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Friday, August 30, 2002

10:25 No-coincidence. Familiar pattern: learn about the subject then meet the subject in the world, there where it lives. Good fortune. Since about a month I've been reading again about Bucky Fuller and his quest for ultralight, foundationless and autonomous buildings. It's been about a week since I got a fun little book on the history of inflatables (in art, architecture and design). My mind full of these blobby, domey, tent-like visions. That's when I got invited to spend four days working at Lowlands, a festival (a camping festival) in the middle of a Dutch polder and made completely out of temporary and inflatable structures. Four days working, eating and shitting, showering and sleeping in tents and containers of all sorts. All communal, all shared. I'm 36 and these were my first nights in a tent. Being there, in the flesh, modified and gave depth to all that stuff I've reading about.


Lowlands festival, aerial view (after the rain on Saturday)

Some sixty thousand people converged to Lowlands with their tents, tattoos, t-shirts and heavy boots ready for fun and mud (lots of both). We were a team of twenty people, brought together by Captain Video, shooting and editing video for four days. LTV, as the programme was called, went on for sixteen hours a day and was shown on five large screens spread around the festival area.

Many more images of the festival at the LTV page of the Captain Video site.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2002

11:29 Aaron Rogers from Australia pointed me to some photos of the ocean pools of Sydney made by Ian Lever.
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Tuesday, August 27, 2002

23:00

still from 'The Abyss'

The other day I rented The Abyss (longer, special edition). I was particularly impressed by the sequence involving fluid breathing. Bud (Ed Harris) is about to go on a very deep diving mission and is being assisted as his suit is filled with a pinkish liquid:
Ensign Monk (watching Bud fight the impulse not to take the fluid into his lungs): Relax, now, Bud. Don't hold your breath, take it in, just let yourself take it in. We all breathed liquid for nine months, Bud, the body will remember.
After the expected moment of panic he resumes breathing and initiates his descent into the deep abyssal trench. A while later he has an unexpected encounter, is guided through a pinkish tunnel (vagina-shaped, quite appropriately) and regains conscience in a submersed chamber where part of the water is being replaced by air to form a small breathable environment. Bud removes his helmet (still filled with the oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion) and gasps, pukes, coughs as his lungs get once again filled with oxygen.

It's an extremely moving scene and something I would really like to physically experience one day (fluid breathing is a technology in development since the sixties). Incidentally, both the concept of a 'memory of the body' and the act of re-living your own moment of birth are recurrent issues in the work of Lygia Clark, ideas she explored in great depth and using the simplest possible means.

still from 'The Abyss'

still from 'The Abyss'

still from 'The Abyss'

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22:58
That wasn't a true dream, Robert, but an ancient organic memory millions of years old."
He pointed to the ascending rim of the sun through the groves of the gymnosperms. "The innate releasing mechanisms laid down in your cytoplasm millions of years ago have been awakened, the expanding sun and the rising temperature are driving you back down the spinal levels into the drowned seas submerged beneath the lowest layers of your unconscious, into the entirely new zone of the neuronic psyche. This is the lumbar transfer, total biopsychic recall. We really remember these swamps and lagoons. After a few nights you won't be frightened of the dreams, despite their superficial horror..."
...
After a few minutes he ignored the Colonel completely and listened to the subliminal drumming in his years, half-closed his eyes so that he could see the glimmering surface of the lake dapple across the dark underhang of the table. Opposite him Bodkin appeared to be doing the same, his hands folded over his navel.

