even with all the time lapses, multiple time zones and being mobile, the flow, it's something that remains, that gives the possibility for a connection. I feel our global lives or art work are all about the in between. That undefined subliminal zone of movement. that is the zone where we can truly create.

the poetic of space

I worked in a film where we traveled all over Portugal up north. After that, we traveled South: Portugal, Spain, Marroc, we went until Fes. By car. He went back Brazil, I stayed in Lisbon and I am now considering to move to London.

How poetic can be space: the geographic space, the one we see, the one we can touch, but also all the imaginary space, all the in betweens, all the shades and nuances of spaces.

How many kind of spaces can we cross? How does space influence the way we live in our body, in our minds, in our joys, in our freedom?

To travel to Marroc, to travel by land, feeling all the way, touching all the colors was a spiritual journey, a learning experience of freedom. I traveled just for fun, to enjoy, to relax on the way. Usually I travel for work, to shoot, to go to festivals... Now, that I am in Lisbon, without finding a job, with no money at all, I really feel I am in a sort of jail somehow. And I don't know what to do with my life... I feel arrested in this place without options or money, a place of solitude, very much alike an island. I am seeing London as an option to be able to find work. I don't see it as a poetic space, but more as an effective place where I can keep working doing what I do, being who I am...

INTRANSIT

1st take of a very in progress of project that deals with living in two cities at once: nyc+ phlly

the spine of time

time is a difficult element to deal with. sometimes a rigid structure, sometimes a blurry fog... where's the spine of time?

in the period I was living in philadelphia my time was structured around my creative work, creating art was the spine of my time. As I had a grant, I could wake up in the morning to work in my projects and be working all day, without the worries of finding money to pay the rent. That peace of mind, gave me also an availability to be with people in a different way. I had time to make friends, just TO BE. Here in Lisbon, my time has no structure right now, I haven't found work until today. So last days were lasy, just feeling lost, without being able to concentrate myself in any creative work... I was still moving some stuff to my new place, dealing with some practical things like going to the bank, insurence, and also to try to read, organize ideas but... Without any particular objectif besides the one of finding work, I found myself walking around the city, without any particular direction, sometimes it was nice, lisbon is a beautiful city.




I feel tired and I am sleeping a lot. I guess this city makes you like that... I know I have to find a new spine of time everyday, but sometimes it happens that I loose its track...

Tomorrow I'll start a new job, a short one, just 3 intense weeks working in a documentary. My time will be totally different from these last days. I will be working with a brasilian crew and we'll be shooting in Lisbon and other places around the city I really like, also places where I lived before or where I shot some of my films. Later we'll go to the north of Portugal for a week or two. I think that will be very nice, to travel in Portugal, in the countryside.

en transito

hola amigas
hola claudia

te leo ...
a~noro sentirme como tu ...
sabes, la gente puede estar deprimida y triste en cualquier parte del mundo ...
claro, la novedad de salir de casa siempre es un factor que impulsa y lleva a unas fuerzas mas alla

y la realidad es que aqui en america nueva hay tanto: tanta tecnologia y facilidad para todo!
es verda hay mucho que aprender de aqui ... y mucho mucho que desaprender tambien!

tambien hay mucho que aprender de estar alla donde no se quiere estar! es balance...
entiendo que no quieras perder tu momentum ... eso es aterrorizante.

pero observa mira tu casa alla = espectacular!

por eso es que compartimos este blog por estar en el in bituin
ni aqui ni alla

yo conozco muy bien de esto

la verda es que por tres a~nos no he estado casi en ningun lugar
si no mas bien en un in bituin total
y ahora que voy a pronto aterrizar en un lugar = nueva york a fines de abril, me esta dando un panico!!!!

se dice que se quiere lo que no se tiene ...
pajaro en mano mas que ciento volando

o que sera que sera?

cuantas preguntas y vueltas da el mundo

la vida es una tombola tom tom tombola de luz y de color!!!!!

one step at a time forevermore

i trust you.

i am trying to trust me ...

love and good things

be were you're at that is all that matters for now.

this is my house in lisbon...

It's funny that since I arrived I am much more in touch with my friends from philly than from here. I mean I am meeting people here, but they seem so far away from me the way I am now, as I changed a lot but they cannot see it and it is very difficult to explain how people change deeply. Of course they want to know how was it, but what I can tell them it's just so poor... that's why I feel my friendships in philly are so important to me now and I wish I could be staying, because I really feel my life is there at this moment, I was feeling happy there, maybe for the first time, at least in such a continuous way, being able to integrate myself with my art and others, without limitations or boundaries... just experiencing that flow was amazing for me.

You say about "the ballad..." that is "simple, direct and human", nice choice of words because it's how I feel myself and I am happy that I could put that in my work. When I started making films I was very concerned about the form, not exactly the technique but how to put things, ideas, feelings into film form, how to create beyond the rules, how to make something new... I discovered the pleasure of the camera and editing and I found I was talented for that and found out that film was the way for me to expresse myself and the world around me. My master - an old film director who lived in Japan for 10 years - used to say I was TOO talented... For a long time I thought how is it possible to be too talented with the camera or whatever?

