Darkness Descending is a video response to the album Tono de Lobo by Cuchufleta.  The music was composed by Gregorio Fontén.  The video is by Francesco Cincotta.

Click on the thumbnail to view the gallery

Copyright 2011 Francesco Cincotta

Portraits of Resistance is a multimedia project begun in the early days of the War in Iraq and Afghanistan with the purpose of recording the efforts of the brave men and woman who risked social and political ostracism for their stand against the war.  Here I am presenting a few of the portraits taken between 2001 and 2008.

Click on the thumbnail to view the gallery

Drawings by Biagio Mastroianni

Story by Francesco Cincotta

It’s a pistol! … It’s her thing! … She has always played with toys.  She really wanted to be a boy.  Something in her moms’ belly put a stop to that.  You never knew the whole story; I’d bet she trade the skirts for pants if she could get away with it.

Of course she can’t … Saving face, you know.  Up there they can be tough, pistol packin’ really.  Like the boys.  Get down with ‘em and all … not quite do the dirty, but close.  Talk the same bullshit.  Yeah, she wants the Big Time.  And she’ll get it if she waves that thing around.

That’s what they like in their girls.  Pretence … They like to see them standing next to the kill.  Waving their piece at the camera with one foot on the corpse.  They’ll get it with her.  She likes the part.  Dressing-up.  All American style.  She has a Dale Evans fantasy: six guns and a yodel or two.  Yeah, That should be the end of it.
Her problem is she’s really cold.  Not cut out for the game as it was played in the past.  Those babes were real.  Packed ‘em fully loaded.  Had to then.  Boys were real boys … wanted real girls … not the rent type whose image you can pretend to own.  Flash here and there.  Nothin hot there … Just a toy that’s all … Just a toy, like her pistol

Down South, in the big cities, they play for keeps.  No bluff down there.  It’s big game for real.  She’s no match for the boys in those parts … They’ll play her along and then jettison the package out to sea with the rest of the trash.  It’s a shame … Should’ve stayed in her own league.  It’ll happen eventually … she’ll pull the trigger by mistake.  And then.  Maybe a tragedy … maybe not.  Piss a few of them off. The Wheeler dealers types.  Their looking for someone to pull the trigger.  Can’t do it themselves.  It’s a privacy issue.  She could level the playing field.

She might regret it  … maybe not.  Her type could adapt to the real sleeze.  No more play acting.  Live the real low-life … it has its hidden benefits.  Some learn to love it.  But mark my words …When she cashes-in she’ll be buried boots-up.

NOTES

Destino was initially intended as a meditation on the city of Leipzig, and secondly as a meditation on cities in general.  It is intentionally chronologically and historically sloppy not because the history of Leipzig is obscure, the facts are easily obtainable, but because I wanted to condense history in a poetic package that involved the present, past and future. The moment is singular, the past is interpretable; the future speculation.  Placed together they are a colored lens, a way we filter our experiences, interpret our lives.

My life, probably little different from countless others, has a filter that interprets reality in split second flashes of colors and categories, many events contain combinations of both, some combinations are spot-on; others inaccurate or inappropriate for the event. That is all well and good for the actions daily life requires; art wants something else and what it demands is not simple solutions but a perennial parade foggy possibilities.  Art is best when it stimulates: visually, intellectually or conceptually.  It leads and hopefully leads to a more astute awareness.

All the cities I have known have shared the desire to represent and be remembered for their cultural innovations, and all of them have had some very dark moments. It was these thoughts and the present debate over immigration that influenced the video.  All the work I do has some shared elements: the passage of time and the various philosophical and historical interpretations of time and specific events; a dash of chance and poetry.  The list is far from exhaustive.

The text of Destino is meant as a compressed poetic discussion of the perennial issues of the outsider, the refugee and the hunted. It contains dialogue that expresses surprise, anger, mystery, fear, wonder and many other emotions. The film depends on the expression of these emotions in an environment conflicting confusion and wonder .

The video was filmed in Leipzig, a city that for centuries was an international trading post poised between Eastern and Western Europe. During the Nazi era Leipzigʼs Jewish population was eliminated, those that were not sent to the death camps either emigrated or were successfully hidden. After the war the Russians took control and in turn interred and exterminated many thousands. It remained Russian until the revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989, a revolution that began in Leipzig. Today Leipzig is part of a reunited Germany, a young international city, a city with a feeling distinctly different from its counterparts in West Germany: idealistic and seeking a future that neither denies its past nor aligns completely with the West.

