I started walking from Lisbon to Paris. This was the only time in my entire life where I was completely alone. The street was mine. The world was mine. We were lost. Everyone around the world was lost, with this disease. I knew that I must record this moment, that it was very important – what I was seeing.
– Binelde Hycran
Concurrent with the exhibition Customs, in which Binelde Hyrcan’s film Cambeck (2011) was presented, the artist’s time at A4 proposed a novel understanding of his practice as embedded research. Binelde shared the books he made while walking alone from Lisbon to Paris in 2020 – an epic journey that led into European winter and took the artist three months to complete, while around him the world was locked down due to the Covid restrictions put in place at the time.
It began as a record of a walk. It was a story too. Recorded moments, papers, tellings; a performance, later. At the beginning, it was not an artwork. It was like a question. I wanted to leave Lisbon, to go to Paris. Airports were closed. There was no bus, no trains. I would tell my family when I first began: it’s not a performance; it’s walking.
– Binelde Hycran
The residency in Cape Town culminated in a Harvest Live session, as well as a visit to Jo Ractliffe’s home, where the two artists compared notes and experiences of working in Binelde’s home of Angola.