Walking the Gray Area » Carla Castaigo & Valentina Rosenthal

Hola Carla

Valentina Rosenthal — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:28:57 +0000

I am Chilean and German, my Opa was German . He was also artists and did craft, he arrived to Chile when he was 18 the same aye i had when i decided to migrate to Germany for studying jewellery. Now i am Santiago de Chile, I work in a jewellery gallery doing classes and making my collections.

Here is very nice, and many things are happening. Spring is coming and the city smells different. I am very exited with this project and i have many ideas for sharing…in the next post i will start sending you some good stuff for start working jiji good luck!

Hola Valentina

Carla Castiago — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:15:18 +0000

I am from Portugal. I am a jeweller. In all these years, I´ve learned that there exist different possibilities in working with jewellery depending on the cultural identity. I think jewellery shows and talks about different cultures. I believe jewellery is communication.

I like walk… Now is time to start walking in the Gray Area.

Cities & Desire

Carla Castiago — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:32:54 +0000

From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream, they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive’s trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.
This was the city of Zobeide, where they settled, waiting for that scene to be repeated one night. None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The city’s streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dreamed chase. Which, for that matter, had long been forgotten.
New men arrived from other lands, having had a dream like theirs, and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something from the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.
The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.

In: Invisible cities, Italo Calvino

Feeling gray

Valentina Rosenthal — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 03:22:39 +0000

Feeling gray in Zobeide…nice story, here are some gray pieces of my city ..how is looking yours?

My Walking in the Gray Area Feelings

Carla Castiago — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:38:07 +0000

Cities & Desire

Carla Castiago — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:26:12 +0000

Cities & The Dead

Carla Castiago — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:21:35 +0000

What makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead of air. The streets are completely filled with dirt, clay packs the rooms to the ceiling, on every stair another stairway is set in negative, over the roofs of the houses hang layers of rocky terrain like skies with clouds. We do not know if the inhabitants can move about the city, widening the worm tunnels and the crevices where roots twist: the dampness destroys people’s bodies, and they have scant strength; everyone is better off remaining still, prone; anyway, it is dark. From up here, nothing of Argia can be seen; some say “It’s down below there,” and we can only believe them. The place is deserted. At night, putting your ear to the ground, you can sometimes hear a door slam.

In: Invisible cities, Italo Calvino

Recollection of Argia

Valentina Rosenthal — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:47:27 +0000

Recollection of Argia 2

Valentina Rosenthal — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:12:57 +0000

Thank you for your Recollection of Argia

Carla Castiago — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:42:45 +0000

Trading Cities

Carla Castiago — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:16:29 +0000

In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationdhip of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.
From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia’s refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.
They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.
Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Recollection of Argia

Carla Castiago — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:37:42 +0000

Thank you for your recollection of Argia

Carla Castiago — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:38:56 +0000

Somewhere in Argia

Valentina Rosenthal — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:07:44 +0000

Valentina Rosenthal — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:24:49 +0000

Trading Cities

Valentina Rosenthal — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:26:48 +0000

Argia, Argila, Arcilla

Carla Castiago — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:19:27 +0000

Reflection of a city

Valentina Rosenthal — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:36:29 +0000

Fragmentes of the lost city

Valentina Rosenthal — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:56:20 +0000

Take off… layer by layer

Carla Castiago — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:24:50 +0000