2020 / A5 zine / 8 pages / Riso print / 300 copies
There may not be a better time to retreat to a secluded, quiet environment than now, at the time of national quarantine. However, I practice this purification quite regularly: in a cottage in Wallachian solitude in a severed side valley, which I have been visiting for about ten years in order to escape the society, its bustle and the ‘fluidity’ of today. The length of visits varies according to my own possibilities. Today it’s been almost a month since I moved here from Zlín with a few friends. I can’t imagine spending this month locked in a city apartment. In my opinion, our civilization is already collapsing, after all, we have already achieved all the Seven Laws of the Decline of Civilizations.
However, I dose myself with the news sparingly, nevertheless, they don’t make much sense to me here, they don’t make much sense to me here. This is reflected in my need to escape the online world. I shift my attention to the inhabited environment, to its meaningful slowness and especially living in the present moment. All the sensations it offers is enough to get rid all of the unnecesary information. The loneliness of the cottage, its difficult accessibility, as well as the absence of news and contact with civilization form an imaginary wall that Epikuros had erected around his garden so that he and his companions would not witness the decline and demise of Greco-Roman civilization. He didn’t want to take part in it, but there was nothing he could do about it.
April 2020