doing films I realized - and even more in my creative time in philly - that I was forgetting a bit the content, my feelings were not clear or direct or simple... my ideas were blured, poetic, but with my camera I could give some beauty to things, I could trick myself or my subject, give them the tension and mistery I was feeling. I was abstract and the communication with the public was possibly also not very clear, I was not trying to send any particular message or make a statement, I was just creating atmospheres, sensations, forms (narative forms, editing experiences and so on). And I still think there is a lot of beauty in my first films and I like them and it is interesting for me to watch them and see who I was, who I am now. I think that is one of the big reasons for me to do films: to understand myself better and the world around me and people and relationships and human condition... yes, the human aspect became more and more important and now I think I can create many different levels of experience in my films, one is more direct and others underneath, like layers - I guess I could finally do that with my new script (Mobile) and it was very important to do it in a script / written form because forced me to really think very carefully in every single detail and in the orquestration of the whole. it took me around 3 years to be able to do so. and that is what interests me right now, to be able to talk with people, to portray their lives I must get close and understand them, so I need to be simple and direct, that is the key I was looking for. America taught me that, not in the sense of the "story / plot" and the "message" but even by my understanding of english language, so clear and direct... that made me think in a different way, also the computers, which made me think more logically... which for me was good!

and now here I am, in a place where people get sad and depressed because they cannot do their art and because they have to wait so long... and I'm afraid to loose the energy I had in philly where I was feeling so inspired from everything and all the friends I got and all the environment was giving me that dynamic... being displaced there, without roots or attachments made me look at myself and all around me in a very different way and I got deep inside to search for new things also outside of me. Being displaced, at first, was kind of painful, then was an inspiration and lately I was feeling part of the place (I remember walking on the streets smiling, just because I was feeling so happy!) and now, it is here in lisbon that I feel like a stranger...

claudia

en sandwich [ed]

estoy aqui en la filadelfia [con la que suen~a claudia]
yo teniendo leves pesadillas de una tesis a la vuelta de la esquina

i am here in a sandwich of immediate past and up and close future
here in philadelphia [place claudia dreams of re turn ing]

all com press ed in the pre sent
voila here i am!

no place to turn to hide
in a sandwich in which the only thing i see is being here very present

with all that is as is.

i wrote this tuesday nite [saved it as a draft]
publish it tonite = thursday
and yesterday, the day in between it finally snowed- lightly flurries- [t]here: philadelphia
now here = NY
it is very cold now. actual winter here now.

In Between ... past and future.

In Between ... past and future.
I finally graduated from college here Philadelphia, the city Claudia misses and the city misses Claudia. I'm in between past and future, difficult past in Tokyo, great past in Philadelphia, and unknown future that I wish to be full of joy and discovery, even with some pains, I'd want to take it.

Where I'm going to be?

I've been in Philadelphia since summer 2005, came here to just finish my undergraduate degree. It was simple. I was planning to hate America, finish school, and go home where all my friends are.

then what happened?

Philadelphia has became my central place of creation, where I can come up with ideas, work on stop-motion animation, and getting support for it from people. It has grew in my heart so much.
I discovered the strongest passion for stop-motion animation production with great creative partner.
If I go back to Tokyo, I won't have space and film equipments to shoot animation, and people who support me and encourage my creative activity, and no more collaborative work with my partner!
Yes, I'm really afraid to lose all that. Tokyo is full of reality that hurts me.

Nothing goes as I plan or expect. In another word, I think there is no connection between past and future. You can't cling to either of them. We all have to live in this moment, even though sometimes we become ghosts and lost in past and future of ours, with sentiment, sadness, happiness, and dreams...

Oh Claudia, Mr.Consumption has accepted to one of the small film festival!

THE BARDO OF IN BETWEEN

For Claudia, who is just back in Lisbon, so happy to see you...soul 2 soul

Life is a flow and in this flow we construct and disconstruct our identity at every moment with every new experience. Like everything , identity is impermanent, just take a closer look, we are changing with every breath and step we take.
Who am I ? who is this I actually ? where is it ? it is forming and unforming, in evolution, in revolution, like a spiral. I is just a reference for organising experience, some kind of harbour for consciousness in our dual world. My body is the home for that no-body, for the I is like the waving of a tepistry. like Penelope, I undo it a night, because of the pretendants...
Identity is wild as the elements, under special circumstances it dilutes, dissolves, cristalises, evaporates, like water it is flexible and can can adapt to all lanscapes but it can also grow to a flood and kill you. We all know some people kill others in name of identity and pertenecy to an identity.
Identity is always in transit. it is THE place in between, but we don´t even notice it...
Life goes through it for there are no bounderies for the life flow, no borders, no countries, no you and no me and that is what we have to learn here, to love without obstacles.
In the west, through the speed of technology and material life, people are getting to discover they are in between. In between countries, places, homes, cultures, constructing identities that are so complex a patchwork that their original idea of identity crasches, often toguether with their sense of security ( the purpose of all this identity stuff anyway). It is an irony that in the material , highly technological and scientific part of the world, this fact is just beeing discoverded now, unfortunately, toguether with the collapse of anthropological diversity, through globalisation and speed of life.
In tibet ( or what is left of the tibetan culture) , we are entering now Loosar, tibetan New Year, and it will be the year 2133. Tibetans have always had a word for describing in between . It is called the Bardo. Everything is a bardo, we are always in transition between a state and a new state. So life itself is a bardo. Death is a bardo. Becoming is a Bardo. That is why all is a flow. That is why I do Taiji. To express that flow. In Taiji, I discovered, in the beginning you pay attention to perfection of postures. Then you start realising the transitions are important. Then transitions get more important. In the end, the posture stops existing, because there is no more, beginning or end posture. That is when you transcend the form. Stillness in motion, the motion of stillness.
that is where west met east inside of me.
Gabriela

limbo in NYC

New York is my limbo now. an empty zone to rest and think about the past year living in the states.
a space of transition between Philadelphia and Lisbon, literally in between.
a time for friendship - thanks Noemi! do nothing, just to be...

a space in between
to rest, to sleep, to be overwelmed, to be afraid... to be sad... so many things happened... I feel confused, I want to come back... I don't want to go home... what will happen?

no words, just silence...

in New York I discovered a
super silent land!