Ariane Braillard is an artist interested in not only in art history but also the history of ideas.  This is the first of several videos which will exam some of those major interests.

He was talking before I saw him.  A husky flat drone.  He was seated across the table from me, on the aisle side.    I had not seen him enter the car or take his seat. The train was crowded, yet there were only the two of us at a table that was meant for four passengers.  I was at the window seat facing forwards, he was diagonally opposite from me.  I didn’t look at him immediately … I was busy.  He did speak first, hesitantly, he was not shy, but not entirely comfortable starting a conversation. I detected a slight stutter or hesitation in his voice.

“I love trains … something about them calms me.  It happens from the first moment I board: I relax.  Even as a child I loved them.  My mom took me on a trip when I was barely 2 years old and I never forgot the feeling of security I experienced that first time.  I just lov’em man. “

I just sat there , I couldn’t get a word in noways.  He needed to speak and once he started, got over the initial shyness, he just rolled-on.

“Maybe it’s the rocking motion or the repetitive sound of the wheels.  I don’t know why, I can leave the world behind.  I forget about my life and enter into the life of the passing homes and farms.  I become transported to no place in particular, a moment here in that farmhouse, or in that trailor or trackside shop.  I am waiting in a station or in a car at a crossing.  Incredible isn’t it?”

He was a pleasant looking fellow with a large round face and an average torso.  He  had settled into his seat with very little fuss and almost no baggage, with the exception of a book whose cover I could not see, and a modern looking phone and expensive earphones.  I gathered he had stowed his luggage before he took his seat for it was nowhere to be seen, neither on the rack above or in the space between seats opposite us.  This being an express train with few stops we were both traveling long distances and would have to spend the next several hours together.  I could have done worse … he seemed like a decent enough guy to sit across from on a train.

After his initial barage he calmed down a bit and we exchanged a few pleasantries: our destinations were the same city in the south, we had both spent the weekend in Paris where the weather was warm and pleasant.  There was not much else said. He went to his book and I to manual for a new camera I had purchased in Paris.  I was excited by the prospect of examining it for the first time.

The camera was one I had dreamed about owning for several months.  I had come to Paris on business and had set aside time to browse the camera stores on the Rue de Bonmarche.  The price, while not  low, was fair, and lower than I had previously seen quoted.  The shop owner told me that it was a return, originally purchased by a hobbyist who had regretted spending the money. He had to mark it down as the box had been opened and the camera examined, if not used.  Surely a great find for me.

In a way, similar to my companion, I too was mesmerized by train travel.  I often read with greater attention while traveling on a train and felt rested at the end of my travels.  I could sit for hours by the window watching the scenery wiz-by in a state close to hypnosis.  I would gladly spend the extra money and time required for rail travel than take a quick jump to my destination by airplane.  In the long run I was more rested and prepared to resume normal life when I disembarked from the train than the plane.  Airline terminals with their security checks, poor food, frantic passengers, the whole experience turns me off.  Give me a train any time.

Almost as soon as I borded the train I took out the camera from my carrying case.  I wanted to examine all its functions while using the manual as a reference. Without the slightest thought or hesitation I turned the camera towards the window and began to take pictures of the rapidly moving landscape.  It wasn’t the images that attracted me, at least not at first, it was the dials and buttons on the camera which were at that time new and unfamiliar.  I didn’t even look at the first photos and when I did it was only to judge how I had chosen the settings that effected the flow of light to the cameras sensor.

When we were on the outskirts of the city, I became aware of him again.  I had forgotton he was present.  He was buried in his book but when I looked his way he immediately felt my gaze and placed his book on the table.  I felt his curiosity, but equally his hesitaton.  I took a few other random shots out the window and stared at the images in the LCD screen on the back side of the camera.   During this time we shyly eyed one an other.

“Blurred, Just what you would expect from a rapidly moving train”?  He asked, nodding toward the viewing screen of the camera.  He couldn’t see the images but he spoke as one who knew something about photography.

I made some adjustments to the settings, increasing the shutter speed and checked the histogram for a representation of the distribution of light.  I felt my neighbor watching me but I fixed my attention on the camera and avoided his stare.  Several more shots followed all of them uninteresting and immediately disposed off into digital heaven.  His eyes were still on me.  I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.  Another couple of shoots later, without a secod thought, I returned his look.  There is no way I could explan my sudden change of attitude.  Of course, I had nothing against the man, I didn’t know him and had no reason to avoid his presence. Before that moment I just was not in the mood for conversation.  He smiled, I smiled. He put his book to one side and I relaxed my grip on the camera.  From then until the conversation tappered off I continued to take casual shots out of the window with little attempt to focus.  These photos were chance encounters with a landscape, just as my conversation was a chance encounted with a man on a train.

