By retracing his migratory experience, José Miguel del Pozo translates his disorientation into a feeling of uncanniness. Following UNHEIMAT/Der Prozess, he continues to reflect the condition of the eternal stranger, in search of adaptation in a world that is both familiar and inhospitable.

UNHEIMAT 2.0—Part Two

Bookshelter is the result of a mistake, the unwanted offspring of a summer fling/for the sake of rationality (that beautiful unicorn) one should say bookshelf instead of bookshelter/its the blunder of emotionality, the glitter of vulnerability, the bedazzlement of empathy/words that come from erring are the most beautiful thought machines/a brick can build a house and break its windows, depending on where is it, what its used for and what mechanical value gets applied to it: force+speed+direction=CRAC/a book is a brick and a house is a shelter, hence many books are the possibility of a shelter/being warm and eating food; the (un)chanced encounter between differently colored eyes; the fear that manages the economy of affections; the coincidences of disjointed limbs; the bonding of the same traumas; the chair that holds the reader; waking up to that insomniac reader, lost in his desert, (un)slept by your side/Bookshelter is the impossibility of an encounter, but the acknowledgement of a possible home where the books rest.

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Recently I went to Barcelona to go to my book storage room. Im there now and things start cascading aggressively: books and comic books, clothes and notebooks, documents and blankets that document a beautiful moment that I destroyed; books that meant the world to me and that I could not care less of a fuck about at this moment in time. Fuck my entire life, I took this trip to pick this up and bring these books back home with me, to Bern, because home is where the books at, but it’s bullshit, home is something else, something Ive been searching forever and that I have not felt for a time that feels fornever.

And it scares me to think that I wont ever feel.

A friend would say Im being dramatic. I am, I am selfish and I cant think of a bigger drama than the one that finds no rest under any roof.

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ARCHITECTURE ANIMOSITY

Animation backgrounds are drawn alone. Entire cities have been sketched for fiction without anyone walking thru them before the story and the characters are laid in and put to play, made alive by the necessity to fill a void that would be unbearable to witness. When its over and everything is finished this cities go to rest infinitely at a drawer somewhere, dark and silent cities where we will never see what actually happens.

We are driving underneath the bridge that waters into the Bolivar Av. in front of us and at the end las Torres del silencio [the Silence Towers], one of the migration post that separates the city and safeguards the class struggle. My friend Alexander invites me to look up as the tunnel finishes and immediately Im attacked by las Torres de parque [the Central Park Towers], the modern brutalist guardians of an unfulfilled intention: a cultural compound/housing complex, the wet dream of an oil extracting Midas that Caracas failed to please.

Alexander then quietly whispers in my ear: it’s Neo-Tokyo bro, we are living in AKIRA.

Some ideas have the capacity to change the way one perceives reality, mushrooming into obsessions. Obsessive bodies, organfull bodies of obsession that lack the space to action themselves into the self preserving space of reality, that boundary building monster. Caracas is the city that inspired Otomo’s epic, a dystopian entity that surpassed its future.

Carakira is a city we will only see after the apocalypse.

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(Dis)ORIENTED
(UN)reliability

I arrive in Cairo at 2:30 am and make my way, windows open to my Airbnb, breathing in the smog and enjoy the light show that keeps the city going way beyond the night. I don’t sleep, I close my eyes a couple of hours, open them and go on a walk around the area Im staying at. Its (Un)expectedly familiar so I don’t feel lost nor scared, Im bizarrely oriented and make my way thru motorcycles, buses and improvised businesses around this labyrinth. The reliable mistrust of this place makes me feel back home, Im again walking around Caracas, Venezuela. Caracas the city that builds, destroys and builds itself again everyday; the self contained valley that fears itself into submission and feeds our survival in the form of mangoes; a dried out river filled with gold.

The last day Im there someone takes me to Cairo tower, the overwhelming tower overseeing a city that exceeded its limits long ago. She asks me if I feel disoriented in Cairo, I have to admit the contrary: Im extremely oriented here, there is a familiar beauty in its dizziness.

—José Miguel del Pozo, January 2025.