Andrea Pagnes (VestAndPage)

All is system and gradation, conquered, reconciled, and yet there are still many flaws. Modernity great promise needs no re-telling, it now lies in ruins. It always takes two to make an accident.

Existential Pace

(65 lines at the rhythm of 65 heartbeats per minute)

Epidemics, urban panic, homeless multitudes, / Criminal activity, economic crackdowns, / Admiration, recognition, contempt, disrespect, oblivion, / Depending on what lies beyond. / Spasmodic, visible, cruel because trustful. / Eradicated, obliged to do something to get some results. / Everyday on this earth: fear for fears / Of agreements and disagreements. / Fear of those who deviate from the line. / Fear as medium, not as message. / Fear as collateral effect, / Force behind progress. / Fear to take a chance, / Sweating on the abundance of services, / Scoring the aces, caressing, embarrassing, managing. / Give it a face, a symbol, a trajectory, a luminous trail. / Fear rocks: it begins where it ends. / Signs, no meanings, dreams in black- and-white colours, / Painted on walls, animating, embodying the city lights lines, / Real, imaginary, undefined by boundaries, / Drawn, etched, carved. / Smell it, breathe it. / Identify the cavity, the ravines where fear was sleeping, / Resting, preparing to wake up: / A snake coiled in his lair, a spore near opening / A self-produced virus, regenerated, diffused independently, / Crossing borders and thresholds, / Smuggling into hidden corners, / Changing, transforming, crystallised in sidewalk cracks, / Not encoded, residual, mutable, / An anomalous gap between the rails, / Unexplored, hard to label, flattened out, cleaned up, destroyed. / Everywhere else the kill is hunted. / Time sliding…