Hi world,

I left my flat this morning with the only intention to go swimming. I stopped at a small vintage furniture shop which is about to close. There is where I found two framed pictures that I couldn't resist to take home with me.
They are two black and white photographs taken in the 50's by some obscure erotic photographer. They represent a naked model wearing a wedding vale and with a bunch of flowers in her hands.

All my past artwork were based on reinterpretation of Duchamp's ideas. One on the central concepts that kept his creative mind busy was what someone called "the dynamics of desire". These dynamics are applied to the realm of erotic love but they can be extrapolated to a number of topics (the impossibility of knowledge, for example). Around this topic he produced two of his more important works: The Bride Stripped by Her Bachelors, Even... (also known as the Large Glass) , and my favorite artwork ever, Etant Donnes.
Duchamp's Bride represents the "object of desire", which by definition, is unreachable. His work explains the circular flow of forces that drives the energy of desire, which ends resulting in an unproductive cycle, closer to a defeat than a victory. Only irony and humor (and love??) could break the vicious circle and save us from the dispair and the suffering of the distance.

The beautiful pictures I got this surprising morning seem to play the same game of visual chess (at least in my eyes as a victim of desire).
In Duchamp terms, they are a "ready made", they haven't been done with an artistic intention, they are made just to provoke a bit of naif arousing effect on the postwar male British population. But it terms of symbolic elements, their story is very complete and consistent.
They relate to the archetype of the "femme fatale" atracting her bachelors to an sinister castrating trap. She doesn't seem to be getting married, she is just playing the symbolic game of presenting herself as a sexual and spiritual goal (by marrying her she will be "yours" forever).
The vale allows some clarity (see-trough) while simultaneously implies an always frustrating distance.

That's the beauty of archetypes, you call them and their appear with all this meanings and stories. Like a friend of mine said, maybe the life of the archetypes is the real one, what we think is real is just a blinded representation.

by my favorite character:

thanks Hadas!

Text found in Absolute Carmel thanks to Hadas: http://www.absolutecarmel.com/?p=113
It helps to understand the Twitter phenomenon from a symbolic (vs allegorical) perspective. Being vs representing.

In the world of print writing was a virtue. People who would write and publish were the ones who had something interesting to say. A text would have to be worth a read. Similarly, an image would normally be art, it will be upheld to an aesthetic standard and convey a message. However, online conversations and picture sharing cannot be treated the same way because they’re not texts or images anymore, but the building blocks of (virtual) reality.

Many bloggers bash teenagers for creating foolish colorful blogs with dozens of pictures of them goofin’ with their friends, whereas their writing resorts to “school is boring” complaints or “got nothing to say but just wanted to update and say hi” posts. I’ve often read bloggers wonder: with all due respect to the long tail concept, why would someone read something so remotely interesting? And why would you even blog when you’ve got nothing to say?

everyone has a right to produce and reproduce

As texts in print culture, most of our online content would be inconceivable; no one would bother publishing such texts and images under any circumstances. But in digital culture everyone writes and photographs not because we’re all artists, but because this is our new realm of experience and our new inhabitance space. We’re all entitled to a body, to breathe, to be present and occupy space. People don’t have to be interesting in order to deserve a place in the world; they could just be and we would never wonder why they exist in the first place.

In the beginning of the 20th century many people appeared in movies as extras and loved watching themselves appear on screen, they felt everyone had a right to be represented, mechanically reproduced. it is no coincidence that our biological right to reproduce uses the same word as our freedom-of-speech “right” to produce and digitally reproduce images and represent ourselves in the new medium.

It is the same with online presence in digital spaces only that our embodiment in these spaces is through texts and images. We don’t have to write something worthy of reading, since writing is like breathing. We’ve already recognized online writing as speech but what is speech if not a form of breathing? Through your online activity you say or show “I’m here” and it’s enough, you don’t have to communicate anything but your presence. So much of our online conversation is pathic but i argue that a good portion of our content is too.

Your writing can be impulsive and unedited like your spontaneous speech, your spelling can be a disaster in the same way you’re not obliged to be beautiful and perfect. Letters are your avatar now so they mean much more than speech; they’re how you move and perform yourself in this space too.

it’s no longer documenting experience, it is IT

Every once in a while someone says the net is boring and the majority of its content is crap, and I say: of course. So is life. And life is on the web now. We experience it not only through our bodies but also through technology: we tweet during an experience and take a picture and share it, as part of experience. it’s no longer a documentation of it, it is IT.

