Jerusalem is starting to boil over again. The dust must settle before comments of consequence can be made with a clear head. In the meantime, please have a look at this important and stimulating performance from a brilliant Portuguese philosopher named Tiago Rodrigues. Those visiting Jerusalem would be wise to follow his advice on exploring a city.
A Portuguese man visits the town of Beirut year after year. He is several people that are always the same. Several men that year after year walk the same path throughout one day, in centre Beirut. The city changes, it metamorphoses at the mercy of times’ erosion and History’s convulsions. This man never changes but he always lives different days in each visit. The days that the ever changing city allows him to live.
This show starts from the supposition that in each city there is another city, an underground city and that underneath that city there is another and another, in an endless number of hidden cities that time reveals in the most unexpected way. These underground cities are at the same time past and future, they are all that no longer exists or does not yet exist in the present.
Mundo Perfeito translated into English means: “perfect world”. This company is based on the setting of a kitchen in a small apartment in Amadora, a city in the suburbs of Lisbon. Mundo Perfeito is recognised by the quality of its work and a constant drive towards innovation.
“This project starts from an hypothesis that says: in each city there is another city that exists beneath it, and under the latter one there is another city that exits beneath it and so on so forth. Accumulations of cities exist underneath. From time to time, and for unknown reasons, fragments of these hidden cities emerge to the surface and appear, facing the present of the supposedly new city; appear bluntly or hesitantly and sometimes with cruelty and severity. An act of violence that resembles the extreme violence that one day the new city itself carried out against the old one, destroying it under the pretension of doing so for a better future. This project is an attempt to invite the spirits of hidden cities to come up to the present city, so we can wander with them in their old cities and get lost there. In other words, it is an attempt to over-lap the present with the past and even with the unknown future. It is an attempt to create moments where time stops, so that past, present and future will be blended together, so that it would be easy to become lost. A place with a lot of crisscrossing and complicated passages, paths and barricades, holes and cracks that makes the history of the city much more complicated to be simplified. A place appears exactly as a labyrinth where time would stop and streets become as if they are one same street and where the lost person will have the impression of repeating the same day or the same moment over and over again. This is why the lost person has the feeling that he has never left the city. He is trapped inside it; in spite all the exits that exist.
Actually, once the traveler visits a new city, he will meet parts of his past that he has lost one day in his own city. So, what he thought that one day he had lost and would never own again, will be waiting for him in the other unknown city. He travels in order to re-live his past again in this strange city and it might be also a desire to find the future of his own city somewhere else. This city is there, somewhere there, no doubts. One can hear it, one can see it, one can feel it, one can smell it, and one can taste the bitterness of the fact that this city will keep telling him that: I will disappear sooner or later and you are going to spend your entire life seeking for me.
This city is so fragile. Once he enters it, he will have the taste/feeling of danger. He will get the impression of walking over an old bridge that might fall down and collapse in every step he is going to make. He should pay a high attention and be careful as he walks inside it, so that the catastrophe will not happen now. Finally this project is an attempt to show these moments of desperation, where all these shiny lights and all these wonderful colours are there but to hide the guts of the city and to hide the fact that the city eats itself little by little”. Tony Chakar, Rabih Mroué and Tiago Rodrigues 2007
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 and is filed under Jerusalem. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Yesterday’s Man while Jerusalem Heats Up
Jerusalem is starting to boil over again. The dust must settle before comments of consequence can be made with a clear head. In the meantime, please have a look at this important and stimulating performance from a brilliant Portuguese philosopher named Tiago Rodrigues. Those visiting Jerusalem would be wise to follow his advice on exploring a city.
A Portuguese man visits the town of Beirut year after year. He is several people that are always the same. Several men that year after year walk the same path throughout one day, in centre Beirut. The city changes, it metamorphoses at the mercy of times’ erosion and History’s convulsions. This man never changes but he always lives different days in each visit. The days that the ever changing city allows him to live.
This show starts from the supposition that in each city there is another city, an underground city and that underneath that city there is another and another, in an endless number of hidden cities that time reveals in the most unexpected way. These underground cities are at the same time past and future, they are all that no longer exists or does not yet exist in the present.
Mundo Perfeito translated into English means: “perfect world”. This company is based on the setting of a kitchen in a small apartment in Amadora, a city in the suburbs of Lisbon. Mundo Perfeito is recognised by the quality of its work and a constant drive towards innovation.
“This project starts from an hypothesis that says: in each city there is another city that exists beneath it, and under the latter one there is another city that exits beneath it and so on so forth. Accumulations of cities exist underneath. From time to time, and for unknown reasons, fragments of these hidden cities emerge to the surface and appear, facing the present of the supposedly new city; appear bluntly or hesitantly and sometimes with cruelty and severity. An act of violence that resembles the extreme violence that one day the new city itself carried out against the old one, destroying it under the pretension of doing so for a better future. This project is an attempt to invite the spirits of hidden cities to come up to the present city, so we can wander with them in their old cities and get lost there. In other words, it is an attempt to over-lap the present with the past and even with the unknown future. It is an attempt to create moments where time stops, so that past, present and future will be blended together, so that it would be easy to become lost. A place with a lot of crisscrossing and complicated passages, paths and barricades, holes and cracks that makes the history of the city much more complicated to be simplified. A place appears exactly as a labyrinth where time would stop and streets become as if they are one same street and where the lost person will have the impression of repeating the same day or the same moment over and over again. This is why the lost person has the feeling that he has never left the city. He is trapped inside it; in spite all the exits that exist.
Actually, once the traveler visits a new city, he will meet parts of his past that he has lost one day in his own city. So, what he thought that one day he had lost and would never own again, will be waiting for him in the other unknown city. He travels in order to re-live his past again in this strange city and it might be also a desire to find the future of his own city somewhere else. This city is there, somewhere there, no doubts. One can hear it, one can see it, one can feel it, one can smell it, and one can taste the bitterness of the fact that this city will keep telling him that: I will disappear sooner or later and you are going to spend your entire life seeking for me.
This city is so fragile. Once he enters it, he will have the taste/feeling of danger. He will get the impression of walking over an old bridge that might fall down and collapse in every step he is going to make. He should pay a high attention and be careful as he walks inside it, so that the catastrophe will not happen now. Finally this project is an attempt to show these moments of desperation, where all these shiny lights and all these wonderful colours are there but to hide the guts of the city and to hide the fact that the city eats itself little by little”. Tony Chakar, Rabih Mroué and Tiago Rodrigues 2007
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 and is filed under Jerusalem. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.