Free retellings of a few days in Mexico. Texts by Carlos Ávila and photographs by Agustina Triquell.
Tijuana. Artaud arrived in Mexico in the mid-thirties and said that he was on the road to the sun: «What must be pursued here is the secret of that force of light.» What did he mean? Nobody knows. As far as I’m concerned, the reflection of the sun in Tijuana, possibly that «force of light» pointed out by Artaud, gives me an intense headache.

Before the memory of the islands dissipates, we have decided to try and revive what we experienced, which in this case is not about talking about this or that street, such and such park, a magnificent exhibition, an absurd monument or a historical place. It’s something different. An island is always something ‘other,’ even if we are inside a museum, even if a house is a house, even if the streets are similar to continental streets. An island, as Gertrud Stein’s rose, is an island is an island is an island.

We embarked on this trip as a disrupted continuity of the previous one, thinking: not one island, two. But Capraia turned out to be the other face of the insular coin, the darker yet dazzled side of the concept of island: when it is closer to the place of imprisonment and repetition, when the map does not lead to a treasure but to the most beautiful trap.

Recounting a trip you returned from some time ago is no piece of cake. There is always a sort of slip of the head, as if the past had slid down the shower drain, as if “returning” was a haircut with memory at the tips. This is why sometimes keeping a journal is an advantage, or if none exists, having been more or less consistent with the uploading of photos and thoughts to cyberspace—this dematerialized place we so inhabit—could also work. There we can search for what was said and seen—to avoid repetition or to invoke it—: to live up in the clouds.