When I've heard the term minimal traveling from the residency description, it came to my mind the book by Alain de Bottom "The Art of Travel" - specifically the chapter about traveling in your room. It suggests the reader how it may not be necessary to go far away to explore the world and enjoy the insights sparkled by traveling.

The enriching aspects of traveling - discovery, empathy, enthusiasm - are close at hand if you perform a playful effort of attention, and establish a relationship with the surroundings based on active observation and curiosity.

Perfect: that sounded to me as drawing.

About curiosity

Living abroad for 15 years, I must say that this traveller’s curiosity often fades out when the mind gets used to a new surrounding. It’s when the details are taken for granted, and ironically, you feel at home.

Then, action is needed - at least for me, since my artistic drive comes exactly from the moments when the so-called trivial shows itself in its true colours: beautifully rich - in history, aesthetics and metaphor.

Process 

During the two-week residency, I have radically adopted the perspective of a curious traveller, in the close surrounding neighborhood - a limited space in time. The process was simple: observing, experiencing, and developing the thoughts and sensations through notes and drawings - which were daily reassembled in the studio space.

In the last days of the residency, I was invited by the residency director, artist Stefie Steden, to take part in her project Parallel Prokotoll. Her long-going project (with more than 200 editions so far) consists in a weekly activity where her and volunteers would stop in a specific point of Berlin, and during 20 minutes describe in writing their surroundings. Their impression will be later transcribed, and published in parallel, and anonymously, in a printed publication.

For this edition of the project, I participated as an observer and note taking, but instead of words, I used drawing. I was asked by Stefie to choose the location so we went to a street corner two minutes away, and sit in front of this abandoned shop which grabbed my attention since the beginning of the residency.Its decrepit signs had gave no hint of it used to be, and served as home to birds. Its big glass windows exhibited the well lit interior, and, due to the difficulty in finding working space in Berlin, I was badly fantasizing of having my studio there one day. 

Although it was a beautiful sunny morning, I had unfortunately received the notice that a close cousin of mine in Brazil, had deceased the evening before. I took a long breath. Drawing had always been a way of calming my mind, so the opportunity seemed providential, so I didn't refused it.

The result of the activity was published some weeks later. The impressions in writing of three observers can be read in parallel in their original languages (German, Spanish and Japanese) and in German,  illustrated by fragments of the drawing of the chosen location. The publication also features a link to the original drawing sketch (also with one or another of my notes in writing).

Conclusion

If observational drawing is for me a constant exercise, this activity has literally provided me new perspectives on the act of looking. Reading the published outcome - a writing account of an expanded moment in time - was a magical opportunity to revive the drawing experience through a collective point of view. 

Thanks to Stefie Steden, KHB Studios and the participants of the Parallel Protokoll.