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Another remarkable experience in New York was held from having been a resident of the Bowery, the border
region of Soho, then industrial area inhabited by artists seeking cheaper rents and larger spaces. The Bowery
was occupied by hordes of
bums
(homeless), people who roaming trough the corners, people from all social
classes. They drank a wine with a taste sweet and cloying. They lived in groups, with their heavy coats pur-
chased at any Army Supply Store. Slept, bathed or cut their hair in charity houses. They drank literally till drop,
cutting sometimes with shards of broken bottles. One morning, trying to get out of my apartment, I could not
open the door. I called a neighbor, we look across the window. The snow of the night before, very high, piled
up in the doorway, blocking the passage. The body of a man, frozen, lay under the snow.
Experiences like this, added later to the experiences of Berlin and those of violence in Rio, were projected in
works such as
Os Policiais da Chacina Verão Boca Mole, Barreira do Vasco
and the series
Registro Policial
.
In Chichen-Itzá, walking one day through its wide avenues, I found myself in a sports arena. More precisely in
a field of “juego de pelota”, football practiced with knees and shoulders and where – as unbelievable as it may
seem – the defeated were killed at the end of the decisive matches of the championship. I discovered, in the
stones around it, carved figures forming a sort of strap that enveloped the whole side up on to the beacon,
itself a large stone ring with the figure of a jaguar on the spot where the ball should enter.
Looking downwards in the vertical I came across with skulls and skeletons in bas-relief. One of them seemed a
familiar creature: the Mickey Mouse. I stepped back in time and remembered the cropped-out figures in wood
of my apartment in Ipanema, overly colorful, as in former Disney movies. Later I made reliefs in wood using not
only the figure of Mickey Mouse, but the visual experience of Chichen Itzá as a whole. Were works like
Bloco
Podre, Caixa de Morar, Algum, Multidões and A Marmita.
Cities keep secrets and memories. In Berlin, after a journey of 12 hours, from Rio, I went in to a knipe[sic] (pub)
to take a cold one and eat something. Inside the bar a woman feeds a giant German shepherd with the lef-
tover food from her plate, while at the back boys were playing pool. Shortly the dog started barking, awake-
ning the wrath of the boys, all much strong. Then they stood throwing pieces of blue chalk with which they
sharpening their cues to expel the woman with the dog. Only later I realized that attended – the early ‘80s – a
manifestation of a group that later would be revealed by
skin heads
.
In Berlin I experienced the closest contact with the violence of the city, with loneliness. There was something
that caused, the whole time the unpleasant feeling of not belong to the city. In the neighborhood where I was
accommodated there was many Turks, which helps to strengthen the notion of German xenophobia. I think I
could be translate only that artistically now in my latest book,
Dupla Identidade
, about immigrants.
In Rio I always liked to walk in the streets of downtown, trough Praça Mauá, Estácio, Alfândega Street. I ente-
red into its stores, visiting small glassworks shops, frameworks stores, shops of building material and useless
objects. On the outskirts of Praça Mauá, for example, I rediscovered the makers of tourist objects. I experien-
ced the thrill of encountering again with those trays and objects filled with butterfly wings, which had seen
many times in my childhood in visits to Corcovado. I bought them in all shapes and variations. In these travels,
in the mid-‘60s, arise the
Rei do Mau Gosto, Bela Lindonéia, O Altar and Carnê Fartura
.
Another pivotal experience was living in number 135 of Barata Ribeiro, opposite to the famous 200. I observed
it at nightfall – its lights, parallel lives, a human hive that never breathed and slept. Or slept in shifts. Copa-
cabana was a new world to me. One day I decided to go up and down several times in one of its crowded