Pulse, the spluttering of a car’s engine cut through the neighbourhood. The engine pops and crackles like a machine gun, coughing out erratic gout of exhaust. Its echoes bounce from house to house, until it pulls up outside the building and the engine cuts.
Pulse, the spluttering of a car’s engine cut through the neighbourhood. The engine pops and crackles like a machine gun, coughing out erratic gout of exhaust. Its echoes bounce from house to house, until it pulls up outside the building and the engine cuts.


Imagine to be alone here now, undercover.
It's a short close up shot.
Outside is raining, outside the drivers walk, with their head down, shielding their eyes with one hand, while you stare ahead, a few yards ahead, at a few yards of wet asphalt; outside it is cold, the wind blows between the bare black branches; the wind blows through the leaves, rocking whole boughs, rocking them, rocking, their shadows swaying across roughcast walls. Outside the sun is shining, there is no tree, no bush to cast a shadow, and they walk under the sun shielding their eyes with one hand while you stare ahead, only a few yards in front of you, at a few yards ahead.


There is silence in the kingdom.


The streets are empty
and
the drivers are on the street underneath customer's room
third floor of the building is customer's room
customer's staring at the window
(while) translucent liquid is flooding car's interior
(while) drivers staring at the streets.


Car's carrying goods
scraps
rubble
refused plaster compound puma's heads
baskets of clay
michelin banners
dunlop baloons
boxes
pillows
packages
trash bags
grey seats and orange belts
long nose puppets, short handed puppets
carved foam
plastic shoes
low reliefs
shards of an unfinished ones
chinese cups
good years baloons
stickers, for tuning, stickers for home.


The close-up zoom in through the car's window
it frames the liquid
spilling.
You are pressed inside,
too close to see anything
if not tiny light reflections in folds.
Light hitting car's windows
“if this is not magic” customer's whispering
car's answering with black smoke
black smoke's rising in the clean sky
black smoke and customer's words liking each other in the sunset boulevard,
customer's smile to black smoke
liquid smile to driver,
driver smile to car
when driver open the car's doors, liquid becoming a thin airy patina reflecting sun-rays
lifting car's scraps and goods, suspended in thin air, intersecting black smoke, from the street through the window to customer's room, sweeftly scattered on grey floors.


On the floor
refused puma's heads, not puma's heads
baskets of clay, not basket of clay
michelin banner, not michelin banner
grey seats, orange belts, not grey seats, not orange belts
long nose puppets, short handed puppets , not long nose, not short handed puppets
carved foam, not carved foam
plastic shoes, not plastic shoes
boxes not boxes
packages not packages
trash bags not trash bags
good year ballons, not good year ballons
low relief, not low relief
shards of an unfinished one, not shards
stickers, for tuning, stickers for home, not stickers for tuning, not for home
chinese cups, not chinese cups
pillows, not pillows
but
a collective assemblage of enunciations, sensed through bodies, encompassing vast
distances, in an aimless sparsness,
magically appeared on clean customer's floor.
with black smoke
smiles and clouds.


Each magical event its own celebration.


The camera zoom out
the drivers smile from the street
to the customer's window
the customer smiles to the drivers.

In the little kingdom of the little street the sun is shining.

“An happy ending” the customer's whisper in thick words to the black smoke.


In a world that is a complex mixture of geological, biological, social and linguistic constructions that are nothing but accumulations of materials shaped and hardened by history smiling means magic or just the flip-side of a large scale depression.

Cloud disappearing through wind
customer closing windows
driver's turning street corner.


Were this a fairy tale, the drivers would be the genies, the customer the lucky man who’d stumbled on the lamp and the goods his wish, granted in an eye-blink. For the goods are no longer carried or fetched, but fly straight to the customer’s door.

He has but to whisper their name and they are immediately dispatched from where they sit and carried swiftly through the city streets by the driver who arrives with them safe and sound in his hands and rings the bell. And because there are no real genies, wishes or lucky fellows in this kingdom, and no magic lamps that let their owner turn things into other things, the customer opens his front door, and takes the goods. During the course of the short transaction between customer and driver a pulse runs through the kingdom. A shiver, rapid and faint, but encompassing vast distances.

The magic in fairy tales is a real magic, which moves and swaps things round. It makes the frog a prince, turns dust to gold. The magic in our world is an impostor. It makes no substitutions, just allows things to encompass vast distances without ever leaving their place. There is the distance between the place of production and the customer’s home: a misleading distance in an age in which homeowners are accustomed to choose from products which have been produced in a number of different locations simultaneously; there is the distance travelled by the drivers, the distance the customer travels in thin air conditioned corridors towards the doors; the distances dividing the city’s districts, traversed by people and goods.

All these distances are encompassed in a fleeting, magical pulse… and everything is transformed, just as in our fairy tale. The kingdom exchanges its products with itself via those who move and travel.

So it is that each time the echoes of a car’s spluttering engine bounce from house to house, the kingdom thrills to a new pulse running through its veins.