I'm on an art residency at VASL in Karachi, Pakistan. It's an amazing time full of interesting conversations and meetings. There is ten artists involved in this projects, but two didn't make it to Karachi ( Egyptian artist was refused visa just before boarding his plane). On Thursday I'll be giving presentation when I'll also talk about the Walkway Press project. It's interesting to talk about a project like this in a place where class divisions are so present.

I live in a nice little bubble here... moving by car from one place to another.... less fortunate people's shapes and faces passing by... their images dissolving in a dust of the everyday... sometimes becoming painfully sharp when my car slows down... forced by the traffic... rarely by a red light.

Machines rumbling in my ears. 'Monday to Friday' sound of the Leopold Estate.

I'm watching footage that we filmed on the estate three weeks ago. CHAOS! total chaos! but so funny! and so much of how it really is over here... Annalisa came from the outside of the estate... she held the camera still... keeping the distance between her and everyone around... I live here and I'm too involved in what's going on to keep that distance, so I never film like that. I am a part of that chaos...

sometime I need to have a break from the estate... from it's dirty corridors... from fresh spit on its walls, stairs and mirrors... from the cold... the draft... from the smell of weed... from the broken glass... from lifts that hardly ever work ... from pools of urine on the lift floor ... from the sound of machines building new estates outside... from lack of my own space... from .... and from... but never from the people that live there... maybe just from the inability to adjust myself to that place... there is always a feeling that I belong somewhere else.

I spent one week in Clapton. A friend of mine left me his keys.

What a day! We had a very special workshop today, creating characters for the film. Those characters were the 'spirits of the estate'.

Ludo was leading the first part of the workshop, helping to make costumes and explaining to kids what character in the film was. We will need to work a little bit more on that, as just as we started filming kids became aware of other people (their family or friends) looking at them and they refused to wear masks... becoming someone else. Initially I felt a bit frustrated, we had equipment and camera operators organised... When I think about it now, there was something interesting in their refusal to were masks, to become 'the spirit of the estate'...or any other character that they had created. Younger kinds, when asked about who their character was, would reply that it was themselves. Musharraf made another Musharraf and etc...

I need to be careful of how much I want to push my own vision of the film... as it was always supposed to be the film made with... not about... if it is ever possible to avoid the 'about' aspect completely...

I think Ludo made an interesting observation saying that we need time to build characters, to make children understand that once they perform in the film they can become whoever they want... and that being a Devil in the film doesn't mean that Ashraff is a bad guy... (He created the Devil, but then was afraid to go outside in the mask, because he thought that other people will perceive him as someone bad)

The overall energy was great this time. A massive THANK YOU to Ludo, Federico, Annalisa and Andre, as each of them brought amazing energy with them. Federico was fantastic, explaining to kids how to make music...and they seemed to enjoy it a lot!

I wrote a text titled Blue is Blue, but Grey can be Blue too. Notes from the Leopold Estate. It was inspired by the Leopold Estate and people I have met here. The text, together with few photographs taken on the estate (by myself and by children), was recently published in Deja Vu magazine (www.theselection.net/zeitschrift).

Oh! and great news! Tomorrow is an engagement party of a son of my neighbours. I was invited and can't wait!!!! Everyone was running up and down the block with presents, sweets and flowers today...