Hello! my name is Nico, I'm a Uruguayan with Italian ancestry, and I just did one of the biggest changes in my life by leaving my country to live with my Portuguese partner here in Portugal.

I'm a person that really need to have art projects all the time, I'm very curious about materials and what it really means to do art, so I've been learning Cinema, photography, drawing and painting, dance, percussion, writing, and up next is sculpture.

I'm a very restless person but also enjoy very much my time off, just contemplating nature or the city, having long talks and practice tai chi or yoga.

If you want to get to know me a little bit more, you may want to see one of my shortfilms. This one's called Antes del almuerzo, and you can see it on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDiZrKG7_Sk

If you want to see more of my work, including dance and more stuff, you can check out my web page: https://noromi.work and my instagram is https://www.instagram.com/_noromi/

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

So... when I was a kid, if you'd ask me what part of the world would I want to visit, I'd say Venice. No doubt. It always seemed to me like such a crazy amazing place, just thinking about the daily commute of people living there, the streets, the buildings (the texture of those buildings!), just such a mistery is involved here I cant even...

Well here I am, in Europe for the first time and an opportunity appeared to cover the Biennale teatro di Venezia as a journalist for a Uruguayan newspaper. And I'm very very excited! However, I really don't have the means to live there for two weeks, and the job is not payed, only giving me the accreditations for the festival. But I really want to go there so my option is doing Couchsurfing for the first time, and to me It's more than all right, because I'm really interested in the day to day life of people living in the city, and getting in touch with the people that know what's it like to actually live in such a particular place.

Interests

• contemporary art
• tango
• cinema
• kung fu
• karate
• contemporary dance
• cinematography
• percussion
• philosphy
• tai chi
• screendance

Music, Movies, and Books

Favorite music:
-Roberto Goyeneche, Anibal Troilo (Tango)
-Talking Heads, David Bowie (Art rock)
-Atahualpa Yupanqui, Alfredo Zitarrosa (Argentinian and Uruguayan Folklore)
-Aphex twin, uZiq (electronic)
-Catriel,Paul Higgs (Argentinian dance music)
-Harold Budd, Brian Eno (Ambient)

Favorite movies
-Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick
-Beau Travail by Claire Denis
-Stalker by Andrei Tarkovskii
-Recreations by Claire Simon
-Pina by Wim Wenders
-Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio
-Fallen Angels by Wong Kar Wai

Favorite books
-Beyond Good and Evil by Frederich Nietzsche
-The Bergsonism by Gilles Deleuze
-Changing by Liv Ullman
-Spheres of insurrection by Suely Rolnik
-A thousand Plataeus by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

It's kind of random but one time I was walking through a kind of "rough" neighborhood while going back home, plain daylight but the streets were completely deserted. I see on the next corner a man enters my street, sees me and then leaves. I don't think much of it and keep walking. As i get closer to the corner, the man approaches me kind of fast. I feel the tension in the air, something tells me I'm in danger but I decide not to judge him. He starts talking to me, I stop and engage with him. As he tells me he has just come out of prison, I just look at him in the eye, he then states that he's not going to rob me, saying that there are cameras in this corner, and pointing to them behind me. I just don't break eye contact and with the calmest energy say "I believe you". He's speechless for a few seconds: I can feel the impossibility of a really big man on a perfectly deserted street to do anything to me by virtue of an imperceptible force, a wall separating his desire to rob me from the possibility of doing so, a wall that was lifted precisely by the wallessness of my presentation... in those seconds somehow we bonded, he couldn't do it anymore. And to top it off, out of absolutely nowhere, he says to me: "You're gonna do well in life."

...🤷

Teach, Learn, Share

One of the main things that's been present time and time again both in my life and in my work (they're distinguishable) is working on vulnerabillity. Whether it is giving Karate or tango classes to kids in "vulnerable neighourhoods", making artistic workshops in a prison, doing street-based communal artistic interventions, or in my more personal creations, dealing with themes like jealousy, fear of being seen, overstimulation, precariousness... and time and time again I find that leaning into the vulnerability is what makes me and the people around me stronger and lighter at the same time.

Of course it's very easy to say it theoretically but it's a very hard and constant work for me, to meet someone new and look into it's eyes (or my own) without judgement. I think it's an impossible task but a very rewarding one. Since I got to Portugal I've been in a very vulnerable position and little by little I'm working on that judgment that goes on top of the material conditions and makes everything seem so dull. But it's better now :)

What I Can Share with Hosts

Besides helping with the house, buying food for the house, and trying to be as less bothersome as possible, I can help you learn and practice Spanish, or even very basic Portuguese, I have experience working with children and can play with them. I can teach kung fu or tai chi to whoever's interested, perhaps kicking off a future engagement with matial arts, or just to start a workout routine.

I can teach the basics of tango dancing, how to use Photoshop, how to edit videos, we can even have fun making video art experimentations with very basic software and just the phone's camera.

I'd love to share my favourite movies (can watch the a million times) or talk about art, philosophy, humanities, science or whatever rhyzome we may invent.

I can also cook but I'm afraid I wont be able to come even near to the Italian standard, heh.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Brazil, Cuba

Countries I’ve Lived In

Portugal, Uruguay