'City of dreams' is an excerpt from a work in progress entitled 'a smear of roses' and explores subjectivity, secrets, sadness and desire. The non-linear text of 'a smear of roses' ruptures traditional narrative, opening out into flightlines across the plains of madness, picking up trace memories of disturbing events, sensual and violent impulses, erotic encounters and pyschotic states.

A north american First Nation belief states that healing comes from the ability to answer three questions clearly. Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here? 'a smear of roses' is perhaps my way of beginning to seek some answers.

The work's initial line of flight was from de Sade who states 'that only through the exploration and refinement of his sphere of tastes and impulses, only by sacrificing all at the altar of sensual gratification, can this individual - he who never asked to be born into sorry a world - can this poor creature, named Man, sow a smear of roses over the arid path of life.' (Philosophy in the Boudoir)

This idea is investigated within the narrative by a number of characters:
the ghost doll yoko who rises nightly from the pond of dead girls in the foothills of Kyoto; the notorious GashGirl, a disembodied intelligence prowling the internet and the streets of New York, haunted by a ghost girl, an Italian peasant drawn from her wounded bloodline; and Klava, snow queen, last sighted somewhere in St Petersburg last autumn. These avatars are joined by the voices of various intimates, confessors and victims, all enticing the user/reader to follow their versions of the 'truth', their tales of the inherent tension between the solid states of solitude and union.

So quick, so fine, a haiku minimalism composed of a binary gossamer, a shimmering warp and weft of ones and zeros. There is no beginning and no end, no right sequence of events. Time collapses in on itself producing a series of parallel states of being, each with their own logic and drive. Reduncancy propels the reader forward, or is it backwards, or sideways? What happens when the permeable membrane of these distinct worlds touch each other? In which direction is the flow? The same stories, the same iconic images, loop, twirl in on themselves, replicating themselves, with just a word changed here and there, omitted, added, misspelt, repositioned. Eventually a whole new text has evolved from the genetic starter culture, the double helix of despair and transcendence.

© Francesca da Rimini

About the Artist

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