, the stiffening rings where I can put my foot, the side bolts that I can hang on with my hands. The metal is cold, frozen... but nothing can stand in my way this time ....!

This is a good time to put my plan into action... it's just me! The birds are busy... circling in wide circles, keeping watch! The others are preoccupied with their problems... looking skyward! Nobody's looking. Everyone seems indifferent! Slowly, with trembling hands stiff with cold, I advance with difficulty, with slow, even, correlated movements... I am one with the furnace! I've reached the halfway point and my strength is failing. Do I give up?.... yet a thought keeps me going. The number 7 ring is cracking, it's rusty. I try not to make sudden movements so as not to attract attention. I'm almost at the eaves and the thought that it's different there gives me hope! I finally reach a horizontal platform. I stop, breathing hard... I carefully analyze my hands, my arms are black, of slag, of rust... the bluish tenta and the metallic taste... I must continue!

I look down into the inner courtyard from which I started.... or the place I've arrived? My eyesight is playing tricks on me... probably the effort it took to climb up the chasm... did I get out or did I get in? Did I flee from a world or did I want to get into it... same thing and the other way around, but different.... and yet... I am upside down...