My first experience of seeing a movie that represents a place i know very well, a place which was my home for a while, was an unsettling thing. I’ve been particularly attached to that movie ever since (Left Luggage, a story which takes place in the city of Antwerpen, in particular in its Hassidic neighbourhood). The fascinating alienation of it: those familiar streets i walked so many times, that park i loved to spend time in. Suddenly all of these lose their more intimate locations in pictures taken by Lotte or me, in memories and shared stories: they are out there on the big screen. The strangest feeling of displacement.
Arriving to California: a similar kind of alienation, but the other way around. A place that feels intensely familiar but very strange and unknown at the same time. I haven’t really been here before, so it’s supposed to feel strange and different, that part is fine. But all the images of California that circulate in movies and television shows give the place an uncanny familiarity. It’s like visiting the set, as the advertisement suggests. [In that capital of brilliant advertisements, London, what a good stop-over on the journey to seeamerica.com] Walking through the other side of television, Maria said. So i guess it’s kind of being on the set and in the backstage area at the same time. How to relate to a place like that, where reality somehow has this intense fake quality (and once more Hollywood is to blame)? Perhaps the beginning of some kind of Alice in Wonderland.