Some Letters Make the Night Last a Moment Longer
Correspondence between artists, directors and creators, curated by Sergi Álvarez Ríosalido for La Casa On. The authors, who haven’t met before, exchange filmed letters, united by a desire to attain a certain intimacy and share it from a distance. The correspondents will be Rita Azevedo Gomes and Antonio Menchen; Valentina Alvarado and Nazli Dincel; and Mariano Llinás and Matías Piñeiro.
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote that he required “of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land”.
That distance, expressed in different ways, is materialised in the letter-document: spatial distance, temporal distance, or distance between worldviews. A letter written or filmed from a unique position, defined by concrete spatiotemporal but also affective coordinates, is always a message which, from the moment of its inception, is never present as such, but rather steeped in expectations, desires, disappointments, in different times and places: where it is sent from and sent to, when it is sent and received, when it is written and read. In short, letters carry within themselves postponement, delay and difference.
One might say that nowadays such a document is an anachronism, and yet we continue to write and wait for correspondence, perhaps because of what Anaïs Nin told Henry Miller in one of her missives: “I need your letters, as human assertions of reality.”
Thinking of what Thoreau wrote, these accounts, experiences or feelings conveyed in a letter are always messages from an intimate I to an intimate you. In that sense, the words of one of Jeffrey Eugenides’s characters in The Marriage Plot ring true: “Every letter was a love letter.” Yet the love at stake in this connection with someone far away is a love that reveals the fragility of subjects who make themselves vulnerable to each other, even when distanced by time and space.
In this proposal, three pairs of visual artists who work in the field of experimental film and art will maintain three parallel dialogues that share a common theme: distance, not only as a condition of possibility for keeping up a correspondence, but also as an issue that affects us in the present moment. Therefore, from the outset there is an awareness of the fact that letters are texts which always seem different when we return to them and, if we haven’t already shredded or burnt them, offer new readings marked by memories and desires.
The correspondence will be posted on a weekly basis and will be available on the Vimeo channel of La Casa Encendida
Correspondence calendar:
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Week of 6 July.
Correspondence A. First letter from Rita Azevedo Gomes - Reply from Antonio Menchen. -
Week of 13 July.
Correspondence B. First letter from Valentina Alvarado - Reply from Nazli Dincel. -
Week of 20 July.
Correspondence C. First letter from Mariano Llinás - Reply from Matías Piñeiro. -
Week of 27 July.
Correspondence A. Reply from Rita Azevedo Gomes - Reply from Antonio Menchen. -
Week of 3 August.
Correspondence B. Reply from Valentina Alvarado - Reply from Nazli Dincel. -
Week of 10 August.
Correspondence C. Reply from Mariano Llinás - Reply from Matías Piñeiro. -
Week of 17 August.
Correspondence A. Reply from Rita Azevedo Gomes - Reply from Antonio Menchen. -
Week of 24 August.
Correspondence B. Reply from Valentina Alvarado - Reply from Nazli Dincel. -
Week of 31 August.
Correspondence C. Reply from Mariano Llinás - Reply from Matías Piñeiro. -
Week of 7 September.
Correspondence A. Reply from Rita Azevedo Gomes - Reply from Antonio Menchen. -
Week of 14 September.
Correspondence B. Reply from Valentina Alvarado - Reply from Nazli Dincel. -
Week of 21 September.
Correspondence C. Reply from Mariano Llinás - Reply from Matías Piñeiro.
