The Carrot, the Stick, and the Territory
Implanting a superhero into a collective soil presents certain difficulties, particularly when it comes to relational practice. It is hard to be invisible in tights with a cape, hard not to be dazzling, hard to stand at the same level as a passerby—and yet, the encounter with the Other happens.

To be the guy in a temporary collective, sharing a week of common life, a small sensitive community where breathing follows the rhythm of nourishment. To feel colorful. To grow in immaturity, through the daily games of proximity with foreign friends.

To take on a subject too big for oneself: a root vegetable bearing royalty. To wear on one’s body something like a symbol of achievement; the golden carrot. To display the phallic root as a transactional object, to see the imperative of verticality in the unfolding of an invented territory. To fail at sustaining the melody, to feel anxiety in contact with the misery of the local community, to take horseback riding lessons with a virile mare—more virile than oneself. To appropriate a place, a zone in the public park. To find the right moment thanks to the gestures of a friend, to draw from that presence the realization of one’s own gestures. (Thank you Arkadi)

To meet every evening in the gaze of the other, to emerge from the isolation of individual experience. To conclude in the sharing of public space, to be dominated by the boundary, to ride a horse like a child, to carry the carrot to the public and lose one’s innocence.