It’s not just a technicality that film is referred as the moving image. Films transport. Fittingly, among the latest I’ve seen is one of the kind that are considered road movies: Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo (I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You). Released in 2009, it is directed by Karim Ainouz and Marcelo Gomes, two leading figures in what’s become a lively experimental film scene in the Northeast of Brazil. I’ve watched this film more than a dozen times since last year, first in the big screen, as part of a program organized by Cine Esquema Novo in Porto Alegre; thereafter in Youtube, where it was posted in its entirety by a fan—and which, for some reason, I can no longer find on that website nor in my networks.

Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo is made-up of location shots gathered and archived for years by Ainouz and Gomes, materials they’ve given a newfound end through their montage. The film mostly comprises of establishing shots or landscapes taped from a moving vehicle, all of which are evidently taken with a disinterest in attaining high-quality photography. Place is what matters, and their placement next to each other what’s meaningful. Their sequence is given sense by the film’s protagonist, whose semblance is only made known through a diaristic voice-over. He’s a young geologist, we learn from the start, who takes us through a months-long field-trip research in an un-tropical Brazil, and who we accompany as he abandons the planned itinerary of his road trip. He’s suddenly decided to explore different routes. Let’s call these possibilities.

The digressions experienced are initially prompted by boredom and memories; eventually by encounters with people our geologist meets throughout the journey. For these latter sequences, we see primarily still-shots, portraits of individuals, couples or groups (friends among them, circus people, prostitutes), passers-by and families, characters he introduces us with names and locations. Through them, he contemplates as much on commonness as he does on the extraordinary. And, as much as our geologist is able to understand tectonic movements by observing a rock’s shape and land fissures, he is able to comprehend other kinds of moving experiences through the skins and eyes of these individuals. In the process, less scientific than intuitive, he questions notions of belonging and happiness, doing so with a more speculative than poetic intent. The geologist’s delivery of this all is voiced less as a journal of his exploration, than a kept epistolary account drafted during a road trip, of which addressee is a never appearing correspondent—a Dear Love or, innately, a Dear Diary, Dear You, Dear Double.

The film’s narrative and syntax has various surprising turns albeit an absence of peripety or much plot. One of these beautiful surprises is the location and factura of the film’s ending. Composed of jump cuts, primarily presented in slow motion, the images are blue- and orange-hued color-saturated shots of La Quebrada in Acapulco, Mexico. La Quebrada is a ravine famous for its divers, who jump into the sea from natural ledges that are as high as 80 feet, and who must intuitively calculate the right time, instinctively identify the appropriate wave, to make their dive and avoid catastrophe. It is a daily spectacle in Acapulco. Has been so for decades. But in this film it is a unique, intimate event. Suicide, death, mortality all crossed my mind—as the points stressed at the end of the film, that is. But it was actually living, living differently to be precise, the idea that eventually, insistently settled. That when courage is missing, finding encouragement is a start. Immersing in the moment, just the beginning.

Pictured above, El Valle de Mexicali, as seen from the peeks of La Rumorosa, Baja California, México

It was no doubt a phenomenon, a new, strange case of the believe-or-not-kind. At the very least, it was definitely an anomaly. And so, day after day, new people arrived to the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre to experience it. These were artists and scientists, meteorologists and even seismologists, cloud busters, tornado chasers and other climate experts and aficionados. A new type of social summit had formed in the bays of the Guaiba, the site of the group’s camping and deliberations. The reason for their gathering was to observe a rare cumulus in the sky above. It was a cloud, but oddly motionless. The Cloud didn’t move naturally with the changing weather, nor was it slightly provoked by artificial wind-machines. The Cloud was simply there, anchored to the atmosphere. And it was slowly growing, getting puffier as the weeks went by.

Theories of The Cloud’s appearance varied. Some claimed it was actually Laputa, stranded because of some magnetic revolution happening in that floating island. Seismologists and writers had concocted that theory, noting that the grounds of Porto Alegre were shaking even with in the absence of fault-lines, and arguing that fiction had previously predicted other happenings, even geographies. Some others considered The Cloud a UFO in camouflage. No later did this theory circulate when welcome receptions for extraterrestrial aliens were thoughtfully organized. The newly settled campers felt the strange forces of The Cloud, saying they levitated like cumuli; the locals, for their part, felt more and more attracted to each other. Everyone was happily floating. A new language was created in The Cloud’s honor, a new typeface, too; they called it Porto Alegre.

As it happens, much before The Cloud appeared in the sky, the Fundação Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul had secured air-rights over the Guaiba in preparation for the 9a Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre. To their luck, this meant The Cloud could be technically included in their upcoming exhibition. The Biennial organizers thus gathered in the bay, inviting locals and campers to a rain dance in celebration of this peculiar inclusion. No cloudbursts came about. But the assiduous organizers didn’t stop there, importing a rainmaking machine invented by Juan Baigorri in 1938—considered lost for years, much like the Meson de Fierro meteorite, sought once by Baigorri. Then, The Cloud reacted. It poured.

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Published in conjunction to the 9a Bienal do Mercosul| Porto Alegre, The Cloud is a book that gathers texts by Jules Verne, Vilem Flusser, Bruno Latour, Maria Lind, Monica Hoff, Walter de Maria, and Abraham Cruzvillegas, among others. The English edition of The Cloud was released yesterday in a sundown picnic—with overcast skies, and eventually some rain showers—at Fort Greene Park in New York City. The Portuguese edition of this book, A nuvem, as well as its Spanish edition, La nube, have or will be realsed between May and July 2013 in the cities of Porto Alegre, Recife, Sao Paulo, Pelotas, San Francisco, Mexico City, and Amsterdam. All language editions are published in print and as e-books, and have been designed by Project Projects, New York. More information at: www.bienalmercosul.art.br.

Pictured above: The Cloud in Fort Greene Park. Photo by Sarah Demeuse.

On Monday, the Fundação Bienal do Mercosul announced my appointment as the chief curator of the 9th Mercosul Biennial, scheduled to open on September 13, 2013 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A press release of this announcement, and, perhaps most importantly, a curatorial statement for the biennial, can be found here. All the while, I will continue to work as curator of contemporary art of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Seems like I should also begin writing more regularly here, posting research-in-progress.

To join me in the adventure of organizing the biennial, I’ve brought together a team of curators and educators that I highly respect. The team includes Raimundas Malašauskas, a curator who I’ve collaborated on several projects before, as well as the educator Mônica Hoff and the curator Bernardo de Souza, both based in Porto Alegre. They will be closely involved in the curatorial research, including the artist selection, commission of new work, and the conceptualization of the biennial’s exhibitions and educational programming.

In addition, an interesting group of curators will be engaged in the research towards the biennial through a curatorial fellowship program. I’ve called this program the “Cloud Fellows,” as they will help determine the shape, the place and the experience of information in the biennial. They will certainly also influence the artist’s selection –are already doing so– and project development in general. These are the fellows: Sarah Demeuse, based in New York City, and co-founder of Rivet; Daniela Pérez, based in Mexico City, and co-founder of De Sitio; Julia Rebouças, based in Belo Horizonte, and member of the curatorial team of Inhotim; and, Dominic Willsdon, based in San Francisco, and the Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs at SFMoMA.

The appointment of the curatorial team for the 9th Mercosul Biennial was publicly announced through a smoke signal on Monday, August 13, 2012 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The image above is of this event; it was taken by Cristiano Sant Anna (indicefoto.com).