JG Ballard, Drowned World

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Wednesday, August 21, 2002

01:38

my full name in Russian

Back in Brazil, my nephew Luis Henrique Lira da Fonseca (15) is determined to learn Russian. I wonder whether he knows that, several decades ago, his great-grandfather João Nepomuceno Pereira de Lira engaged similar plans.
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Saturday, August 17, 2002

21:45 fragment:
...damn you folks with multiples!
(from a message I got from BJ a few days ago)

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Friday, August 16, 2002

11:37

flooding of the Ars Museum in Lins, Austria

Sebastian writes:
i am reading your pool stuff.
something funny (or freaky)
the Vals pictures at the bottom of the page resemble (a bit) some pics posted by Ars Electronica documenting the water penetrating the basement of the Ars museum, which is next to the Danube in Linz. (trivia: the basement is fucking FULL of electronic equipment and stuff)

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Wednesday, August 14, 2002

22:35 The matter
Not only my own, or the ones of the people around me. It's the body of everything, lush, food I slice, cloth I fold, paper I finger and file. All the matter enjoys immense. Look and really see and smell and smear or squish with my fingers and hear the little noises that come from the things. The light friction between my own and the bodies of everything. It's really happening and being noticed. No record will do.
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Monday, August 12, 2002

23:09

still shot from the film 'Run, Lola, Run'

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16:34 Subject: Pool correction
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 07:31:23 -0400
From: rlxxxx (rlxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx)
To: Rog (rog at latenightpool dot com)
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.8 required=5.0
tests=FROM_NAME_NO_SPACES,TO_LOCALPART_EQ_REAL,PLING,AWL
version=2.31
X-Spam-Level:

Rich got up and run back to the station and to Brussels.
Should be:
Rich got up and ran to the station and back to Brussels.
so correct run to ran and the structure of the sentence!

Me

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Sunday, August 11, 2002

23:56 Review
Sunday almost over. Full of concentration, calls made and received, information found, notes taken. Ideas. Insight.


James Turrell's Heavy Water, 1991

I started by reading in bed and then getting up and browsing. Some weeks ago Stefan had mentioned the work of James Turrell in which an indoor pool gives (underwater) access into a room with a view to the sky. Waaaa. A quick search shows that the temporary installation is supposed to have a new, permanent address somewhere in France. Must search further.

Paul called (life boats, Turrell, appointment).
Bill called (stuck with broken foot, craving sport and movement).
Short but authorized foot massage.
Dark juicy strawberries, yoghurt, fruit-and-fiber, jam.
Rich got up and ran to the station and back to Brussels.
Quiet in the house, many (vibrating) SMSs to and from the train.
Pressed play on 'Dogtown and Z-boys'.
Showered thinking of audio and of ways to brief a composer for my DVD project.
Semi-watched 'Dogtown and Z-boys'. Thought about it.
Tidied up. Dressed. Bike, coffee, studio.
Wrote suggestions/requests for Homegrid database interface (I'm a test user).
Added, edited database records (therapists, Turrell).
Checked for available options of massage courses. Notes, printouts.
Thought about it.
Checked for books on Shiatsu. Notes, wish list.
Flávio called (saudades, living alone or with people, dissertations, property).
Found all new position lying on the floor with my head sticking out the door/window (neck on wooden lath). Street and passers-by below/behind, great view to hoist and the sky. Realized the studio feels new again, many possibilities ahead.



E-mails received and answered, appointments made. Expectations.
A postcard from Vals sent by Teike Asselbergs tells me we were there at the same time without knowing it.
Searched for information on Haptonomy. Found.
Thought about it.
Prepared and planned meetings to be had in the coming week. Expectations.
I called Maria Alice (research, Suely Rolnik, hurry).
Bike, crowded streets, home. Undressed.
E-mails received and sent.
Semi-watched The Osbournes for the first time while cooking (pasta, fresh spinach, tomatoes).
Ate.
Finished watching 'A Bout de Souffle'. Extras included excellent trailer a la language course ('la jeune fille, le revolver, la police de Paris')
Read in bed. Notes.
Dressed. Brought out the garbage and the paper and glass to the recycle container.
Walked shortly through the red light district.
Home. Undressed. Posted. Got thirsty.
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Sunday, August 04, 2002

02:12 It's gay pride weekend again in Amsterdam. Identity check, as usual, and I'm having a very nice time.
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Saturday, August 03, 2002

04:21 'Is my life just another story?'
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