Travelling is the best way of feeling just Human, feeling just Human is the best way of seeing others as you see yourself.
This might be the beginning of all understanding.
Miguel Angel Arenas
Spain
Allegory of multiculturalism.
A man walks among people,
In the opposite direction.
People are from different origins.
Just a walk in a city makes him remember all his life,
In different countries.
In a concrete moment he sees the face of a Moroccan old man,
And he starts remembering,
That face gets transformed into the face of a boy (it´s him when he was a child),
And a off voice says:
There is a motive which is leading the videos, as a whole story.
Like in Amelie.
Every image is a metaphor of the verse about interculturality.
I was born from my mother’s womb,
further more than that, my land is the air I breath.
A travelling focusing on the ground, the image goes up to the sky and goes down again with the sea.
Because I’ve been ancient Greek in front of the Aegean,
with my pupils full of undefined seas.
I’ve been Italian when the Vesuvius buried me
The video goes to the shore where there is a couple kissing (he remembers when he was French) He crosses the couple.
and French when I kissed for first time in Paris.
I became a Swiss when I heard Rousseau in Geneve,
I’ve got from Finns thirteen Sunday evenings.
The link that joins the former image with the next one is a calendar that
Falls down and the wind puts the leaves away.
I lost a ventricle of my heart in Saint Petersburg,
and Stockholm adopted me as an Olof Palme´s brother
on that morning of June.
One of the papers falls into the water.
The video takes the paper floating.
Beside the paper there is another paper with the shape of a heart.
A hand takes the paper heart.
I speak this language since Cervantes gave me a mirror
and I dream of going to be Portuguese riding a verse of Pessoa.
The paper heart gets transformed in a cake with the shape of heart.
That heart is inside a shop. The man looks at the crystal and sees his reflection.
Until now, people that watch the video can enjoy the poetic of images,
But probably don´t know which is the theme,
This verse gives you a clue about the theme of the video.
Where am I from if I am I everywhere?
I get emotional when I listen to the Estonian hymn,
I’ve said I love you in Hungarian on the shore of the Danube,
The man keeps walking and get closer to a musician who is playing an instrument.
I’ve heard Mozart saying I love you in Vienna,
One of my seven lives keeps begging in the Prague streets,
In the other side of the street there is a beggar asking for money.
and another one stays incarcerated in the British Museum.
In Dresden, the English bombs fell on me
and in Warsaw the German ones.
In the same street, in a corner, he sees two boys who through stones to each other.
I’m Danish in all my blood when silence talks for me,
and every 8th January I’m Finish again.
He gets sad and look at a wall. In the wall sees words of protest, graffiti. The graffiti speak with no words.
Which country would I defend if I feel attacked everywhere?
I got married in Rabat with a knife and a hat,
In Fez I painted myself dark black.
In Sahara I crossed frontiers without lines in the maps.
I was Jewish in Tel-Aviv and Muslim in Jaffo.
The graffiti of the wall, the image goes to the graffiti in the vagon of train.
In the train station he sees a map with no lines.
In the Holy Tomb I was Catholic at five o’clock,
and at seven I was Orthodox. I’ve prayed in Shinto temples
and nobody ever noticed.
He sees a man with a bible and another man crosses this with a coran in his hand.
They crash with each other and they say sorry.
I’ve been Argentinean in the anger fists
and Brazilian in the hope.
I’ve been from every place I’ve been in.
The images in movement ends with the man walking along the railways.
Life continues where the trains leaves you.
