ENDLESS EMPIRE
Physical and temporal disorientation. A false recompense of unlimited connectivity. Existence at the threshold of perception. The fleeting moment between the spectral and the world's finiteness. A slow passage into a void of low affection intensity. Neutralization via voluntary numbness.
When escaping this world no longer demands a set time or place, attention becomes a currency, which is collected continuously and stealthily thanks to the omnipresence of screens. However, the option for such isolation takes its toll; the sacrifice of our individual freedom's final shelters: daydreaming and sleep.
Besieged by immaterial forces, the world around us gradually loses the relevance in its existence, and all that is left is a feeling of impotence in face of the vastness of the endless void. A mourning for a world that will never be the same.
These photographs are part of a series done in São Paulo, where the urban dystopia of the 'Minhocão' elevated avenue becomes the ideal backdrop for representing the contemporary feeling of being displaced in time and space, from the others and from oneself.
All traces of human presence were systematically erased, and the surrounding buildings have been altered into ambiguous volumetric shapes through a process of digital manipulations. Such archaeology of the impossible allows both society and photography to reach into essential issues in the age of the post-truth, such as the subject of authenticity and what is real, and following recent events, censorship.
In Brazil there is still hope that history can be denied. The country continuously sabotages itself through a form of "self-imperialism" that only reinforces the underdevelopment from which it longs to be free.
As a territory ready to be conquered over and over again through cycles of construction and destruction, the contemporary city fulfills this wish. It doesn’t have time: it is born already in ruins.