“It looks new.”  He commented rather shyly.  I nodded.  “It’s all a blur out there …he nodded towards the window.  “It is.”  I said.  “Are you trying to capture that blur … if so, I bow my head to you .  Capture that and you capture something intrinsic to life.”

With that remark he got up and left me and I returned my attention to my new toy.  Whether his remark influenced me to continue taking pictures of the rapidly moving countryside, or I was already into a new project I had just stumbled upon, I began to take more photos.  There was an essence in the blur!  So much in life is distorted, in fact, or in memory.  There is often no truth, no absolute truth, to be found that can withstand the test of the ages, or even the short time by which we measure our lives.  Outside my window the lives of farmers, laborers, people from all the various levels of society were rushing by.  Bits and pieces of their presence were captured by my eye and lens: a farmhouse, a solitary truck or tractor, a man or woman in their garden, a dog watching the train pass; an isolated landscape with a solitary church steeple off in the distance.  A blurred condensation of life.  This is history I thought, condensed, lived at high speed. I can make no conclusions, reach no judgements, it passes that’s all.  And it continues on its on journey, a journey I can only guess at.    I know it’s there and in a vague unregulated way it is aware of me as I speed on towards another encounter somewhere else.

An hour or so later we came to our first stop.  My companion still had not returned, his book lay open face down on the table with a pencil beside it.  The only reminder that he existed.  The station stop was brief, it seemed that only one person left the train, yet there was a big discussion among the staff and the local train officials on the platform.  Something serious had occurred.  By their expressions I could tell that they were analysing events, taking sides in a debate that had some implications for them, and possibly us.  Very quickly things returned to normal: the whistle blew, the conductor boarded the train and we set off, slowly picking up speed until the train seemed almost to fly off the tracks.  It is a marvel of high speed rail travel that the acceleration is often slow with all the dreamy qualities of trains of old, and suddenly one feels that they are close to leaving the very earth itself, so fast is the locomotive moving that the very car you are relaxing in seems incapable of maintaining its attachment to the rails it depends on.  It is at that time that the horizon takes on the greatest distortion and the sense of life, the sense that all is under control, all is as it should be, that the physical connection with the earth and its patterns and exchanges is about to pull apart.  I only get this sensation on trains, it is a mystery to me for air travel does have an awe and unaturallity about it, as does the perspective from a lofty building, such as the Empire State building, have a sense of the separation from the natural; but it is only on trains that I sense a pulling apart, a separtion of the layers of life and history.  What is outside of the train is what I think of as a weak reality. A dream that is barely present.  A fast moving event that can’t be grasped or discussed the way events in history are usually discussed.  In fact, it is real nevertheles and the facts of the moment might well be portentious, spreading their influence over a wider sphere.  A sphere that is unimaginable from our moving platform.

A short time after we left the station my companion returned.  He seemed in a bright mood and renewed the conversation as soon as our eyes met.  After a few sentences I began to notice something slightly different about his demeanor, something I could not put my finger on and to this day I am not entirely sure that my final analysis is accurate.  He seemed even more talkative, indeed loose with his words.  I took this in stride, it was past noon and he might have taken a glass of wine with lunch in the dinning car.  I was also in the mood for conversation and curious about this fellow traveler who shared my place on the train.

The convesation started with the usual banalities: he was from a small community north of Paris, he had lived in his birthplace from yourth with the exception of several years away in Paris during his university studies.  He still maintained a small apartment in Paris and a small house in the south to use as a retreat.  I gathered that he was a writer or some sort of artist, he set his own hours and spoke abstractly about a current research.  You can usually tell when someone is literate and informed about current events.  It shows in their conversation and even if there is no reference to books or academic references there are some telltale signs.  Our conversation remained sparse and good humored for quite a while.  We shared little bouts of information while I photographed and he read and make notes. We developed an easiness to the exchange; at times he became very involved in his book or I with my camera.  My manual was a real chore, as they tend to be, and I skipped from section to section looking for information.  He was reading a french translation of a novel by Paul Auster.  Eventually, the conversation took a sudden turn when he made a new reference to the blur of the photos: the effect caused by the rapid movement of the train and the inability of the lens to open and close quickly enough to capture the landscape with any degree of accuracy.  I had not shown him any of the photos so I presume he knew something about the workings of a camera.

