Around the Day in Two Worlds
“We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.”
Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
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| 6 real windows, 4 for the sake of a balance principle |
Sometimes you can travel several worlds in a few days and I certainly feel that's what happened this week. I was surprised by several things. Madrid. Looks amazing! My last memory of it was dark and gloomy, either because travelling was not really fun without money or because I was just that, a gloomy eighteen year-old.
Instead I found a vibrant city, one that had what you expect from Spain, shouting, drinks, laughter and people on the streets with bags and running shoes. Some old spaces restored either by new concepts or completely recovered like the Retiro gardens.
Thanks to wonderful friends I discovered Joaquín Sorolla and his beautiful house.
In Segovia, they have interesting stories around the aqueduct, and though a clear presentation of its construction was given through an iPad, I kept the romantic one about Lucifer and the beautiful woman, of course.
I like local stories. They convey a sense of imagination and collective fantasy that makes sense to the culture that created them.
Now, Prague.
What is there to hate about Prague? Well, I actually have one answer now but I want to be courteous enough because it really is, a beautiful place. After twenty years, Prague has become (or it always was?) a tourist mecca. Maybe there weren't so many of us, or maybe the romantic movie Somewhere Only We Know has brought herds of Chinese young men and women around and about several sights in Prague.
I found several things really interesting in relation to space and architecture. Reappropriation of private spaces has made de-contextualization an extraordinary, bizarre, or just sad notion of what the building was and what it is now used for. Some gentrification I saw in New Orleans, yet the use of the space was similar to what it originally was intended for. In Madrid, too. However, in Prague you can find beautiful marbled structures with a fish spa or thai massages in them. Czech people can't do anything about that or Chinese millionaires buying palaces or places that held some "holy" meaning to Bohemia. And if they do, they try to safeguard and buy it by several local people and that's exactly what they did for the oldest beer pub in Mala Strana.
Czech cubism, completely dismissed twenty years ago, now became an obsession. Objects and lines are unique, elegant. And to me, they hold a new classic feel to them, something contemporary interior designers could also explore.
Maybe this whole trip was about that. Of finding new ways of interpreting old meanings, the whole of Europe once held a strong meaning in my life. It was certainly an important part of my past. Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies, said Cortázar. Once you get past these faux mirrors, new meanings can emerge. Ones that are real only because they are present and the only thing that remains clear, is what we concretely leave behind. If we're artists maybe we'll be lucky and people might use our stuff in the future as props for a movie, because in the silent war of "private property" versus objects or spaces regarded as "holy" or "ethical" or even "artistic", fish spas are having the upper hand so far.
Instead I found a vibrant city, one that had what you expect from Spain, shouting, drinks, laughter and people on the streets with bags and running shoes. Some old spaces restored either by new concepts or completely recovered like the Retiro gardens.
Thanks to wonderful friends I discovered Joaquín Sorolla and his beautiful house.
In Segovia, they have interesting stories around the aqueduct, and though a clear presentation of its construction was given through an iPad, I kept the romantic one about Lucifer and the beautiful woman, of course.
I like local stories. They convey a sense of imagination and collective fantasy that makes sense to the culture that created them.
Now, Prague.
What is there to hate about Prague? Well, I actually have one answer now but I want to be courteous enough because it really is, a beautiful place. After twenty years, Prague has become (or it always was?) a tourist mecca. Maybe there weren't so many of us, or maybe the romantic movie Somewhere Only We Know has brought herds of Chinese young men and women around and about several sights in Prague.
I found several things really interesting in relation to space and architecture. Reappropriation of private spaces has made de-contextualization an extraordinary, bizarre, or just sad notion of what the building was and what it is now used for. Some gentrification I saw in New Orleans, yet the use of the space was similar to what it originally was intended for. In Madrid, too. However, in Prague you can find beautiful marbled structures with a fish spa or thai massages in them. Czech people can't do anything about that or Chinese millionaires buying palaces or places that held some "holy" meaning to Bohemia. And if they do, they try to safeguard and buy it by several local people and that's exactly what they did for the oldest beer pub in Mala Strana.
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| Fara House |
Maybe this whole trip was about that. Of finding new ways of interpreting old meanings, the whole of Europe once held a strong meaning in my life. It was certainly an important part of my past. Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies, said Cortázar. Once you get past these faux mirrors, new meanings can emerge. Ones that are real only because they are present and the only thing that remains clear, is what we concretely leave behind. If we're artists maybe we'll be lucky and people might use our stuff in the future as props for a movie, because in the silent war of "private property" versus objects or spaces regarded as "holy" or "ethical" or even "artistic", fish spas are having the upper hand so far.
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