RED CAR Potentially, I could drive us to freedom, to safety, towards adventure, an eventless holiday in a scentless hotel, or: straight to hell, an endless nameless horror of boredom. Obviously, you could drive me home or crazy, all over town or over the hills and far away. As the joke goes: "Why does Jane drive an ol' red 55?" "Because she wants to get from A to B." See, we looked in the wrong direction, yet again. They say, or sing, time waits for no one, but cars sure do, or maybe it is only make believe. And then it's the weekend. Windows adjust their ties and fix their makeup in the windscreen of an empty car; the seatbelt is just a reflection, the ghost of a seatbelt. Mirror to mirror. It's a drive-in Saturday in a germ free world. The light plays with darkness, the shadows lurk, particles reminisce: sweat on the steering wheel, a few drops of blood on the gear stick, sperm stains on the backseat. Creatures of light and steal, they remember.

CLOCK Call me whatever you like, but let me tell you this: assholes rule the navy, they rule the army, I mean, they've taken over the entire world, and take my word: once an asshole, always an asshole; keep that in mind. Don't believe anyone tells you different. Ever read these inscriptions on sun dials? Seize the day, tempus fugit? Just a load of bullshit. Because, guess what, who is the lord and creator of time? You guessed right. An asshole as well. The father of all assholes. Who else could invent something like that but an asshole? Just think about it: something we cannot see rules over our lives and in the end fucks them up completely, takes away everything you love—your youth, your health, your loved ones; it makes you run like a bloody hamster on a bloody hamster wheel; you're always rushing, but where to—eventually only a hole in the ground awaits us. So why rush? All our efforts are in vain, all possessions useless—like an old dick shrivelled in the cold. All because of this fucker, time, and the other shithead, the one who invented it; you can't see time, but you know there's not enough of it. Can someone please explain it to me, 'cause I just can't wrap my head around it? Ever read these inscriptions on sun dials? Seize the day, tempus fugit? Just a load of bullshit. And most of the time you can't even read them because the sun is in your eyes. And why? Because there are no trees in cities, no awnings, nothing to give shelter or shadow. And who designs our cities? You guessed right: assholes. And politicians? Don't even get me started. Rotten to the core, every single one of'em—everything fake in each one, except for one thing: asshole. Now, that's genuine. Listen, son, I don't wanna take anymore of your precious time, but promise me you'll give it some thought, heh?

WHO USED TO DRIVE THIS CAR? Certainly not me. I can't drive you home tonight, but I love you. We're drunk. Here, too, the shadows are pulling your leg: a green cage with phantom bars; it's no use rattling, Jeremy Bentham says. I gave you a ribbon star, though a Joseph Cornell box'd be nicer. Business is down and money is tight. But we keep pushing, pushing West. You stop, rust eats you alive. Rust is eating at the walls of the house anyway, bricks are falling down on the hood of the car. Verdigris and taupe: old copper and nuclear family. Foliage and bricks, bricks and the pavement. Sous les pavés, la plage! Under the paving stones, the beach!, which makes me think of William Blake, the world, the tiger, the rose, all that jazz, you know? The bricks are red, and I want you; the pavement lies waiting, let's go.

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Our project started spontaneously and keeps growing organically, its boundaries and goals as yet undefined.

Marta: After several years abroad, I came back to Warsaw, to Mokotów, my old neighborhood. It was two days before the word lockdown went viral and became an official and confirmed description of everyday reality. Spring smelled so different here than in France. After a few days of self-isolation I noticed that the heavy walls and wire which I could see from my window weren't just a fragment of a weird, jail-like landscape. They were actually designating the area of the Rakowiecka street former prison, which I could perfectly see from the small studio which I'd rented. I could also see a big piece of the sky and somehow enjoyed my new view; rarely does one see so much open space through the windows of Parisian apartments. At some point, the camera became my permit to go out and explore. The world was standing still, and so were the playgrounds, the shops, the streets and the cars—empty and unused. A perfect metaphor for the suspension of life as we used to know it.

Adam: At approximately the same time I moved as well. After having lived for many years in a bleak tower block on the outskirts of Warsaw, in Bemowo, I got a flat in a prewar tenement house in Grochów. Unfortunately, I only had two weeks to enjoy the cafés, parks and to see friends living in the neighbourhood, before we got locked down. Anxiety, fear (magnified by "the scream[s] of the ambulance[s]"—I live in the vicinity of two hospitals), uncertainty about the future, loneliness. There was also a lot of anger, at those in power, and at the direction this country is heading in; the feelings were accompanied by the conviction that nothing short of a revolution would do (hence the references to the Paris May '68 events). Yet, there was no means to give vent to the anger, out there, in the real world. Marta's pictures yanked me out of a sort of paralysis, and I started writing texts the grew out of, or meandered around, her photographs. The images Marta captured—of prison walls with barbed wire, deserted houses, empty streets—resonated with how I was experiencing isolation. In the photos I saw the dark beauty of dreams, and looking at them was accompanied by the frustrating knowledge that the realisation of these dreams has to be deferred. Yet, because the photos are focused on detail, they offer a glimpse into whole universes one otherwise overlooks—specks of dust, spots of rust, flashes of sun, interplays of shadows and light. We are both curious to know where this collaboration, based on the play between words and images, is going to lead us.