“It’s like so much of life.  This divide between what we see and what we comprehend”.  I nooded agreement and he continued.  “  I have had a recurring dream for several months now.  My dreams are important and I take them seriously.  In this dream there is a man who is always following me.  I noticed him in the first episode when I stopped to cross a street, as I looked around he stood out of the crowd, his eyes focused on me.  That caught my attention and later in the dream he was still behind me, ever so cautiously, but still obviously there.  The dream varied slightly over the course of the months but the same elements were always present: I was waiting leisurely in an unfamiliar neighborhood, he was somewhere behind me.  I have a habit of trying to control my dreams and with increasing regularity I tried to elude or even meet the stalker.  I desperately wanted to see his face … maybe I would recognize him, could question his intentions, could intimidate him and drive him away from his solitary purpose.  Nothing worked and the dream continued.

Several days ago I was shocked when I thought I encountered the stalker in the street.  I had come to a café, it was an abrupt decision, I was passing the entrance, or in this case the row of tables along the sidewalk, and without thought sat down and took out my newspaper.  When I opened it I automatically looked up towards the left hand corner and my eye saw him leaning against a post on the corner.  He was very nonchalant but I was certain it was him.  I said before that I had not previously seen his face, that’s true, but the dress was exactly the same, kakhi pants, polished loafers, dark brown suit jacket, workers cap.  Strangely similar, but not quite the same, as the outfit I was wearing that day and often wore.  I couldn’t get a good look at his face but his build was remarkably like my own … I think that is why it was so easy to remember him.

“You can imagine how strange I felt.  I knew that I was no longer in a dream and I was sure that my previous experiences had been dreams.  But how can you be really sure, how do you know you aren’t delerious or a little mad.  I turned inward, I examined all my recent actions and thoughts to the point where I might approach hysteria, but there was nothing to indicate that I was imaging this.  This is what raced through my mind as I sat in the café pretending to read the newspaper.  All the while I was pretending to read he lounged lazily within sight.  At some point he browsed among the few vendors in front of the café but he was careful to keep me in sight at all times.  At no time could I get a detailed look at his face … it was somehow blurred, like your photos, maybe slightly familiar, but unidentifiable.

“After about an hour I decided to try new tactic: I knew the neighborhood well so I pretended to tire of reading.  I stretched, folded the paper and started to people-watch; I appeared tired and closed my eyes for short intervals, but increasingly I let him know that I would leave soon.  When I did leave I walked slowly to the corner and subtly mixed with a crowd leaving the Metro.  I made sure to be natural but wanted to put some pressure on him.  A half a block down the Boulevard. there were a series of computer stores, I window shopped, poked, made notes and went from one window back to the last and continued making notes.  Finally I entered one and asked a few questions and then left the store … I had positioned myself in a spot where I could easily scan both sides of the street.  He had taken very few precautions and was leaning against a building a few feet away.  I had the feeling that he didn’t care if he was seen. I didn’t linger and very naturally entered another store down the street.  On leaving there was a repeat of my earlier experience and this time I was frightened and angry.

“I started walking leisurely down the Boulevard. trying to come to a decision.  I was sure I could elude him if I tried, but maybe  confrontation would solve my dilemma.  My mind was spinning and I was emotionally in no position to make a decision.  I opted to board a bus, a series of busses and go home, and do so without looking around to confirm if I was being followed.  When I arrived at my apartment I double locked the door and gently edged the curtins aside to look at the street, he was nowhere to be seen.  I had an early supper, read, inspite of my distress and went to bed.  And I dreampt, a similar dream, but in this dream I was more aggressive.  I confronted him in a variety of circumstances throughout the night; without fear I asked him what he wanted, why he was tailing me, who was he … The dream always ended without an answer …  He just kept on reappearing.  I saw his face, I was sure of it, but in the morning I could not remember his features.  It was a loop with little variation, a constant troubled repitition, seemingly endless.  When I awoke I was nervous and unrested.  It was early morning and I needed to reach some resolution, something had to bring me back to a semblance of reality.