We all deserve to occupy space online, to breathe. Thus, Evaluations of quality of any sort are completely irrelevant. The only relevant question for online content is if you care about someone enough to witness his experience, as boring as it may be.

How many of you who read this through, did it because you assumed I’ve got something interesting to say, and how many did it because they care about me as a person and enjoy the thoughts and experiences I share?

Thanks Sjors for the video. Despite the irony, it's a very "neo post modern (sam dixit)" and trendy video:

"I refuse to get involved in arguments on the existence of God--which means that the term "atheist" (as opposed to the word "believer") is of no interest to me at all, no more than the word believer or the opposition of their very clear meanings. For me, there is something other than yes, no and indifferent -- the absence of investigations of this sort, for instance."

Marcel Duchamp

Chapter 1. He sat in front of a mirror in her living room wondering where all the reflected images of her past were stored. No rewind button
From my Twitter 140 characters stories

Hi world,

I am starting a new visual experiment, I just purchased a really nice 1860´s french mirror with a golden wooden frame in an trustful antique shop in Notting Hill.

Years ago I started to use vinyl stickers over mirror glasses, as a way to enforce the materiality of the surface: Material versus illusion, I would say. I call them: "Surface Invaders".
The idea is back again, with a less conceptual but more aesthetic goal, building up on the doodles I keep doing while at the meetings. The reason why I use the doodles is because its the closer thing to random creation I can think about, and at the end of the day, creation relies on instints and shape is just an issue of random numerical combination.

 Bellow the first draft I've done tonite as away of showcasing it. The reflection is not of my current flat, but it looks like my future one.

Marcus opened a nice topic on his site about Social Media engagement with good follow ups. It's a bit like the manifesto we never managed to write.

It's also the first excuse ever to put a picture of Britney in my blog.

http://www.chickerino.com/$tumblelog/2009/05/21/on_britney_and_social_media

Do you remember the traffic controller in that comedy about a plane crash saying "I've chosen a bad day to give up smoking" ?.
Well, I fell like this. I've definitely chosen a bad year to give up on anything. Every time I tried I ended adding more stress to already stressful situations.

Tomorrow, however, it's going to be a bit different. I am getting the keys of my new flat at 9:30 and cheese as it might sound, I am giving myself a life change opportunity. Seriously. (the tenancy contract also specifies that smoking is not allowed).

So, will see what is next.
This is my 5th move in less than 2 years. From the flat I used to own in South London and that now belongs to my ex girlfriend, to Marcus's flat in arty Shoreditch, to an apartment for executives in St John's Street that made me feel like living in a hotel (depressing experience), to this fantastic flat in the heart of trendy Clerckenwell that I shared with Marcus for a year and that hosted a few great parties; and finally tomorrow, 9:30 AM I am moving West to beautiful Notting Hill, to an old converted school which includes a kinder garden in the ground floor, and in which the most gourgeous yummy mummies of London will drop their perfect babies in the mornings*. The flat is also attached to a church, somehow is pretty ironic as I became an atheist quite recently. I guess I'll have to start believing again and/or buying some good headphones to deal with the sound of the bells and the choruses.
* an old fantasy of my sick mind, the mummies, not the babies, of course.

All those moves implied a radical change one way or another, some for good some for bad. I am really curious about what will be next. I cannot avoid the sensation of the end of an era. I'll keep you posted about my little domestic adventures

love! alberto

oh! I almost forgot! thanks Marcus aka "chickerino superdude" for being such a good flatmate. Good luck!

For the good old times of spanish music, what an awesome song.

For the last few weeks I've been starting a new novel every working day of the week (I think I missed one day). I post this short beginnings of amateur literature in Twitter. The only rule is that they have to be exactly 140 characters long (Twitter maximum number of characters).
They tell the stories of different unnamed people (he, she, I, they) and they are not related with each other.

These are the first 35 entries (updated 27 May 09):

Chapter 1. She arrived home late last night, he was awake by a dream when she oppenend the bedroom door. She was wearing a beautiful dress.

