“Project Berlin” constitutes my conscious attempt to embody a state of otherness. Beyond the physical alienation that my mask already places upon me, I sought a self-imposed exile by coming to this city (far from anything that I could call home): where a sense of estrangement could be internalized.  Here—in this internal space—vulnerability reigns due to a lack of access to the external space (to the language, the social etiquette, the power structures, and other economies that surround my immigrant body).

The reason for this choice is a story for another day.

What I can tell you today is that:
The stress of this situation brings logic to its yield point (the pressure at which it begins to deform) and reality becomes mere speculation. Lacking access to this external reality, the immigrant is bound to rely on his/her own experiences, fears, pleasures, and subjective judgments as he/she attempts to understand and ground himself/herself to this new world; objectivity becomes nonexistent.

One of the few havens where the immigrant finds shelter is in the poetic: a place where the rules of language, logic, thought, and expression can be bent. In the poetic, a raven is no longer a raven but the exasperating echo of “nevermore,” as Poe would have it.  

Thus, the poetic offers the immigrant room in which to expand his internal landscape and, in turn, feel to understand and be a part of the external one.

#PoeticEncounters is a facet of #ProjectBerlin with which I seek a sense of understanding and communion with my estranged, external environment.
 
“Ida & Dactyl”  is one such instance of said encounters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HDqkOtZT3Ug

Ida & Dactyl

Certainly not a brushstroke


Title: Fear as the Mother of all Gods
Subtitle: 
Eclipse, Coma, Parenthesis. 

size: 3.5'' x 5.5"
mixed media: ink, collage, & hyperbole on Moleskine® notebook paper 

Fear as the mother of all gods

http://youtu.be/M4EAe3pDzjI

Pond-Side Story offers a glimpse into the moment when true love seemed almost possible for two styrofoam lovers. Standing between them: the mother and father of the bride to be.
She's a daddy's girl- a consequence of her father's overprotectiveness.
He tries to convince her mother of their styrofoam dream. 
The mother vehemently opposes their relationship. Both father and mother, joined by the circumstances of the wind, spend the rest of a while keeping them away from each


                                                                                                               other. 

Pond-Side Story: Of Unrequited Love and Styrofoam Lovers

http://youtu.be/KreJtc7RHNw

Which treats of the time when our venerable gentleman, Don Pancho Panoptes, took thirty seconds to reach posterity.



0:30 to Posterity

http://bit.ly/Ia64jA

"Me pretending to be jailed by the confines of my image & what is familiar to me, but really only playing with the reflected light from my window while attempting to look handsome"

Me pretending to be jailed by the confines of my image

http://bit.ly/Ia5J0t

I figured that the more naturally the water falls on the grass, the more comfortable the grass will feel to grow. Almost like a Chinese proverb.

Pancho with Hose; Making it Rain

"Five Bunnies Holding a Meeting Under a Shade of Diluted Green"

Riddle of the Sphinx: Morning

http://youtu.be/pMNSWMpW6qU

One always--always--sits with yesterday on the mind. 
If by mind we are implying memory, and memory implying thought, and thought implying knowledge: it all condenses into the known, which is always in the past; always the yesterday. 
Knowledge is the past:
So how could one attempt to face the now--the ever changing truth--through knowledge?
How does one attempt to understand the unknown with the tools of the known?
The end of knowledge is the awakening of intelligence; the awakening of creativity: Of being able to experience the here and now---the present-- from moment to moment without betraying it with the known--the past.

"Hi there, my name is Pancho?" seeks to explore the parameters of being. The implications behind an individual wearing a mask and calling himself Pancho vs. a number of others wearing the same mask and calling themselves Pancho. At what point does Pancho cease to be something tangible? At what point does it become an idea? Was it always an idea, one that is acted out?—How much of ourselves are ideas? Are we ideas of ourselves acted out? Is this idea of ourselves our very own? Or is someone else enforcing us to anthropomorphize their idea?

Hi there, my name is Pancho?

http://vimeo.com/26457906

On the evening of July 13, 2011,
Pancho arrived home from work, sat down, and had a thought.



(Needless to say, the thought was interrupted when he noticed his breathing rhythm matched the movement of the blinds in his window as they were caressed by a subtle breeze of summer air)

I Think, Therefore I am Pancho

http://vimeo.com/panchopanoptes/6fish

On the evening of June 12, 2011 I happened upon a school of rice fish as I was getting ready to wash my dirty dishes. Under further inspection, I realized they were performing Shakespeare's Hamlet.
This is my documentation of the event.

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Pancho Panoptes