Trading awareness in exchange for naivety - an old school video experiment.

I have been travelling night time to Zagreb to start a video experiment which will be posted by the end of this year with Mirko Plod Svrabic and Filip Tomić.

Last year we were having a good meal just talking about the past times as often happens and we came up with a simple romantic idea. We meet up, we go back in time 10-15 years, we film a parkour related old school video.

This started as a joke and we wanted to keep it so. But the more we got closer to the moment in which we had to film the more my curiosity about it has been growing.

In fact, as we progressed through the years, experiences, researches, knowledge and thinking strip away some naivety to our practices. Of course on the other hand we gained awareness. This is the price to pay to progress. And that moments it is a fundamental part of the development of a practitioner.

Just to give a quick example dancers, in order to fully understand where and when to move they learn how to count beats and recognize the rules behind music.

 So, with time, they develop a matrix to orient themselves through the notes heard by the ears. Once this happens it cannot be removed.

So, the questions here are: Can we get rid of years of knowledge and regress to some degrees in order to gather back naivety, recall specific emotions, reasons for practicing and old approaches? Is there a meaning to do so in a practice we have already developed? Is it possible at all?

It might just be pure onanism – but I found some value in this.

My answer will come later on, when the video will be posted. So far, I just say one thing. Old school is all appearance. It doesn’t exist. Time goldens memories but what makes them shine is the power of the moments lived. We need less nostalgia, less I want to do that tomorrow, more full-on in the present.

One single clip raw unedited clip from that day.

Now I am already in Belgrade for another project again with my friend Saša Sevo to push the horizon of the events further, enjoying a coffee by the river and this view on the 14^th floor.

Marcello.