Lisbon, May 12, 2011
Dear Agency of Unrealized Projects,
We have been planning to write you for so long. In fact, it has been more than two years now, since we first felt the urge to share our thoughts with you. But we ended up never doing it until now. In a certain way, these sorts of incidents are the reason why we are writing you. Or maybe not: perhaps it is more about those things that are never done. But allow us to explain ourselves a bit better. For the last two years we thought about nothing but relinquish. This continuous cogitation was so overwhelming that we left everything else behind: we were unable of working, reading, writing, travelling, and even dreaming. We could only think about giving up; about the meaning of voluntarily cease to do. Sometimes we were more driven towards postponing: doing so, we added time to our obsession with ceasing, and it turned itself into a deferment. In other occasions we believed abandon was the essence of our passion. But it became evident that we were in love with the act of renouncing. Perhaps you think we are insane. But we are not: finally everything became crystal clear. We risked loosing everything, and yet we gathered all these thoughts, and all the things we gave up of and decided to give them a use. And that is why we am writing you, because we started collecting abandons and we would want you to give us one of yours. Just one, we would not know what to do with many of them, and we would probably leave them behind, such renouncers as we are. Anything serves, as long as it is a high-standard personal relinquish: an idea left aside; a decision not undertaken; a choice of non-production; an abandon of the traditional production-consumption logics; a suspension of an ongoing process, which assured the conservation of the idea in a pure, almost ideal phase. It could have been the conception of a product or of an event that was left behind. We simply want a non-fulfilled idea of yours. And you rightly might ask us why. Well, because it is the only thing that will heal our obsession. Do you know when you are in love and you continuously read that message sent by your beloved one? Or when you put the player on repeat to let the same melody enter your body again and again and again? We have the same need with relinquished acts. Please consider that we are not interested in all your non-realized ideas. What interests us is that gap between creativity and productivity, and specifically its negative side: what you decided not to do. What we are launching is a large and enthusiastic celebration of the potential of these resolutions to don’t do. Once the decisions - or should we call them non-decisions? - have been gathered, we will read them carefully, slowly, passionately, once by one. It will probably take us long to do so. Hours, days, weeks, who knows? It does not matter, because, at last, we will not be thinking about abandon: we will be living it, incarnating it, through our own gift. We will finally compose this sort of non-instructions manual, a bestiary of non-completion, a tribute to idleness! Where will we do this? In the only place where you intentionally go to give away a part of yourself: in a barbershop, in Lisbon, in June this year.
We will be looking forward to the seeing the postman arriving with your correspondence.
Until then, Our warmest regards, Filipa and Antonio
Lisbon, May 12, 2011
Dear Agency of Unrealized Projects,
We have been planning to write you for so long. In fact, it has been more than two years now, since we first felt the urge to share our thoughts with you. But we ended up never doing it until now. In a certain way, these sorts of incidents are the reason why we are writing you. Or maybe not: perhaps it is more about those things that are never done. But allow us to explain ourselves a bit better. For the last two years we thought about nothing but relinquish. This continuous cogitation was so overwhelming that we left everything else behind: we were unable of working, reading, writing, travelling, and even dreaming. We could only think about giving up; about the meaning of voluntarily cease to do. Sometimes we were more driven towards postponing: doing so, we added time to our obsession with ceasing, and it turned itself into a deferment. In other occasions we believed abandon was the essence of our passion. But it became evident that we were in love with the act of renouncing. Perhaps you think we are insane. But we are not: finally everything became crystal clear. We risked loosing everything, and yet we gathered all these thoughts, and all the things we gave up of and decided to give them a use. And that is why we am writing you, because we started collecting abandons and we would want you to give us one of yours. Just one, we would not know what to do with many of them, and we would probably leave them behind, such renouncers as we are. Anything serves, as long as it is a high-standard personal relinquish: an idea left aside; a decision not undertaken; a choice of non-production; an abandon of the traditional production-consumption logics; a suspension of an ongoing process, which assured the conservation of the idea in a pure, almost ideal phase. It could have been the conception of a product or of an event that was left behind. We simply want a non-fulfilled idea of yours. And you rightly might ask us why. Well, because it is the only thing that will heal our obsession. Do you know when you are in love and you continuously read that message sent by your beloved one? Or when you put the player on repeat to let the same melody enter your body again and again and again? We have the same need with relinquished acts. Please consider that we are not interested in all your non-realized ideas. What interests us is that gap between creativity and productivity, and specifically its negative side: what you decided not to do. What we are launching is a large and enthusiastic celebration of the potential of these resolutions to don’t do. Once the decisions - or should we call them non-decisions? - have been gathered, we will read them carefully, slowly, passionately, once by one. It will probably take us long to do so. Hours, days, weeks, who knows? It does not matter, because, at last, we will not be thinking about abandon: we will be living it, incarnating it, through our own gift. We will finally compose this sort of non-instructions manual, a bestiary of non-completion, a tribute to idleness! Where will we do this? In the only place where you intentionally go to give away a part of yourself: in a barbershop, in Lisbon, in June this year.
We will be looking forward to the seeing the postman arriving with your correspondence.
Until then, Our warmest regards, Filipa and Antonio