“Really, I tell you, I am a calm man. I love my work and have a normal life.  I admit to an active intellectual life, even to an imaginative life, it is what I am best at doing and it is natural for me to read and think.  I am not physical, I am in good health with a large group of friends, and a very special lover. I am deeply aware of myself and I am not mad.  Yet something was happening and I was not in control.  Frightening, Yes, It was frightening!  I needed to get hold of myself.  The morning was bright and the forecast was pleasant.  I had already decided on todays trip to my home by the sea.  After a light breakfast I relaxed and briefly fell asleep.  I dreampt but the dream was different.  I awoke calm and relaxed.  He had not been threatening and although I could not remember his face, I did feel we had been close, so close that we had looked deeply into one anothers eyes.   There was a confrontation and it was without violence … the result was a deep relief.  I allowed myself to sleep again and then I dressed and prepared to leave my apartment and enjoy the day.

“And he was nowhere to be seen.  Not that I looked obsessively, I didn’t need to, or so I thought.  I walked to the park. Paris is a walking city and on a warm winter day it is delightful.  After lunch I read the newspaper in a café along with countless other Perisians.  Later, I went to a film and felt completly at ease.  In the evening I returned home and spent a quiet evening tidying my papers and preparing my computer for work at the seashore.  I would pack the next day, finish my business in the city and leave the day after for the Mediterrainian.  I had almost forgotton about the dreams and the terrifying day I had spent under observation.  I went to bed and slept soundly.  No memorable dreams, but deep refreshing sleep. The next morning I was off in time for a series of early appointments.  What a day it was.  Everything seemed so fresh and pure.  It was as if life was perfect, the streets seemed clean, people were polite, the bus drivers smiled, the crowds appeared well-dressed; just perfect, so perfect, I even smelled the flowers, everywhere there was the smell of early spring.

“In early afternoon I lunched near the Pompidou Centre and spent a couple of hours attending a film.  Immediatly after the film I was in a rush to get home and hurried towards my bus stop.  I saw the bus approaching when I was less than a block away, the driver was going very fast, probably in a hurry to complete the route and get home.  I started walking at quicker pace and then to run, I didn’t want to miss this bus. It was an infrequant route and I had many things to complete before leaving in the morning.  The driver had already reached the stop and seemed about to open the door.  I could tell he was in a rush to keep on schedule and would not be disturbed to leave me behind.  I ran.  And then, from out of nowhere, right smack in my path, he was there, running at my pace right towards me.  We collided, I was knocked flat on my back, he was on top of me, looking me in the eye.  It was me, he was me … or a double.  I almost had a heart attack … I know my heart stopped, I could feel it stop, hesitate and start again.  We both screamed something and then he bounced up dashed onto the bus and left me lying there.  I fainted.  Some kindly people helped me to my feet, my heart still beating wildly, and hailed me a cab.

“I can’t adequately tell you what my immediate emotions were,  surfice it to say they were chaotic, rational thought was impossible, my mind raced, my body was in trauma.  I was truly terrorized.  A simple task like paying the taxi driver overwhelmed me.  I was unable to speak coherently.  Somehow I managed to get my wallet out, pay, leave the cab and enter my building.  The door key to the building and the apartment weighed so much in my hand that I found it difficult to insert in the key hole.  God help me … God help me … I repeated over and over again under my breath.

“Once in the apartment a slowly descending calm settled over me.  I rested and regained some composure, finished packing … I need very little so I am able to travel extremly light.  Everything is already at the home.  During the night I dreampt a calming, healing dream.  It was if a gentle hand had given a peaceful blessing.  As if a soothing medication was placed in my bedtime drink.  Nothing could have prepared me for this, it was in such direct contradiction to the event of the afternoon.  This morning I was and I remain calm.  I have no answers and I am content with that.  If this is a splice of the future I am accepting and ready to meet face to face with my fate.  What I can’t explain is why … there is no possible, plausible explanation.  I am in other hands.  I am in waiting … “

Rivetting!  the story just bound me to my seat. I listened in total facination.  The man wanted to share the experience with someone. with a stranger.  But what could I contribute.  I was spellbound and told him so.  And as farfetched as it all sounds, I believed him.  There are things that will always remain inexplicable.  For a long time after he finished I remained relatively silent.  Oh, I was supportive, I sincerely believed that what he had experienced was real to him.  Really, I had no doubts …I liked the man.  I wanted to continue to follow the story but our trip was nearing a closure. We were to leave at a station just before the teminus of the route.  I wanted to get closer to him, to know him better.  He was, how shall I say it: sympatico.  I felt a compassion for him.  In the end I quietly asked him a few questions about his life, his university studies, family and the like.  He was remarkebly open.  But the information was unimportant in relationship to the story.  He was well and broadly educated, like so many others. There was no clue to be found in his history or in his demeanor.

