victory

Imagine a white room, stripped of everything. An off-white curtain truncating the skewed perspective formed by a series of modest grey partition panels. And, in this minimal, sparse, rarefied space, imagine a bright white object, dense and convoluted, with the tiniest glimpses of colour, context and storyline peeking out. The 'casbah object' (ha ha ha) is suspended from the pure white ceiling by clean and thick plastic parallal bar string; it skewers the perfect space of the grey, muted inner room. An apple i-notebook (also silvery grey and muted) hides inside the casbah, running a film that you can (almost) see from various angles, looking into the condensed, petrified, typified, objectified, built-up islamic core of Algiers. Another film runs on the curtain, touching the white hanging jumble sometimes. This film shows bits of parisian obsessions, fetishes, of Parisians ecstatic and miserable, choreographed in a mad dance of desperate urban people. When you enter the room (through a white door) you see the film first, with an annoying shape obstructing your view slightly. Then you realise that something's inside the object of your annoyance, too. In trying to see what's in the annoying obstruction, you circumnavigate the space and unconsciously follow a locus of viewpoints. Now you see only one film, now both, now one and a quarter; and all the time the voice of Algiers struggles to reach you through and over the hip, happening soundtrack that is Paris. These struggles give you snatches; moments of tension that are unique to this fragmented juxtaposition, moments wavering on the edge of reality, fragile moments that you may or may not catch.
I think it helped to be such a scattered bunch, after all. We didn't come up with a Grand Narrative, forcing our impressions onto and through those of camus, sartre, picasso and that lot. We, somehow, managed to tack together a tangible representation of our confusion and wandering between the themes of the two cities. Something like this can only be a rough draft; and that's why we won I think.
And there was conversation - oh my... conversation in the paris room, in the Milan/Venice that tried to be so much, with such substantial layers and layers of meaning, and even postcards! In the LA/New Orleans that struggled to find one storyline, and failed, I think. And much discourse went on in Cooper's bar after, with free drinks and snacks. oooo.. no dinner, no wonder i'm awake at 5. Many interactions happened last night, with the crazy coot of a studio director, who is so lovably passionate about his own, irrelevant, input in my life. Also with classmates whose admiration and camraderie it was very precious to receive. And with the poor, floundering program director, who came in for much flack from my tipsy, completely un-diplomatic self on the subject of his subject. Let’s see if he remembers and is petty enough (or human enough) to flunk me. And with Greeks. Who were not treated like gods for once, but spoken to on equal grounds about topics of mutual interest, for hours on end, or so it felt. ahhhhhh.. I can die easy now.

p.s: worrying thing. It seems it’s getting harder to find work in London for completely niched-in people like me. This dream could soon be over.
p.p.s: now i can truthfully add adobe premiere skills to my cv. would that help, maybe?