I MAY HAVE LOST FOREVER MY UMBRELLA...

In the spring of 2011, during the Photomonth in Krakow, the artist collective Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin invited Johan Grimonprez to be part of 'ALIAS', an exhibition with artists who inhabit alternative versions of themselves. An artist and a writer were teamed up with the aim to create a non-existent third persona. The outcome was that none of the artists in the exhibition existed, as those fictional characters took over the creative process.

Grimonprez was assigned to inhabit the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. Fernando Pessoa wrote much of his oeuvre under multiple, alternative identities. Not so much pseudonyms or aliases but what he termed ‘heteronyms,’ invented personalities with detailed biographies and interweaving histories. More specifically Pessoa’s "The Book of Disquiet" became then the point of departure for this film project.

All the footage was shot on iPhone recapturing selected details from YouTube endless growing archive, a world where ‘heteronyms’ abound. Images of the earthquake and the tsunami that recently hit Japan in March that year dominating the net, resonated quietly with the world of disquiet Grimponprez was envisioning. In addition, Grimonprez imagined an added female voice to Pessoa’s many male heteronyms while also staying true to the original language of "The Book of Disquiet". So, Grimonprez invited Portuguese writer Isabel Sobral Campos to narrate the selected passages.