SLOW RIVER

For now I write about this work as a travel report

I decide I need to take a trip to Foz do Iguaçu on a hot summer night after watching a movie where lovers kiss violently on their way to the falls. I decide when I happen to find this article about Las Vegas where the journalist wrote ''Vegas is the place where neon goes to die'' and although Foz do Iguaçu is not Las Vegas I decide to take this quote for myself, as I find it unbelievably coherent. I decide after saying goodbye to J. in October 2023 - while watching their brown Beetle - the car I hated so much - turn the corner and disappear along with the scandalous roar of the engine.

Through a quick search on the internet, I discover the number of arbitrary tourist attractions I can visit: A dinosaur park, the water park called Blue and also this miniature museum containing all the wonders of the world; A replica of the Eiffel Tower, a small coliseum and a mini Taj Mahal - just like the one I've seen on top of the mountain somewhere in Dutra highway on the way to Rio de Janeiro.

Every time I passed by there I remember to make a mental note; I need to go back to this very specific mile and find out why on earth someone bothered to build a tiny replica of the Taj Mahal here - it makes no sense at all and yet it's hauntingly beautiful and pathetic. Over the years, I´ve crossed this place a few times - accompanied by different lovers. Always sitting in the passenger seat. Once I almost wrote down the exact point on the road where the Taj Mahal was so I could return one day, but I never did.

Over the months I write it down repeatedly in different notebooks: it's important to travel to Foz do Iguaçu to take photos, but I still don't know why. Time passes and I invent the story of this town where love goes to die or perhaps where a broken heart must go urgently and furiously. This imaginary territory follows me through time and my own grieving process; going through the days, on a hot and dry carnival, buying flowers for a new house or crying over neighborhood bars.

I then buy a tourist package through a travel agency that I found on the internet and at the beginning of May I get on a chartered plane and start my expedition. I take a film camera with me and all the film stock I've always kept on the fridge to photograph something special. Other than the hotel booked, I don't do any additional research to plan my days.

I stay at this hotel called Golden Park - Convention Center. Interestingly, in the same week that I am there, there is also a national conference with HR professionals from all over Brazil. I see the cardboard banner at the reception and another one next to the auditorium. I pass convention attendees in the crowded elevator and also in the breakfast room. They chat animatedly and wear formal clothes; pencil skirts, tight burgundy suits and navy blue socks in fine fabric.

The hotel pool is large and calm.

I hardly find anyone swimming despite the dry heat. A disused waterslide and many striped beach chairs occupy the entire length of the hotel's outdoor area, next to the gym consisting of a solitary treadmill and some rusty weights. I photograph this couple by the pool. Every year they go to Foz do Iguaçu, every year they visit the falls but they prefer the Argentine side. The woman tells me it's more pleasant.

Every morning I go for a run around a military barracks. I run at the same time as the army boys. They all wear small brown shorts with stripes on the sides, tight white t-shirts and white ribbed socks as they trot along singing a rhythmic chant that I can't discern. I pass in front of a giant war tank displayed at the entrance to the barracks, next to a palm tree.

Foz do Iguaçu has wide avenues and billboards scattered on every corner. The main avenue takes you to most of the city's attractions and also leads to the falls. One of the lanes, almost as wide as a football field, is closed. The Uber driver explains that they are carrying out an audacious construction to expand the highway to five additional lanes  ‘’In the next few years they are planning to build an amusement park as big as Disneyland’’ he also says.

Interestingly, most of the places I visit are always under construction. At the airport, walls are being painted at five in the morning, at the hotel they are renovating and modernizing the meeting rooms near the convention center. Constructions permeate my work like an irritating and constant background noise - which is only noticeable when it stops abruptly, and then it is possible to hear the silence.

I go to this dinosaur park. In the background, covered by an extensive green fence that surrounds the land, I see three towers under construction. The ticket attendant said it will be a new hotel. I pass through a half-open aluminum gate that leads into a quagmire of disturbed red soil. Right there, at the back of this dinosaur park, facing the construction towers I see a giant dinosaur - one of the good ones from any Hollywood movie - packed in bubble wrap as if it was being prepared to be the most extravagant gift ever given to someone.

