When in Rio 3

"A Falta que Nos Move" (The Absence that Moves Us) -- film by Christiane Jatahy. Dogma-like, formalist exercise, drawing film closer to its theatrical roots. High-brow reality t.v. brought to the screen? Reflection on the narcissist vacuum facing post-utopian artistic/intellectual life?  Worth (re)viewing.

Wisnik diz que Pessoa diz

que para se ler poesia é preciso acionar a simpatia (a vibração com o que se lê), a intuição (a abertura para o entendimento do que parece não ter sentido), a inteligência (o senso de integração das partes), a compreensão (a entrega de tudo o que você já viveu e leu) e a graça , senão os símbolos estão mortos para você, e você, morto para os símbolos.

When in Rio 2

Paisagem em falso (False Landscape), by Sofia Borges, in the Galeria Arthur Fidalgo in Copacabana. Large digital print images taken of diorama landscapes in the Museum of Natural History in NYC.

When in Rio 1

Arthur Bispo do Rosario -- "O Artista do Fio" -- at the Caixa Cultural. Mesmerizing display of mundane objects, fabricated by the artist and wrapped, mummy-like, in gray thread collected from the uniform clothing worn by fellow mental hospital residents. The work is both meditative and distressing, each object a result of a painstaking patience and labeled in a contrasting thread as a sort of guard against oblivion or perhaps a desire for a sort of ground-zero of language, with the word stuck to the object, the signifier and signified once again inseparable.....

Bene' Fonteles -- Benches Series

Ecology without Nature

Fascinating talk by Timothy Morton on fallacies of Nature as an organizing concept and on what in fact makes one being different from the next, or not ....

"The Ecological Thought and Object Oriented Ontology"

Xochi’s Tale

Is it my fault I’m part rat terrier, part

the kind of dog who lives in a lady’s lap?

I didn’t ask to be bottom mutt in the pack

that runs untamed through the twisted trash-strewn streets

in Xochiapulcho, I didn’t ask to be plucked

up by a pair of gringos. First they took

away my manhood. No more sweet reek

of bitches, no hot pursuits, no garbage rot.

When they packed up to go back to the USA

I thought they’d cry, then dump me out, but no.

Macho mestizo, my entry papers say.

Who dines in style and sleeps the sleep of kings

ought dream no more of his rowdy half-starved days ….

I dwell in heaven but without the wings.

-- Maxine Kumin