nula.cc : source of the nula filecasts

60511 mortal coil.

In which we devise a circumstance wherein the tortional energy stored in a long rusty helical doorspring (inter alia) becomes a physical, as well as aural, metaphor for the tumult and turmoil referred to in the erstwhile, more classical, sense of the word ‘coil.’

60484 highway.

A highway is but a single thread in the open fabric of the landscape; its path and form constrained by the contours of the earth. The present work is a composed drone that has been cast and worked from material that was selectively mined from recordings of highways and other forms of travel. It withholds any impression of where and when, emphasizing the featurelessness of the source material as a way of probing its power and uncovering its mesmeric potential.

60477 bar bard.

Our guide takes us to a bar in the evening; already from the street it sounds like a good time. We go in, I take the only unoccupied chair, which is at the back of the room. Smiling people are all around listening to a local minstrel bowing a one-string instrument and happily singing. We listen as the clever worder strums his instrument and improvises bons mots, causing much mirth, (I am later told) on a wide variety of topics, such as local gossip, as well as more serious subjects like politics. He makes the rounds, collecting the encouragement of small banknotes. He comes around to me and sings several pointed strophes, but I do not understand his tongue. What am I to do? I smile and clap along with the rest. I am later told that he sang this to me: ‘I would be happy if the foreigner gave me a dollar.’

Image and video by Tamás Sajó, recorded 7 February 2019 in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.

60366 it is almost what it seems to be.

I do not wish to go out on a limb and tell you what I think this means. In the first place, I do not really know. I feel myself merely the conduit, the source is somewhere beyond me, untraceable. Secondly, such explanations are superfluous, and anyway, prone to frequent and futile revisions. Why speak? Why, indeed.

60359 mirror.

We wander the forest of a dead volcano, whose peak still exhales a warm breath from the insides of the earth. As the mountain sighs above us, the woodpeckers hammer and the crows caw. We come across this limpid pool, and gaze as if  “… through a glass darkly.”

60353 at nightfall.

This out-of-the-way place attracts gapers and gazers from many lands, who have come to see its various natural and cultural wonders, only to find that an eerie wind has swept them up like so many leaves and brought them to rest at a lonely mountain hotel.

60349 at daybreak.

All cities have their edge places, areas of indifference, where life goes on outside the fovea of modernity. Daylight also has an edge, and when its sun comes to play across these fractured surfaces, it outlines contrasts and deepens shadows, the hiding places of the quotidian.

60330 the nth iteration.

Having been over it many times, I cannot think of what to say about it.

60324 road to ahlat.

As we set out on a road that takes us from the old citadel of

60322 tibetan lunch.

After our visit to the monastery of Tagong, we go into a restaurant run by a Tibetan family, where the owners pause their own family meal to prepare a dish of yak and greens for us. I peek into the kitchen to see what is going on. The cook seems to be using the exhaust from a jet engine in the service of stir-fry.