Eloquent Silence
Created by two brothers, Omar Z. Robles (photography) & Huáscar Robles (writer), this project explores a unique and interactive way to approach photographic medium. A collaborative experience which fusions street photography with fictional writing. Available now as a Foundation World.
L'étoile filante sous la pluie
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
The scent of roasted almonds pierces the air engulfing dinner with a feeling of joy this house hasn’t felt since the accident. I tell them not to worry. But they stare at me like something is missing. Grandma said it best: “You’re a dancer of the sky,” and this was before the car hit us on Rue de Bretagne. So yeah, Grandma always knew. I miss her.
Dad’s constant pacing is unnerving and Mom wobbles in high heels in the kitchen like a marionette. I come to the window to escape.
Here, framed like a classic piece of art, I travel like Grandma had suggested. I am not a body; I am a star, like my name: Estrella. I soar above these thunderous clouds and see Paris below like a postcard I would pick at St. Ouen’s Market. I traverse the blackness of the stratosphere and plunge into Earth. I leave a trail of fire. Je suis une étoile filante, Grandma, a shooting star, with you. Here in this body whose bones are still shaken by the accident, I join you, I feel you in the rain over the Paris sky.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Rainbow Tears
Edition of 30 | Mint Price 0.10 ETH
Heartbroken at 15, Clara still accompanies little Anja through Franz-Klühs Strassa to school in the morning, before the buses hum and bikes fly by. She holds back tears that burst into rainbows. The power of youth is so wide; their desire so strong and pure. And while Clara disregards this and that boy, she stops and fastens Anja’s shoes, so we can walk and not wobble over the asphalt road. She receives a text and a smile appears on her face. Everything feels so new, so fresh and yet so heavy.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Olek and Yana
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
I guided them to the other side, yes like Aslan, as if we had discovered our own Narnia. We arrived at this city of colors with few belongings in tow. My father, mother, sister, and I left the old home in a deluge of rain and bullets, and reached a new soil that welcomed our tired bones.
In the morning, Yana climbed out of the window of our new home, and walked into the new world. A symphony of sounds invaded our bodies. Joy, tears, applause, embraces; the day unraveled in seconds.
I know the world of children; I live in the same dimension, sensing their heartbeats, perceiving their specific scents. I’ll see that Yana and mother continue their journey into this new country. I’ll make good on the promise I made to father when we stepped into that train, “Olek, see that they make it through until the end.”
*Dedicated to the pets of Ukrainian refugees.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Central Park West
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
People dislike winter. Not me. The low temperatures and high precipitation turn the city into a map, desolate, and I get to be with the city, just us. After a winter storm, the snow transforms the street lights into a blue haze and I walk inside the center of that living color. Without busy feet and slow tourists, I gaze once again at the buildings of my youth. The Empire State, the Chrysler, the Flat Iron, yes, but also the cottages of Forest Hills, the villages in the Bronx, the secret garden in Elizabeth Street. New York is made of corners and my memories are embedded in their concrete beams, cobblestones and bedrock. I recall my first kiss in Central Park West. Heartbreak in Harlem. This city is where I first knew success and tasted failure. Where I learned to walk again. People hate winter but I don’t. It’s just us, the city and me. The memories. The kiss. The warm goodbye. The cold days. It surrounds me.
It is in me.
And.
We are.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Caption This
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
New York has survived the apocalypse. Talking heads announced the world would end in 2012. But here we are. January 2013, in the dead of winter. Alive. In spite of the Mayan Calendar and conspiracy theorists.
The world continued but New York hasn’t. Something’s changed. The shops of our youth perished but the franchises remain. People come in and out of cafés in a loop of iced lattes and caramel macchiatos, a simulacrum of the New York they saw on Seinfeld or Sex in the City.
On this corner I sense the past. In a city of disinformation, newspapers are free in vending boxes. AM, Downtown Express, the Village Voice. You name it. Yes, OpEds, Mayor Bloomberg, nightlife, Michael Musto, the 9/11 attacks. It’s all here, all disappearing.
But I remain, a man on a trench coat, a symbol of New York past, a caricature, a postcard, a cartoon on The New Yorker commanding readers with a simple phrase:
Caption this.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Tunnel Vision
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
The office party was an insidious joke on the team, and the boss, after spending on pizza, told everyone we had to return to our desks full-time. Why? I was never one to fear the subways of the city. On the contrary, my wife and kids have traversed these arteries for years without fear. But things have changed. I’ve changed. The city’s underground arteries have been poisoned. Down here, there’s something in the air. People don’t care. Police don’t care. I sit here and absorb the energy of the city like a goddamn antenna and I hold my cranium in my hands, cos now some jerk turned on his speakers on the subway car. I get tunnel vision. The world around me tumbles like the inside of a clothes dryer. But we’re safe. Soon there will be robots or so Major Adams said. Robocops. No more “see something, say something.” Artificial intelligence will patrol the platforms. This is some future shit and I can’t imagine the rest; all I can think of is ‘fuck what a day to forget my headphones at home.'
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Engaged
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
The electricity in the street unites neighbors on this Havana morning. False hope? Great expectations? Teatro? Maybe. The fact remains: tomorrow the President will visit Cuba.
I am from the old Havana, built on discourse, La Libreta and remittances. As a child I ran on cobblestones, sang La Bayamesa and watched Russian cartoons. Yes, muñequitos rusos: existential stories designed to extract hope.
Here we can’t scream and expect the cavalry. Language is punished. We engage with desire, hope, or Obama with one powerful force: our bodies. The stars on my wedding finger tell a story. My body tells a story. Look at me: my face obscured by honeycomb wire, but my hand, engaged with a flag other than mine, is in focus. I am a symbol, a beacon, a flare gun. I travel from your camera to millions of eyes. You see me. You will remember me.
