Érica Zíngano

Photo © Lotto Thießen
Website Address: http://ericazingano.com/

Born in 1980 in Fortaleza (Brazil), Érica Zíngano has been living in Berlin since 2014. Her artistic practice crosses the boundaries between poetry and visual arts in different directions, tracing a cartography of strange combinations. As someone who deals with foreign languages on a daily basis and who feels herself to be in a permanent state of linguistic dislocation as a result, Érica is passionate about the phenomenon of the voice, and has been increasingly exploring the enunciation of poems in performative actions and readings. (Or you could infer by this last sentence that Erica was trying to say, in an elegant manner, that Érica’s language problems highlight issues regarding language and communication.) During her time in France last summer, while she was collectively putting into practice the more extreme aspects of post-tuquetism theory, she discovered the poet Christophe Tarkos, who was already waiting for her, whispering in her headphones: “dans quatre mois et on est dedans”.

“Immanence: I guess it’s a good bet, No plans, apparently, No goals, No moans but an overflowing of groans”, she wrote down in one of her notebooks. Were we to spend a little more time looking at some of her recent notebooks, we would probably realize that her literary interests whirl around combinations of words such as “vibration”, “body”, “female body”, “machines”, “dreams”, “time”, “intensity”, “languages”, “partnership”, “desire”, “community”, “animality”, “refrigerator”, „friendship“, etc. Maybe you can tell that she is often tempted to combine dadaist and surrealistic poetry with contemporary literature, or perhaps, put another way, you may have noticed that she is merely attempting to say (quoting one of her best friends, Antoine Hummel, who usually says it in French): “Good morning to all the current problems of the World”. She often spends her time trying to devise an ethical bridge between the “I” and the “Other”, which is still to be built somewhere, somehow. Reading Bolaño brings up strong emotional reactions — the “rice interview”, in particular — but we should also mention “Putas asesinas”, etc., etc., etc.

Why did you decide to take part in this project?

Only if we can both agree that in Modernism the space between the symbol and the meaning was (somehow) getting bigger and bigger, I mean that the gap separating these two soulmate-poles was increasing crazily, almost at the speed of the light, only in that case would I accept your invitation to have a drink with you. But I can already imagine, however, that while we are having our amazing drinking time together and talking about common things that make our lives seem so special, like a documentary about ants—besides the smoke and the buzz of unknown voices surrounding us—, it would also be nice to try to keep our discussion alive (the primary reason for my accepting your invitation), to keep talking about the word that remains lonely and separated in the first brackets of this small paragraph that I’m writing to you right now, and that you will receive 2 seconds later on the lock screen of your smart phone as a new notification. I mean, “somehow”. When we are drunk enough to feel like drunk flies in the room just because we will be behaving like drunk flies in the room (literally), we will already be in the waiting room of a dentist. I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you don’t like dentists. Me neither. But ok, I recognize that flies don’t need to feel like they need to go to the dentist very often. In that case, we will be in an elevator, because, in practical terms, an elevator is one of the simplest ways to go up high. But, yes, if we are flies, we don’t need to use an elevator, right? We can just fly.

p.s. I did my homework and I made a small collection of quotes that might be useful for our discussion. Enjoy reading them. See you Friday.

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1.

“Echoes

In Nature’s temple, living columns rise,

Which oftentimes give tongue to words subdued,

And Man traverses this symbolic wood,

Which looks at him with half familiar eyes

Like lingering echoes, which afar confound

Themselves in deep and sombre unity,

As vast as Night, and like transplendency,

The scents and colours to each other respond.

And scents there are, like infant’s flesh as chaste,

As sweet as oboes, and as meadows fair,

And others, proud, corrupted, rich and vast,

Which have the expansion of infinity,

Like amber, musk and frankincense and myrrh,

That sing the soul’s and senses‘ ecstasy.”

(Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, translated by Cyrill Scott)

2.

“The obscure forest wasn’t entirely pathless. Our steps wended along trails that we instinctively knew, among dappling shadows and streaks of cold, hard moonlight. We talked about impossible things, and the whole of that real-life landscape was just as impossible.”

(Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, translated by Richard Zenith)

 3.

“I call her attention to the fact that the centre of a table is an unusual expression, which she admits; but here, of course, I cannot question her more directly. I carefully refrain from suggesting to her the meaning of the symbols, and ask her only for the thoughts which occur to her mind in connection with the individual parts of the dream. In the course of the analysis her reserve gave way to a distinct interest in the interpretation, and a frankness which was made possible by the serious tone of the conversation. To my question as to what kind of flowers they had been, her first answer is: expensive flowers; one has to pay for them; then she adds that they were lilies-of-the-valley, violets, and pinks or carnations. I took the word lily in this dream in its popular sense, as a symbol of chastity; she confirmed this, as purity occurred to her in association with lily. Valley is a common feminine dream-symbol. The chance juxtaposition of the two symbols in the name of the flower is made into a piece of dream-symbolism, and serves to emphasize the preciousness of her virginity – expensive flowers; one has to pay for them – and expresses the expectation that her husband will know how to appreciate its value. The comment, expensive flowers, etc. has, as will be shown, a different meaning in every one of the three different flower-symbols.”

(Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by A.A. Brill)

4.

“White people do not become shamans. Their nōreme image of life is full of dizziness. The perfumes they rub themselves with and the alcohol they drink make their chests too odorous and too hot. This is why it remains empty. They do not possess spirit houses or songs. … They do not really know how to dream.”

(Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, translated from the French by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy)

What is your interest within the engagement with the „reading format“?

action_“ich verstehe nur Bahnhof“_to johanna ackva1_choose a day in the week that you feel able to spend a lot of time in the metro;

2_buy a „tageskarte“ if you want to do this action during a long period of the day and you don’t want to be interrupted by controllers;

3_in case you’re going to do this action with some art project, make sure to include the ticket price in the budget of the project;

4_in case you’re going to do this action on your own, make sure you can pay the price of the ticket;

5_in case you’re going to do this action on your own and you cannot pay the price of the ticket, make sure you can talk with the controllers about art and explain this action;

6_in case you’re going to do this action on your own and you cannot pay the price of the ticket, I don’t know how this „paranoiac situation“ would interfere with the action itself, what consequences it would bring to the „result“ of the action itself;

7_yes, this action will take place in the metro;

8_I will suggest a time to start, like when the metro opens (very early), one-day action, but I won’t suggest the ending;

9_feel free to draw your own path in the lines of the metro station;

10_feel free to literally draw your own path in the lines of the metro station;

11_maybe this action is not good for you, because you don’t often use the metro;

12_maybe this action is good for you because you don’t often use the metro;

13_maybe the term „good“ is not well used by me, because good and bad are not aesthetic categories;

14_instructions: how do you remember? what do you remember? are you able to tell us what you remember?

15_do you know any anecdote(s) or „sprichwort“ in german about metro(s) and/or train(s)? do you remember the person who told it/them to you? do you remember when it was? the circumstance of the conversation? can you tell me?

16_do you know the „sprichwort“: „ich verstehe nur Bahnhof“? can you explain it to me? send me an e-mail or call me on the phone;

17_in case you’re going to perform the recollection(s) of this action on stage, feel free to call me from the stage to tell me about the topics above;

18_in case you’re going to perform the recollection(s) of this action on stage several times, feel free to call other people from the stage to tell them about the topics above;

19_in case you’re going to perform the recollection(s) of this action on stage several times, feel free to not call anyone and talk directly with the audience about the topics above;

20_do you have already any idea what I will suggest to do? in case you do, before to continuing to read this list, write down your own ideas in a piece of paper and tell me later;

21_do you have already any idea what I will suggest to do? in case you do, did you write down your ideas? be honest with me and with yourself!;

22_feel free to replace your ideas with mine, I’m not attached to my own ideas, and I can easily decide to do something else, mix, erase, overlap, but, sometimes, it’s just interesting to make someone else contraintes*, because we don’t need to think too much, only execute;

(*) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrainte

23_instructions: this action is about memory, memory and books, memory and books and people reading books in the metro, while they are moving to other spaces and they cannot move with their own legs, while they are waiting to move, this action is also about time;

24_instructions: this action is about memory, how do you want to proceed? notebook, pencil, recorder or camera? or just nothing?

25_instructions: this action is about memory, what do you remember of what you just read? how do you remember it/them?

26_instructions: you get inside the metro, you know how to do it, you get closer, closer to someone who is reading, even closer to the person reading and then you read too, the same page, the same „thing“, in the next stop you get out, you write down and/or record what you understand from this reading, you keep on: you get inside the metro, you know how to do it, you get closer, closer to someone who is reading, even closer to the person reading and then you read too, the same page, the same „thing“, in the next stop you get out, you write down and/or record what you understand from this reading, you keep on: one person at a time, you keep on: you can talk to the people, if you want, if they want; you keep going: i don’t know which kind of consequences the fact of doing this action will provoke in your body;

27_feel free to stop the action when you cannot stand it anymore;

28_feel free to do anything you want with the recollection(s) of this action;

29_feel free to invite other people to do this action with you, if you don’t want to do it alone;

30_feel free to correct my „falsch“ English, it was a pleasure to talk to you: see you soon;

31_feel free to edit any part of this text, in case of publication.