Chapter 1. The girl at the coffee shop smiled and prepared the usual large latte and orange juice. No words were crossed. No word was needed

Chapter 1. For a man with such strong principles, "truth" wasn't a real issue for him. The spell must be protected from those little details

Chapter 1. She was upset for no particular reason. Particular reasons are manageable, the unanswered generic feelings are the difficult ones

Chapter 1. Her voice at the phone was broken by the effects of a nasty cold, her breathing let escape some echoes of pain and sweetness.....

Chapter 1. Factory made abstract paintings hang all around the furniture shop, he was drunk and surrounded by aspirational, hateful ugliness

Chapter 1. There was nothing she could do about it. She was part of a game that was bigger than her, a character defined by desires and fear

Chapter 1. The picture covered the most of wall, nothing on the painting existed but those days it became the only landscape of his reality

Chapter 1. I saw her at VATS drinking a long shot of something strong and red, dressed in black and with the liquid, deep eyes of a vampire.

Chapter 1. She pointed to the wrong man. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Life made an unexpected turn dragging all their lives.

Chapter 1. She stopped working for a minute, looked up and raised her hand to the first lacy rays of sun. Do you think we'll have a summer?

Chapter 1. He stopped listening, his mind was already filled with too many images and ideas. Quietness was unavailable there, a rare luxury.

Chapter 1. In his brain the electro-chemical reactions to beauty and sadness were closely connected. And he saw beauty and sadness everywere

Chapter 1. His room was empty, it had the white walls and concrete ceilings of an aseptic art gallery. Everyday started from a blank canvas.

Chapter 1. They kissed and said goodbye. He stayed smoking outside the terminal before taking the train back home. He was also traveling far

Chapter 1. They felt like falling in a bottomless well, acelerating hand by hand, together, strightly following the Universal Law of Gravity

Chapter 1. They sat at the bar and he had a shot of scotch before ordering the dinner. I am fucked, he said. You are just tired, she replied

Chapter 1. I lost her, he said. Memories of defeats exploded inside my brain, diluting the night and my will like a bath in corrosive acid.

Chapter 1. His behavior was observed, classified and measured on her virtual emotional grid. A complex equation to define the value of love.

Chapter 1. They were friends since they could remember. After the funeral two of them left in opposite directions, the third one stood there

Chapter 1. He was alone, sitting on his board exploring the horizon, cold, quiet, hypnotized by the moving parallel lines, invisible to all.

Chapter 1. They were waiting at the hotel lobby under fake flames made of fabric. And she walked in, looking like fake flames made of fire.

Chapter 1. She stared at his shaking hands: Dear maybe you are meant to be a smoker. You are not you anymore, you are like your evil brother

Chapter 1. He was trying hard, but it seems that destiny only have one face, a face beautiful enough to let himself go, to give up fighting.

Chapter 1. He stood inside the house looking off the window.The house was just a drawing and he was just thinking they were outside. Playing

Chapter 1. The slow, deep and thick sound of a guitar made her bones vibrate, then the bass reached her soul. She remembered her secret name

Chapert 1. She was dancing slowly inside a loose white blouse, looking at the floor of my room with her eyes half open. Careless, like a God

Chapter 1. She felt tired and burned. After a drink, she laugh of my stupid joke, then she realized she loved me. Her light was blinding me.

Chapter 1. Not one single second had passed since the last time they met, despite the winters, the summers, the victories and the defeats.

Chapter 1. They walked along the avenues, the water front, the parks, the back streets, looking everywere but to each other. No turist area.

Chapter 1. While she smiled to my exhausted eyes: "Do you want a simple life?". "No", I said. "In that case assume the price of your choice"

Chapter 1. He sat in front of a mirror in her living room wondering where all the reflected images of her past were stored. No rewind button

Chapter 1. The stones of the city are green & silver after the strong rain. My bones are cold, wet, it hurts. She is the air after the rain

Chapter 1. 11 minutes to the next train. She kept waiting at the terminal thinking on the old prophetic error that drove her there, praying

Chapter 1. He felt that his life was a collection of unconnected, fragmented memories and facts made to be written in 140 charaters maximum.

Chapter 1. She was attached to geography. Her identity changed with the many places where she lived. Leaving the furniture of memory behind.