"OneThousand & OneNights"

THE PROJECT :

Travelling means accepting diversity and being able to put yourself back into question. All along the journey, we encounter cultures different from ours which lead us to shaking up our points of reference and our prejudices. The discovery of new countries implies respecting and adapting to the population, leaving your own print.

Each culture has a popular history, a legendary tale transmitted from one generation to another. This heritage transmitted by the eldest becomes less common and leads to a loss of the popular culture, except in small communities where identity and roots are preserved. They are wrapped in a mystery halo made of myths and beliefs. Nowadays, more than ever, manhood needs points of reference.

Man runs too much and meditates little, he plans ahead loosing what he became thanks to his past. Aware that popular tradition is not the expression of an only country, men must contribute to the rediscovery and the preservation of their ancestors’’ popular culture. This memory must be renewed, when possible, to give it to others in a correct measure. In this way, it would be possible to love a simpler past, but strengthened by a millenary tradition in which magic, religion and fight for existence live side by side intensively. A past which today, in the light of our contemporary existence, seems very far.

Our project aims at gathering those stories, transmitted from a generation to another, across the villages we are going to cross. A series of videos will be put in place to tell the representative history of each culture. We will ask questions to the eldest in the villages we will stop.

The narration of their stories will become an objective for us: that of visually representing the key element of the tale, building it, reinterpreting it and giving him shape through the material at our disposition. Branches, leaves, buckets, wheels, bricks, cords, rags.. Those we will find there will be recycled and reinterpreted to build a symbolic work illustrating the tale.

This construction will leave a trace of our passage and will also become a gift for the village, for the population who will have welcomed us.

Valeria & Gabriele

The launch of the project take place upon the 30th January 2015 in Berlin through a blog, a facebook page and press releases.

Time : 6 years.

Countries :

Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Philippines, Indonesia, New-Guinea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Tibet, Nepal, India, Canada (West coast), United States (West coast), Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Namibia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco.

General equipment :

Tent 3 people, Insulation tent sheet, Duvet x2, Outdoor Cords, Rucksack 80L et 120L, Clothes (jackets, jumpers, trousers, gloves etc. ) x2, 4 seasons outdoor shoes x2, Snow shoes, GPS, Torch x2, Set of foldable tools, Kitchen tools, Knife, Food Tuperware boxes, Gaz ring, First Aid Kit.

Video equipment :

Canon 5D Mark III, Lense 50mm f 1 8 ii, Lense 16-35mm, Lense 24-70mm, 4 batteries LP-E6, Lamp 48 LED, 3 cards CF 64GB, 1 card SD 64GB, 1 card SD 32GB, Lapel Mike HF, Zoom microphone H4N, GoPro, GoPro devices, Video Monopode flow head, Video Monopode flow head, Laptop MacBook Pro, External DVD player/writer, 2 HD 1To, Battery solar panel.

Videosketch 01 - WAITING FOR SUMMER AND COUNTRYSIDE !!!

BERLIN, January 2015