I’m not sure there is a proper ending to this story.  Mr. X told me befoe we disembarked that he hopped to sort out some of the contradictions of his experience during his stay in the south.  He would have a few weeks alone before his girlfriend arrived and that would give him time to revisit the events.  He seemed to have achieved an emotional state that allowed him to examine his experience from a detached distance.  At least that was my impression at the time.  How can one know ultimately the state of another human mind?  It’s just impossible.  I left him with the impression that he was a man of great courage and physic stamia, a man not easily destabilized by nightmares or unpredicable tramactic experience.  My assesment does not really mean much, I have little experience in these matters.

I disembarked shortly after Mr. X.  He was several positions ahead of me in the line to exit the coach.  I followed him into the terminal where I stopped momentarily to get my bearings.  Mr. X was at an exit door about to join a taxi cue.  He stopped just short of the exit and stood watching the street.  He appeared hesitant but still calm and in control of his wits.  After a few moments he turned and reentered the station and procedded towards another exit.  After I lost sight of him in the crowd I exited and joined the taxi cue myself.  That was the last I would see or hear from him but what is embedded in my mind is the look on his face as he turned away from the cab cue with a look of utter bewilderment.

When I edited my photographs I expected to see a reflected image of X.  It is common for the window to reflect images from inside the train.  I was disappointed.  Nowhere did he appear.  I hope we will meet again. Anything is possible.

Inside your head

Images clash

How can One

Be

Certain?

He is behind you.

Looking through your head.

Something is moving off to the distant right.

What he wants is to know you.

Why resist …

It’s all very safe and comfortable.

Everything is in the right place.

You are you and he is he.

It is about understanding.

You are safe …

Trust Him ….

He

Be

In There.

A  Guest.

A  Suggestion.

Stay where you are.

Relax!

Immerse yourself in life.

Possibilities abound.

You have it all.

Consider how

it could have been.

There is nothing to lose.

He is here to save.

Quietly in the background

He hovers.

Orders

Heads-Off!

DownStreet.

Lickety-Split

Heads Together.

He wants to know you.

A poetic process when you’re compliant.

Forget Freud.

Communication will happen later.

The process is new.

You will see and not see …

It will lead to new things.

Hidden roads will open.

Flowers will bloom in winter.

Freedom is almost yours.

Trust my friend …

Have trust.

Click on the thumbnail to view the gallery

I – EDUCATION: PARIS – GENEVA – VIENNA – GENEVA

BA (Hons.) in Fine Arts in 2002 at The BYAM SHAW School of Art, affiliated to the UNIVERSITY of the ARTS LONDON together with Camberwell, Chelsea A r t s School, Central Saint-Martins College of Art & Design, Chelsea Arts School and Wimbledon.

Final Essay on the philosopher François LYOTARD

“On Jean-François Lyotardʼs Resorting to the Contemporary Sublime, as a Way out from Artʼs Political Disenfranchisement, since the Demise of the Utopian Project” .

Other Essays on Roland BARTHES, Brice MARDEN, Robert SMITHSON, Mark WALLINGER, ITALIAN FUTURISM, ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTURE & SITE SPECIFIC Installations.

Ph D. (All but Dissertation)

GRADUATE INSTITUTE of INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

(Social History in Political Sciences Dept). Planned Dissertation Title: “Les Fondement Idéologiques de la Politique Extérieure du Front Populaire en France”

Degree in Modern Literature at the

UNIVERSITY of GENEVA.

Dissertation:

“Artʼs Victory over Fate in André MALRAUXʼs Novels & Essays on Aesthetics” Sorbonne University, Humanities for a semester. Piano Diploma at the Geneva Music Academy.

Private Piano studies. Baccalaureate with Latin.

A r i a n e M. B r a i l l a r d

II – AUDIT CLASSES & SEMINARS

Artist in Residence,2008, Palazzo Rinaldi, Basilicata, Italia.
Artist in Residence, 2009, in the Spinnerei @ LIAp – LEIPZIG INTERNATIONAL ARTISTSʼ PROGRAMME .
Artist in Residence, 2010, BAU Institute, Otranto, Italia

Many additional seminars & classes in New York and London

III – PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

- Director/Curator of the SWISS INSTITUTE in New York (a cultural space showcasing art exhibits, music & dance performances, talks, videos & documentary films) sponsored by the Swiss Council for the Arts PRO HELVETIA and by the Swiss Confederation.