I laugh out loud as I look at that scene. Perhaps this is the most complex image I have ever seen. I walk on this path of red soil and place my entire body in contact with that totem. I want to hug this resin animal until someone appears, shouting that it is forbidden to be there, but no one comes.

In the following days I walk around the city without rushing. I go to this Italian restaurant where families dine to the sound of “have you ever seen the rain” played on a saxophone by a man in a suit. I cross the border between Brazil and Paraguay by foot alongside with other tourists carrying bags full of speakers, iphones and the latest nike running shoes.

In the middle of the week I take a bus and stop at the exact point where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet.

Crossroads; place where streets, roads, paths intersect. In the figurative sense: critical point, at which a decision must be made.

Most nights I photograph the hotel pool, lit by a dim blue neon light while drinking a warm can of beer. Souvenir shops always sell the same collection of objects. In every place I go I buy one of them, as if I was building a very private collection of objects or perhaps the smallest museum in the world - with small cups for drinking cachaça, mini plates in plastic holders hand-painted with the design of the falls and even one of these glass balls that when shaken it is possible to observe the snow falling slowly - despite the intermittent heat that surrounds the city.

On the hottest day of the week, I visit Itaipu, one of the biggest  hydroelectric plant of Brazil. The tourist bus, open on the roof and sides, slowly sinks into the immensity of concrete. Territory cursed by all  layers of violence and destruction that have passed through here. The bus stops at a viewpoint overlooking the artificial river. We all take photos of the water. Itaipu in Tupi means ‘The stone that sings’ - the tour guide says. At the end of the visit I buy a small tile with the pixelated image of the hydroelectric plant.

I go to this water park called ‘Blue Park’ because I like the color blue. Some people bathe on an artificial beach.

I see a lady in a swimsuit putting tips of her toes and then the back of her head inside this fake ocean to cool off. Every fifteen minutes waves erupt from nowhere, then disappear and everything becomes calm again - as if nothing absurd could happen in such a controlled environment. An artificial river runs along the entire length of the water park. It is possible to enter a round buoy and float the circular current forever. The signpost next to the access stairs says: Slow River.

On my last day in Foz do Iguaçu I finally visit the falls and contrary to what J. once told me 'it's going to be difficult without me' I'm happy to be there alone. The closer to the main viewpoint, the more violent the force of the waters, which explode in the abyssal fall like a thousand boxes of dynamite on New Year's Eve, as if all the people in the city were shouting at the same time while knocking over coffee tables.

None of this has to do with love. Our farewell happened a long time ago, I'm not here to say goodbye to anything else.

I take off the white t-shirt I've recently bought in Paraguay that I'm wearing and put it inside my backpack. In a gym top and shorts, I then cross the walkway that ends practically inside the cliff. The thin water wets my body and the bodies of everyone there in a baptism or collective exorcism for no god. A photographer at the park tries to sell me a portrait of myself for 50 bucks. I politely decline but take a photo of him.

I dreamed about this work so much and it took me so long to get here - that when I saw myself going towards each of the photographs I made,  I already knew that they would be there waiting for me. I walked this path and laughed nervously at each encounter with the images that slept with me every day. I knew I would find the woman with her face wet leaving the waterfall tour, the couple who didn't speak Portuguese, all the tourist buses I sat in the window, all the manufactured rivers, which flows nowhere but still the fall it is violent.

The sun at the end of the day crosses the furious set of waters and illuminates the entire park. It illuminates the tourists who take turns at the circular viewpoint and open their arms to be photographed, it illuminates the souvenir shop and it also illuminates the noise of seven thousand horses trotting on the dry, red ground until they disappear from sight.

I observe the ghostly immensity and I can't understand how all that is possible. I've never seen a landscape like this. I will remember this forever. In the false sensation of a territory untouched by humans, I imagine a prehistoric scenographic bird crossing the sky that late afternoon while its roar echoes in the mountains. One of those wise birds, who pass by to bring news of change.