Dádiva e Emoção - CCHLA - Universidade Federal da Paraíba

Ana was often able to hear the reverberation of
terrified voices. For example, this occurred once in the
empty Schonleinstrasse underground station. She was
having a pulling sensation in her arm; it seemed to me as
if she were being pulled back by a strong wind, but there
was no such wind; she said that the material force of the
grey light was there, that she was physically in contact
with it. The hundreds of citizens that used the train every
morning to go to work were grey lighted, and as such,
subway passengers were un-decidable living bodies placed
ambiguously between death and life. Significantly, it could
be argued that western cultures have produced their
institutions and categories of life and death. As such, in
rational western cosmology life and death are usually
understood as a dichotomy, and both institutions need to
define and map their own parameters and spaces. Ana’s
faces of early subway passengers were ambivalent; these
indeterminate zombies were alive but dead, dead but
alive.
Death is nothing to be afraid of since according to
Ana, when citizens travel on the subway “we are
experiencing death in our bodies, even if we are not fully
aware of it”. Thus, every time one jumps on the train, one
is smelling –even if one does not consciously realize –as
happened to me in Schoenleinstrasse- the imprecise
experience of life and death, the present and the
materially immanent past of the city in one’s own body.
Ana often said that this intuitive perception of an inbetween
and liminal sphere had its “intense smells”. When
such smells were particularly penetrating, her face would
blush dramatically. A long series of husky and loud coughs
would take place. Then, she would scratch her nose
repeatedly.
The Flutes of Marzahn
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The seduction of this material energy inspired my
own work by encouraging the ceaseless transmutation of
self and world in living contact and sound. Spending the
day with Ana was a gift. Everything seemed to be hereright-now-within-and-through-relations
with bodily or
material physicality. The intriguing capacity to be in
contact with that which exceeded ordinary selves was
profoundly enigmatic. At the moment, Ana and I are
walking around in the vast and desolated fields of
Marzahn. While dragging a stick along the railway tracks,
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