Title: Vladimir Gugu: The GLOBUS EFFECT
Published by: Paper Traffic, Bucharest
Release Date: 2022
Contributors: Vladimir GUGU
Genre: artists' book
Pages: 96
ISBN13: 978-973-0-37290-8

6900 HUF

The prose debut of Vladimir Gugu describes a peculiar quality of time over the span of his six short stories: obsession over common objects deemed precious and self-assigned missions that need to be completed.
A fairytale village where time has stopped because the town bell has not been tolled in weeks, the story of a certain beach overheard in Mexico City, chasing a box of chocolates to a hotel through the streets of Barcelona, working shifts at the university canteen in Amsterdam, photographing the furniture in his apartment during a cabin fever day, the magnetism of witnessing a car crash on his way to school, fighting a cicada on a boat.
Although very distinct, the scenes are bound by a common thread: the narrator doesn’t feel with his heart or chest, his stomach or his head. Every intense sensation travels through the neck and its elaborate chambers – jaws, tonsils, root of the tongue, esophagus, mapping out the entire area of his emotional center.
You discover a hypersensitivity to human nature through a fine dissection of character, amplified by an inclination towards cause and effect analysis – where do these people come from? what brought them here today, into this story?
Reality cracks at some point, and fantasy creeps in through assumption, imagination, or paranoia. Dense and descriptive, reading feels like a real-time rendering of an image, becoming more detailed by the second and guiding your eyes to points of interest or fear.