Grrjjjm, grrrjjjm, grrrjjm. shssssssssssssssssPRMPRM. plup plup. Step, step. Following step. grrrrrrrrrsssssssssssssssss-
CLOC. Step, step. Clach, CLACH. Step. Faster step, step step. Step, step, step. Perhaps some more clach clach.

“The good city of [name of a city] is known only on its surface; if the hand of God were to tear away the skin, bristling
with houses, that covers the entrails of the ground within a circumference of twenty leagues, our eyes would be terrified by
these subterranean revelations, these formidable arcana that the sun will never enlighten, these marvellous treasures
stashed away by the miserly centuries, and that no eye can see, no hand remove.”[1]“All these tracheas, arteries, veins and
vessels, if not exactly wrapped around a spinal column, do nonetheless envelop what constitutes the skeleton of the
city.”[2]

FFFFFFFFFfffffffffffffffFFFFFFFFFFffffffffFFFFFFFFFFFFFffffffffFFFFFFFFffff.
It starts to breath.

“The royal council understood that the mineral roots of [that city] had been transformed into bowels ready to ingest the
[that city]-ian monuments they had engendered”. And so, “they tried to remedy this dramatic situation which was mortgaging
the future”[3]. On the night of February 28th, all of us gathered there in front of the entrance and finally managed to
move the round cover of cast iron. We had found each other accidentally and a big part of the group was surprisingly made
up of young German tourists looking for some action on their weekend in [that city]. Be it as it may, we proceed to
disappear one after another through the infamous hole. Diving in, the line between the outside and the inside we were now
in, became obvious. Head up, head down, head up, head down. Swallowed up, back into the womb.

The hole was one shoulder and a half wide. The rungs; two hands and a half. Maybe three.

Apparently, this is not where one is supposed to be. Who would have thought so! Maybe it is considered cheating. Just as it would not be possible, no matter how much we want it, to flip around our eyes and look inside. It seems inevitable not to
forget that under that soft, all-covering and mostly homogeneous surface “things” are working out. Functioning(!). Perhaps
the top of that tall building over there also wonders, sometimes, about the cool and stinky pipes underneath the skin.

Filthy, claustrophobic. Secretive, unpredictable. The invisible subterranean space receives -once revealed- a new significance as a void that nevertheless belongs to the image of the city and therefore has a repercussion and a responsibility towards its citizens. This “empty” space, left in the lowest layer of the constructed landscape, represents digestion but also the lowest layer of the human psyche. Out of sight, it becomes the perfect scenario for us to project our deepest corporal needs, our desires, the wills and impulses of our unconsciousness.

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen.

And once the meal was over, they scratched their belly and burped similarly to how, I presume, a whale would do it.
Up through the hole.





...
Text by Carmen Arias released at the 7th issue of Colophon Magazine.


References in the text:
[1]- [3] : Thomas Guilles : Urban congestion and human digestion, The belly and the viscera of the capital city, in Rebecca Anne Barr/Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon/Sophie Vasset: Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century, Manchester 2018, S 23 – 42.