- Public Relations Co-Ordinator of the SWISS INSTITUTE in New York. – Assistant to the Director of the SWISS INSTITUTE in New York.

- Manager for the offices of a “modern art” dealer in Geneva, who was a member of the Selection Committee for the Chicago International Art Fair. .

- Assistant to the Director of I.R.M. (International Research & Marketing), the public relations office of the JETRO (Japanese External Trade Organisation) in Paris.

IV – NATIONALITY

Swiss & French. Mother language: French. Born in GENEVA – Switzerland in 1939.

III – CURRENT ENDEAVOURS

Collaborating with an architect on the renovation of a Victorian artist’s studio in London to pursue my artistic practice there. Restructuring the FONDATION BRAILLARD ARCHITECTES in Geneva towards a research in sustainable architecture. Printing an artist book with etchings & poems on an unusual Venice. Sitting on the Board of the SWISS CULTURAL FUND in BRITAIN.

Recalling the one who mixed politics and poetry

By CESAR CHELALA

NEW YORK — At a time when we plainly see the negative effects of politics and greed in the life of nations, it is important to remember Pablo Neruda, a Chilean writer whom Gabriel Garcia Marquez called “the greatest poet of the 20th century — in any language.” He was an artist who knew very well how to blend politics and poetry in his life.

Neruda was born Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto in 1904 and died in 1973. When he was 16, he changed his name to Pablo Neruda, probably after the Czech writer Jan Neruda. He started writing poetry at 10.

I started reading him when I was a medical student in the 1960s, and haven’t stopped. How could I? Two of his books — “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” (written when he was only 20) and “The Captain’s Verses” — are intertwined with my first sentimental adventures. Like millions in Latin America — and across the world — once I read Neruda, he became part of my life.

Neruda’s political beliefs were behind some of his most powerful poems. For me, he represents the very ideal of the writer as a political man. When he was only 23, the Chilean government made him honorary consul in Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore and later Argentina, and the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Madrid. The Spanish Civil War, during which his friend, the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, was murdered, had a profound influence on his writing and his political activities.

He joined the Republican movement, first in Spain and then in France. In 1939, he was appointed Chilean consul in Paris, and from there, he coordinated the emigration to Chile of as many as 2,000 Spanish Republicans who had first escaped to France.

In 1943 he returned to Chile, then joined the protest against President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla’s repressive actions against striking miners. In 1945, he became a senator and joined the Communist Party. The government soon expelled him, and from 1947 to 1949 he lived in hiding.

In January 1948, Neruda delivered one of the most passionate speeches on Chile’s political history: He read out the names of 628 people being detained at Pisagua concentration camp without having been interrogated or formally charged. That speech became known as “Yo Acuso (I accuse),” after French novelist Emile Zola’s 1898 denunciation of the French government’s treatment of Alfred Dreyfus. In 1949, he fled to Europe.

Neruda’s greatest poetic achievements were fueled by his political beliefs. In his epic work “Canto General (General Song),” published in 1950, Neruda celebrates the richness and beauty of Latin America, and the people’s struggle for peace and social justice. Part of the work is the poem “Alturas of Macchu Picchu (Heights of Macchu Picchu),” a celebration of pre-Columbian civilization.

He lived in Europe for three years and returned to Chile in 1952, whence he continued traveling extensively overseas. He visited the United States in 1966 and in 1971 was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, which he received after being stricken with cancer.

When Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970, he appointed Neruda as Chile’s ambassador to France, where he lived from 1970 to 1972. In 1973, he returned to Chile, but in September of that year, Augusto Pinochet, with help from the CIA, overthrew Allende’s government.

Neruda’s life, I firmly believe, was shattered by Pinochet’s coup and Allende’s suicide. Neruda died only 12 days later. Shortly before his death, his house was ransacked by a military unit. When he saw the commander of the unit, weapon in hand in his bedroom, Neruda, who could hardly speak, told him, “There is only one dangerous thing for you in this house — poetry.”

Officially, Neruda died of leukemia. Most probably, though, this man, the saddest of men after the death of his friend Salvador Allende and the defeat of democracy in Chile, died of a broken heart.

Cesar Chelala is an international public health consultant for several United Nations agencies and cowinner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

The Japan Times: Monday, Jan. 26, 2009

(C) All rights reserved

Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Arise to birth with me, my brother.

Give me your hand out of the depths

sown by your sorrows.

