Blog 6

It is a strange life that I lead, moving from one place to another.

Last week we travelled across Portugal on a brief trip to Lisbon, Sagres and Faro. Three very different locations.

Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, is a higgledy-piggledy city, full of people and noise, grand architecture and history. In the centre it is very old and on the outskirts it is very new. There were tourists of many nationalities, business people, children and families, beggars. A city of contrasts.

Sagres is at the most south westerly point of mainland Europe. A bit like Land's End in Cornwall, but without the tourism. It consisted mainly of one high street and a harbour. Silent, but beautiful. The bluest of skies and sea that I had ever seen, only heard about.

Faro, in the Algarve is the most southernly point of Portugal, a package holiday destination, full of high rise hotels and concrete. The area lacked soul, authenticity, space and charm. You can gather this was my least favourite part of the trip.

The morning we headed out to the beach in Sagres, it was hot and sunny. Idyll. A fellow artist back in England, not much older than myself, was burying her husband. A life lost, suddenly. I could not stop thinking about it and how much of a contrast my life is, compared to what hers had become. I felt like I was cheating, but what, and with whom?

My family have been together these last two weeks, back in England. I think about them a lot. I wondered what they were up to and hoped they were having a good time.

Last year I travelled in the car from Newcastle to Kent for an exhibition I was in. I remember thinking that I was in a pod. A travelling cell / pod. Moving across the land. I remember getting out the car to get some lunch in the restaurant and the transfer from my individual (private) space to a collective (public) space and how big the contrast was.

In Faro, we watched the planes come right over our heads. They were very close and very graceful as they touched down on the runway, in the distance. Another form of a travelling pod. There is always hope, anticipation and excitement as the airport comes into view and you go to land in a foreign destination.

It felt strange because I was a tourist too, yet I had arrived in town by car and not plane, and that when I left, it would be by car and not plane. When I went home, it would be to another part of Portugal, my temporary residence. I was also familiar with the Portuguese culture, but not Faro as a town, itself. A foreigner, not quite.

Our van is like a travelling pod.

Before America was discovered, more than six hundred of years ago, Sagres was like the end of the known world. It is a very interesting concept to think about what might be beyond, and I guess today, man's wonder is space and the moon.

The sunsets were amazing when we there. Bright red and vivid pink colours. Hugely vibrant, almost violent, expressive. The tourist guide literature remarks on man's imagination of 'unspeakable terrors and feral monsters' out there, associated with the unknown world (before America was discovered). If the skies were that bright six hundred years ago, you can imagine people's fear.

It is a strange life that I lead, moving from one place to another.

I'm thinking about pods and cells, movement, contrasts, displacement. I am happy and confused. I live a privileged existence and know that I am lucky. It is complex in nature, simple in practice.

Book references:

Altermodern, Tate Triennial  Nicolas Bourriaud

A Week at the Airport, A Heathrow Diary  Alain de Botton

The Poetics of Space  Gaston Bachelard