Work in progress: I always arrive late for important funerals
Catarina Vieira

Sinopsis

“What kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity?”
Alain Badiou

I always arrive late for important funerals explores the tensions between the narrative of the solitary hero — who must always be prepared for everything and who ventures into the unknown — and the territories where the ideas of preparation and heroicness are perhaps absurd and problematic: love and death.

This project involves research into the iconography of the solitary hero, who is called upon to abandon his world and head off into the unknown, on a journey where he will face different and dangerous ordeals, aided by his magic powers. As this is an old narrative linked to the rites of passage in different cultures, this myth also seems to perpetuate itself in our collective imagination and in neo-liberal rhetoric. This, in turn, is linked to the figure of the free explorer, the courageous and enterprising adventurer who ventures into unknown territory: richer and happier.