In conjuction with Cloud Country, we are having a screening of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly directed by Julian Schnabel. Patricia Perez Eustaquio will be present at the discussion after the film showing, and will entertain questions about her show as well.

"In my works, I am very much interested in narratives: how they are written and how they're composed. My works themselves are exercises in composition where each word is carefully chosen as to material, form and consequent function to the related whole. In such case, of course, the words are images, but the end is still a story, always a story.

I find the film The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, directed by the artist Julian Schnabel, a very interesting narrative that visually demonstrates to us how fragments of what is stored in our memory come to us, and how these data fluidly move with our experience of "now", and then, how we manage all this information, negotiate their relationships and eventually filter them when we finally make our choices of words and verbalize our ideas. Of course, the writer of this narrative, Jean-Dominique Bauby has suffered a stroke, is paralyzed and is suffering from locked-in syndrome. His head is in a diving bell as he swims through his memories as well as his current situation, and this same scaphandre prevents him from communicating his thoughts. When he finally relearns how to communicate by blinking one of his eyes, each word becomes an important exercise of choice. I find the film interesting because it shows us a glimpse, through the entertaining medium of film, of how the brain works and how we communicate the ideas within. Of course, the film has other interesting points, too, and I hope others will want to sit around, eating popcorn on a Saturday afternoon."

- Patricia Perez Eustaquio