Berlim, Berlimbo, Berlimbora (vol. 1)

“Berlim” is how Berlin is spelled in Portuguese. “Berlimbo”: the city fictious author ulysséia ended up staying much longer than expected… an uncertain immigrant status, the instabilities of her country, a few bubbles of refuge, long lockdowns… a lingering journey away from Pindorama dos Palmares. A period of stillness, incertitude and “saudade”.

“Bora” means “in a good hour” and also “let’s go”, “let’s leave”, “let’s do something!”

The artist’s book contains poems and songs - written and translated in-between Portuguese, German and English-, and images “browsing” the open city and the intimate spaces ulysséia experienced in these years.

ulysséia * was born in Pindorama dos Palmares, whose colonial name everyone knows as “Brazil”. At early age, she was initiated in Western catechesis by family, school, books, movies, magazines, tv and the ever “developing” urban asphalt and intellect infra-structure suffocating earth, oralities and sacred cemeteries.

Her parents met each other while guided by some German “holy books” that shaped art, politics, behaviour and industry in (neocolonial) Brazil’s seventies. Marx, Brecht, Salomé, Hesse, Volkswagen, Nivea cream … in a crossroad with pajelança, cateretê, lundu, modinha, macumba and electric guitars.

Struck by the same impulse and “taste for (individual) adventure” inherited from her Euro-Judeo-Arabic ancestors, she decides, in her forties, to leave Pindorama and open up the world, but gets stuck in Berlimbo...