Theory of Souvenir

"Future married couples pass by, chatting seamstresses pass by, young men in a hurry for pleasure pass by, those who have retired from everything smoke on their habitual stroll, and at one or another doorway a shopkeeper stands like an idle vagabond, hardly noticing a thing. Army recruits - some of them brawny, others slight - slowly drift along in noisy and worse-thannoisy clusters. Occasionally someone quite ordinary goes by. Cars at that time of day are rare, and their noise is musical. In my heart there’s a peaceful anguish, and my calm is made of resignation. All of this passes, and none of it means anything to me. It’s all foreign to my fate, and even to fate as a whole. It’s just unconsciousness, curses of protest when chance hurls stones, echoes of unknown voices – a collective mishmash of life."

- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

What is the scenery, what is the souvenir of traveling? Inspired by The Book of Disquiet, which describes the stillness and the seclusion in a life familiar, the project Theory of Souvenir conversely intends to seize the disingenuous solitude during the travel in an unacquainted city. What is the materiality which sensationally contacts with the tourists or outsiders?

A cup of coffee you grab at 3 pm, the pebbles in your shoes, a balloon in a carnival. The plants. The fountain. The square. The signpost. That's the souvenir I send you all the way.