You will not return from these stone fastnesses.

You will not emerge from subterranean time.

Your rasping voice will not come back,

nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,

tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,

groom of totemic guanacos,

mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,

iceman of Andean tears,

jeweler with crushed fingers,

farmer anxious among his seedlings,

potter wasted among his clays–

bring to the cup of this new life

your ancient buried sorrows.

Show me your blood and your furrow;

say to me: here I was scourged

because a gem was dull or because the earth

failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.

Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,

the wood they used to crucify your body.

Strike the old flints

to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips

glued to your wounds throughout the centuries

and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth

let dead lips congregate,

out of the depths spin this long night to me

as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,

and link by link, and step by step;

sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,

thrust them into my breast, into my hands,

like a torrent of sunbursts,

an Amazon of buried jaguars,

and leave me cry: hours, days and years,

blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.

Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

There is a gun pointed at your head … it is cocked, ready to fire.  You don’t move.  It is an old dream.  You go back to sleep, it will go away.  It’s your own creation.

When you awake the morning air smells of battle: canons, muskets.  The acrid smell of gunpowder fills the room.  You put your nose to the pillow … it is there too.

The other side of the bed is empty, the apartment is empty.  It is a bright, sunny, mid-spring day.

You have no place to go … staying here is impossible.  You dress slowly, drink your coffee and take some pictures.  No need to hang around.  More snapshots.  Move-on.

You slide the key through the mailbox slot.  It falls to the floor, sounds louder than it should,  a sound you will never forget.  Move-on man.

Take a bus to somewhere.

Somewhere, the next day you look at your pictures.  What a story.  No one would care.

I need to work it out in my head, You repeat to yourself over and over again.

You will keep the photos.  Somewhere safe in one of those albums on the computer.  For posterity.  You never know?

Love never dies, nor does it fade-away.  It is like energy that passes from one form to another.

Time doesn’t matter.  It is the story that counts … or is it?  What I loved Is what I love … But the gun … Why the gun?  It’s your imagination.  Or is it?

My side of the story is different.  It was a bomb … he dared me to touch it.  I held it close and it went off before I was ready.  You know what I mean …   I was unprepared for the intrusion.  I am I … and then my heart exploded.  God help me!  I did it … we did it!  A bloody mess,  But, I can’t go back.

I laid there for a while, couldn’t sleep.  I laid on my side looking at him.  What was it about him that made me take the dare?  I’m self-contained … I was?  And Him … allself … nothing but self, he picks and chooses his persona.  Will he take mine?  Or should I take something from Him first?

I left before he awoke.  He’ll get the message.  There was a spot of blood on the sheet.  The gun was pointed at his head.  Does he get the message?  There is contention here.  Raw Will against Raw Will.  A dare is not enough.  He has his memories … I have mine.

The morning I left the sky was a deep blue.  I know it is not really blue nor is it empty … When I see such a sky I feel relieved … whole in a way.  Then I remembered the gun hovering over my head.  Tilted it was.  Tilted it was meant to be.  I covered it with my hands, tried to wipe it away.  Then I turned my back on it and left.  My mind covered it in blue.  Whole blue.  I am whole, I am blue.

I left him a note some days ago.  He never responded.  He asked too much.  Too Soon.  Of course, I am searching.  Trying to remember.  Once I was and then I wasn’t.  Try to remember … Put it together … tie the knot again …

Yet, I am happy without the memories.  I was happy then  I am happy now   but to have the whole picture, it would add something.

He insisted.

We watched the angel falling near the light switch.  Together we watched.  We took it seriously.  When the switch was flicked off the angel fell again.  There are many stories about angels  Fighting angels  Announcing angels  Falling angels …  Angels of light  Angels of darkness.  It’s about reconciliation, remembering the way it was, putting it all back together …

Putting it all back …  I insisted.

I’m not sure what I recall   He was tall   attractive   compelling.  I thought he might change the world.  So convincing.  Really, I miss him.

Oh, But then he has become so dim.  so hard to say what he was … Something BIG  Bigger  But what could he be …  Maybe I will see him on the street …  He was a halo of hope … He was …

Something is broken.

Something broke.  A connection   A story line   It became undone  I heard the crash   The smash   The end of It.

I wouldn’t know it if I saw it again.

Or would I …

Red is god’s color.  Headdown she watches   Over emptyness    Rooms, chairs, tables without food.   Nothing to offer   A deserted Idol left for the scrapheap.

Someone might find her?

Where is the Key?