Walter Solon
bangaloREsident@JAAGA
Resident non-resident, down to another Southern trope for the first time now.
Now in the East Indies. I’m from a West Indie. An outcast, entitled to hereditary funds in the trusted meritocracy of blood. Blood that circulates and doesn't spill. Blood as cultural capital but not only.
Spent last two nights watching Darjeeling Limited, now my brother might join in the acting. But it will be different: blood won't be screened as flattened symmetric faces. Blood will be phased out on two sides of the mirrorless camera I’ll bring along with a Zeiss lens box with due import carnets and insured in case of actual violence. A possible visit might include Zeiss's labs in Bangalore, its military optical tech, where monkeys besiege the factory allured by lens flare.
The film might be shot in black and white to insist on shade and contrast rather than landscape or flower. Sharpness of 4K downgraded to 2. Lots of bokeh, look for moirés. And reach Nirvana. A playlist. Sublime and psytrance blow your speakers on the beach.
My West Indian companion – alias Brother Rudi – is the protagonist of a previous film called Ethics of Survival, a simulation of self-defence for daily or untimely apocalypse scenarios — bang-bang on Sao Paulo streets or a second Holocaust. The brother who embodies a foreign state's raison d'état, an assumed identity, a stable warzone for ancestral home. What about me, who lives in a foreign state of origins and has been re-naturalised? He plays me, same same but different.
Let us now de-re-naturalise, brought to you by Goethe, our East Indian Company, we’ve just been to China and South Korea on a similar navigation, then-companion was Jorge Loureiro, our first time in Asia, pitching prototypes for German inventions tested in Brazilian soil by Bayer-Monsanto, the monster re-branded, at A Better Version of You, a technology fair and not an art show.
And the film should be short, shot at Jaaga – a hub for what the city stands for (and more). A 1) simulacrum of reality show pilot 2) hosted by a defecting spy 3) posing as an optics angel investor 4) for a production company named SpottBillig Film, the IG-Farben subsidiary, so that some shots might come in colour.
Access non-access with acting non-actors, their privilege of sight and site. So to be is to be seen, and to see within, anchored on the network of startup hubs in India, out Outdia, outsourced to the Falafel Route, that Jewish Heart of Darkness, that wild heart of life, confronting Flipping Out - Israel's Drug Generation with a flash-forward dream of what might happen to us all.
To test a connection between Sao Paulo, Haifa (Technion), Berlin, Silicon Valley and Bangalore. It might be okra and tapioca. It might be information and tech. A 2-month capital venture.
From Sao Paulo (1992) to Cologne (KHM) via Paris (Sciences Po), Los Angeles (Art Center) and Berlin. Recent shows in Thessaloniki (6th Biennale), Beijing (Goethe), Seoul (Art Sonje).
