Robot Brother

Storytelling: Oana Maroti
Mural Art: Juanjo Surace

When I first saw this mural painting, in Los Jardines de les tres Xemeneies, I stared at it for a while and understood that it´s about technology reinvigorating the past, about forgotten ancient knowledge, about not yet found languages
and bad translations, about a future that can finally recognize and
include essential lost data,
that what it´s considered as dusty,
insignificant might have great potential,
at a closer look or
from another perspective.

Melancholic leaves are lacking from the trees, in the greatness of the forest it must be fall.

Somehow, finding a way to lend a real helping hand, to guide and sustain towards autonomy, is the greatest thing one can receive from another.

Maybe with the help of the machines, this could be.

Precious updated data,
transformation in real time,
not just dreams of alchemy.

All these thoughts came to my mind in front of this wonderful mural made by Juanjo Surace: www.instagram.com/juanjosurace/
an artist whose work,
no matter how I try to present it,
words will be small.

A cute young robot digs in the woods and finds what appears to be an ancient skeleton. Carefully, he takes the skeleton in his huge palm and studies it.

This graffiti painting technique looks like a derivation of nicely done comics and makes me think that it could be the first episode of an interesting futuristic game series and to imagine the next one, so here it goes:

Memo

In the next episode, the same robot character can as easily be my real brother.

His first nickname was Robot because he could not walk until he was 11
and when he did, the coordination was not perfect.
It took years to walk, more or less, and many operations.
One leg was cut shorter, and they cut the other leg's bones to make them equal, and so on, repetitively, more than 10 operations.

The grace, the flow were missing from his walking movements, and poorly educated kids nicknamed him The Robot and sometimes Memo. I´ve tried to teach him, even small, to keep his head up.

After 10 years of seeing children playing only from the balcony, that by the way, in communist Romania the balcony was not surrounded by cement,
but by metal bars,
an impaired boy goes out,
to play
and due to his atypical physics and scars
he has no chance to integrate, is not accepted.

Next episode: Knowledge against bullying

Create an intervention and development plan to support bullied people, teach them all possible techniques so that they can protect themselves.

Keep it strong, don´t let them fall!

Next episode: If one´s down

Create an individual recovery intervention and development plan.
For this specific part, there is a lot of work to be done and different severely affected categories.

As my brother was in jail, I started writing letters to people in prison. What I was about to observe amazed me.

In these kinds of centers, people are forgotten and lose the ability to communicate.
Yet, when having the tools to express,
the grey walls can disappear, and what they have to tell
it's a world of color,
it springs from memory.