Free Men
Cristian Ochoa
Hera goes to the well to fill tanks with water for the animals.
Morocco. Each morning at dusk, the family embarks on a daily pilgrimage that takes them to work and confront the survival not only of the house, understood as the family but also the Berber culture’s common space, which determines their inner space as well as their physical dwelling.
“Free Men”, translation of Berber in Arabic, is an approximation of the daily reality of what it means to be a nomadic family in the Moroccan Sahara, under the shade of a tent or store, in an attempt to understand the spatial temporality of the grand pillars of their identity: family, Islam, cultural inheritance and territory.
Starry Night
Cristian Ochoa
“Almendra Spanish” rests at home. Some of the artists live in the circus and others at their family’s houses.
The night was hectic. There was a small audience, as is usual when the circus ceases to be an attraction. It is the sign that it’s time to move on to another place. Yet the enthusiasm remains, given that a circus does not exist unless it onstage presenting, being the entertainment in neighborhoods where almost no shows go. The city below seems different; many times intolerant; a territory observed from afar.
After adding and subtracting, sometimes the cost of the makeup, feathers, and shiny costumes is more than the money brought in at each function. It is not a business strictly speaking, but rather a desire to believe in the cosmic force of the starry nights, and perhaps to transcend from the resistance; from the love of art. Where struggle is happiness and then comes the money. A rarity in a society in which no one does anything without expecting something in return.