[-empyre-] time and space and movement

[Ana Valdés]

I am an urban dweller, it means I only enjoy the cities, any city, the
feeling of many people moving around busy with their own lives.
Last year I worked at the Swedish National Direction of Travelling
Exhibitions, an institution with 40 employees and a beautiful new building
in the city of Visby, in the island of Gotland, west from Stockholm.
Gotland is the largest island in the Balticum Sea, inhabitated by around
60000 people. In the city of Visby lives around 10000 the whole year, in
Summer about one million people comes to the island to enjoy the sea, the
sun and the views.
Visby is one of Europes most well conserved medieval city, with the walls
intact. The walls were erected in the 13th century to separate the wealthy
German merchants from the Swedish peasants who lived outside the walls and
paid huge taxes to come into the city.
Visby was part of the Hanseatic League and was (and still is) a beautiful
city with several impressive churches and cathedrals.
At Sundays, last Winter, I could see myself being the only person walking
around the center of the town. I could walk home following my own traces
and stepping up the marks left by my shoes.
For me Visby was never a city, too empty, too beautiful, too clean. I need
a dirtier and more soddy city. Montevideo, the city I moved to, fits in the
latest classification.

Ana

-- 
http://www.twitter.com/caravia15859
http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/
http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/
http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/
http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/

mobil/cell +4670-3213370


"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always
long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci
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