Christian Catafago

And the world came to a stop in 2020. I was stuck in Brussels far away from my family, slowly, I felt a dizziness as the town became empty: all were working from their house in the suburbs or staying at home watching the news on television.

The Capital of Europe: Empty.

In one of the few cars going around, I rediscovered the city: time and space were different, main roads, usually congested, felt like playing scalextric-type rail guided cars. The movement in Brussels was different from what I had experienced in Beirut: instead of a relation with the asphalt and crumbling monuments, I now was viewing everything as if guided by rails. I started using again the contraption I had constructed more than 20 years ago, transforming my moving rental car into a camera stand, the heavy hand life regulation by the state and union and its invisible gears would project my vision 90 years back to Leni Rieffenstahl’s times: it is only the blur of movement that would diminish the weighty importance of monuments while hoping the world would not remain as regulated and constrained we were newly experiencing: I couldn’t wait to be able to return to Paris and beyond to my family far away.

In the meantime, I was stuck in the empty Merry Go Round of Europe’s capital.