Page 216 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

216 ¡ÚNETE! JOIN US! JORDI COLOMER
What brings more than 1,5 million people each year—of their own free will—to Quartzsite’s RV parks? I find it impossible not to ask this question, since the town’s two main attractions are a gravesite monument topped with a camel—a reminder of an unsuccessful attempt to import camels into the region during the US-Mexican War— and a gem and mineral show where you can get stones of all shapes and sizes, generally of little value, but offering an excuse for interactions, information exchange, and bonding between people—much in the same way we as kids used to gather anxiously at street corners to exchange trading cards. The whole point was actually to make friends.
One evening, a disciple of Gurdjieff with only four surviving teeth placed one such stone inside his shoe. “Don’t be stubborn and do as I do”, he suggested to his neighbor Miss Newsom who, being so knowledgeable in ornithology and able to play the piano since the age of 5, was feeling quite vexed for having lost the ability to write songs. She dreaded being a victim of her own virtuosity. “I’d like to forget everything, but I get lost in symphonies”, she confessed to him, “and being constantly on tour doesn’t help much”. The disciple insisted: “The little stone. With each step it will make you think of your own body and focus on the present.” And then he added: “There’s no relief without pain.” A similar idea had led this same man to practice writing with his opposite hand for a period of time, “for the brain is a muscle and it’s good to exercise it”. Upon hearing this Miss Newsom lowered her head, less in amazement at this stranger’s words than at his eyes, so dazzling, they looked like sores. Not very far away, some boys were refining their marksmanship by aiming larger stones at empty cans, while their sisters, who were practicing magic tricks, accepted them as payment for admission to their show.
II. Cathedral cars
Other apparitions come to mind, though—since not everything must come from North America. I’m thinking of the villages submerged under the waters of reservoirs during Franco’s regime in Spain, or the hotel in Transylvania where scares are included in the price of a room. Or the clock at the British Bar in Lisbon, whose numbers run backwards, mysteriously; or the traffic jams generated by cars that slow down upon reaching the border. Stevedores in Marseilles call these automobiles voitures cathédrales, because their bodywork is barely visible—nor are the seats for that matter. On their rooftops, piles of mattresses, chairs, basins, and even carpets and bikes are secured with ropes. They are nothing like RVs and yet these singular monuments might also be regarded somehow as “mobile homes” (Miss Newsom, with or without a stone in her shoe, would agree). Should there be neck-ties in the boot of the car, they must be fewer than eight, unless you want to declare them at customs. Personal computers and home appliances are also exempt, provided they are second-hand or have some sort of defect. Most of these items belong to migrants who travel back from France to the North of Africa to see their families every year in June, carrying with them half their lives’ possessions. They try to avoid bumps in the roads that would damage their vehicles’ shock-absorbers, overstressed by excess luggage. They may listen to the radio along the way. On France Culture, an “expert” states: “In abstract—yet at the same time very specific and material—terms, I believe we should rethink politics not so much as an endeavor