SOMEWHERE WAS A FOREST UNDER A BLUE SUN...
One winter day I was walking through the park. Amongst the misty landscape a thorn bush caught my attention. Its spikes were bright yellow, and they were throbbing according to my confused breath. At a closer look, behind the entangled branches, I glimpsed an undisclosed path. After I followed it, there it was, radiating an unknown intangible tension which drew me to it.
I went closer and I held my hand towards it. Immediately, I felt its unstable yet powerful force. The rowdy sound of the forest went silent abruptly. Is this what I was striving for? Sacrificing myself to the darkest burst of desire?
All those ancestral images and objects that I have been dreaming, that were haunting me as echoing a 7,000 year old turmoil, became clearer now that I was standing here. In front of the portal, time was passing so slowly. Its unnatural brightness along with the uncanny shadows it was creating, showed me how to finally decipher the sigils of the gate.
I looked around, I closed my eyes, and step by step I let my body and mind cross the portal. In the blink of an eye the light, the mist, the park, and myself were all gone. Disappeared.
Now, I'm completely lost in the geography of Perverse City.
It's 8 am on a beautiful spring day. Shades of blue are caressing the facades of the buildings. Erin and Drew are visiting their family in this desolate land, dragged around by Boredom, their delicate but dangerous bull terrier. They already had breakfast and are heading to the Zone park.
As they enter the Zone, Boredom begins to pull, like he never did before. Stop it, says Erin as he tries to calm the dog. But Boredom was unleashed, and ran away.
They can't find him anymore.
They are worried as they keep yelling their dog's name. Sometimes the Zone looks deeply unwelcoming. They heard lots of dark rumors about this place, and have been warned about the wild areas surrounded by heavy thorn bushes where pail dodgy figures have been sighted. Nobody knows who these figures are, or why they appear and disappear, like flashing lights.
They are walking back and forth, trying to follow different paths each time, but mapping the Zone is impossible. They feel like waiting is lasting endlessly, and the feeble sunlight filtered by the dense trees canopy is making it difficult for them to distinguish the passing of time.
In front of a giant deadly oak, Drew heard something. It sounded like distant voices coming out of a sink full of water. As he stopped he felt like an energetic flux of desire was asking them to cross the spiky bushes.
Drew and Erin hoid hands, take a deep breath, and they start to hesitantly walk towards the thorn bushes barricade. They cross the first row, and then the second, and a third one, until a field of dried burnt yellowish grass opens in front of them.
As they walk around, disoriented by this landscape change, they see something in the center of this empty field. They get closer, and start to dig a little bit deeper until a muddy backpack and a pair of pants surface. The pants are covered by spikes looking like stonefish darts while the backpack has unknown objects attached to it. They wonder who they belong to.
Drew looks up, 'Hey Erin, look at the thorn bushes! The spikes are turning yellow!

-Gabriele Longega

Gabriele Longega vive a Venezia ed è tra gli artisti in studio a zolforosso. Si è laureato in Arti visive e Studi curatoriali a NABA (Milano) e nel 2020 è stato parte di School of the Damned (UK).
Ha recentemente collaborato con Léann Herlihy per il progetto the middle of nowhere, supportato da Project Arts Centre, Dublino.
Precedentemente il suo lavoro è stato presentato a Viafarini (IT), CREATurE Live Art (LT), Celine Gallery (UK), Embassy Gallery (UK), Iperformancespace[ (UK), Dfbr18r (US) e al Centre for Contemporary
Arts di Glasgow.