Thursday 19th January 19.30
Travels Through Absence -Letters from a European City
Christopher Thomson
Lovers separated. A letter written. A lonely voice echoes weakly from within the hollow structures of the city. It calls for a glance over a shoulder, for a memory. Journey through questions of identity across the great cities of Europe: Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, Budapest, Lisbon, Istanbul and many more. In this meticulously researched collection of moods and symmetries, Christopher Thomson layers up an alternative narrative for the European city of today, crafting a series of intimate reflections on each. Written over years of experience, a travel book like no other.
Christopher is based in Dordolla, a village in the fold of the map and the mountains of Italy, surrounded by the sing-song of the encroaching forest and multitude of languages. He grew up in London but has lived and worked across the continent.
He is concerned by the absence of memory and the slide of identity, because without the fortification of these, based on landscape and learning, the force-fed nonsense of nationality, ethnicity, the worship of power and other controlling sentiments become all the more dangerous. A stroll around Europe describes all too clearly the highly flammable nature of our situation. He is grateful to travel above all it taught him empathy.