The caravans passed, the President waved and the visit ended. But I remain, traveling the network of subconscious minds telling this story over and over.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Trancao
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
The streets are soundless, the town square is bare, and we are here in the same spot where we turn grief into game. The world feels like a bubble but we don’t care. Look, Herminia just fired up the stove and the cauldron sizzles in this rinconcito of Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.
We are one, we are song, we are strong but a few nights ago that “we” was hurt, because one was lost. We knew someone would heed the call of that terrible disease; we just never thought it’d be him. Ismael was the life of this place, a tiny Energizer battery that lit up the entire neighborhood. Last time he was here, dressed in that striped white and blue shirt, he recited that bolero:
Reloj, detén tu camino
Porque mi vida se apaga
Oh clock, stop time,
because my life’s ending.
And it did. So we still come here. Capicú, Trancao, we keep slapping the tiles on the table because our game is eternal. Yesterday I thought I saw him, still with the COVID mask walking by the table.
Was he smiling?
I’m sure he was.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Cut the Alley
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
“Cut the alley,” a voice beckoned and Aida obeyed. El Raval turned into an image that she sliced with a knife and threw herself into the void.
The half man she left behind did not disturb her nor did the constellation of stars she saw on her way into the nothingness. Her body was a vessel of memories, embraces, and heartaches that traveled with her to the other side.
Then Aida awoke. She directed an orchestra that played a Mussorgsky song. A wave of adoration. Her fans had come to see the renowned conductor. She’d never felt love like this. “Night on Bald Mountain” coiled around her and the score continued playing when she awoke next to the eye of a sperm whale.
Aida was inside a vessel gawking through a window at the giant mammal. The Mussorgsky piece morphed with the whale’s song. It rippled through the ocean and threw Aida once more into the void.
She came to again as a newborn in the arms of the woman who’d whispered the phrase minutes earlier ‘cut the alley.’
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Raspberry Beret
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
Make people dance. That’s all I ever wanted. When I stepped into that New York night, I never imagined all hell would break loose.
See, I left Michigan for Manhattan. Not in the Madonna-kinda-way; more in the my-parents-got-money-kinda-way so I convinced myself it was my time.
I stepped in. Festooned guitar. Hat. Of course. I strummed. The song about tonight and being young didn’t tickle the Saturday audience. I switched to Taylor Swift and a few young faces bobbed. Then I kicked it with Prince. “Raspberry Beret,” good ol’ classic. I strummed from A to G to F sharp and a few bodies jolted up. Yeah, I thought. More people stood up. But they weren’t dancing. They squirmed, worm-like. Then, the scratching, the screams, the 42nd street stop. I noticed the film of louses coming up their sleeves. Perhaps, like the lady in the song, they got it from a second hand store or from Paris or London because now the entire train crawled with them. Yeah, bed bugs dancing to the sound of Prince.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Radio City
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
The neon lights of the marquee flicker in tandem to illuminate the dusky street. I live here, in the cordoned off section called Radio City. Yes, Manhattan redistricted, rezoned and stitched back up to divide those who have from those who don’t.
A Frankencity.
See, you think you got me all figured out. Taped sneakers, sutured bag. Everyone assumes, but you don’t know me. I follow the sun, avoiding the shadows. I am a member of the resistance against those who lurk in the dark. Vultures, vampires, night crawlers that suck the blood of the innocent to feed their rich children. They live in high rises soaring above the wasteland of the new Manhattan. Their identities marked by an X in their forehead, their skin tattooed with codes. They are walking algorithms, having lost their humanity a long time ago.
The insurgence is coming. Behind me there are hundreds. The night is coming. We are ready.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Photo 12
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
I.
[This is not home. No. Not Rue Saint-Merri. Or much less Centre Pompidou. The memory is home. The woman and the pet whose name I forget. They’ve paused on the checkered sidewalk and they’re almost…dancing. This is how I remember them. Strolling up the hills of Sacré-Cœur from where the world sits in the palm of my hand. My hands. I can see them. I want to call their names but my mouth is not...here. My voice is in my head. And even though my eyes can see them, I can’t call out to them. ‘Mmmm.’ I say. ‘Mona.’ But she doesn’t turn around. Then I use all the air in my lungs. ‘MONA!!!’]
II.
“Let the record show the subject has reacted to Photo 12 of 2023. The muscles in his face have morphed into a smile. And his pupils have dilated, a sharp increase in serotonin. His limbs have tensed inside his pajamas. And he seems to be struggling to say… No. He’s screaming. The subject in the cryogenic tank 2047 has identified the woman in Photo 12. Is he ready for restoration?”
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
The Invisible Cloak
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
I drape myself with this invisibility cloak and wander through Manhattan. I hear your calls, smell your cologne and read your text messages. City Hall, Gracie Mansion, Albany. I’m everywhere. In the age of information, I’m a gatekeeper.
Last night I snuck into the penthouse of a crypto star. A fundraiser. Politicians and wielders clinked to the power of their future major, who from a platform, bewitched the audience with her fanning speech.
From the fog of accolades and low lit candles I heard a voice.
“What is she saying?”
“An interpretation,” I answered.
“Interpretation is a function of power, not truth.”
“Nietzsche?” I asked.
“Very good.”
“Wait, can you see me?” I was dumbfounded.
“Of course. And hear you very well. Follow me.”
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Together
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
Yesterday I rode the train to the center of the city. It was late, dark, colder than most nights. The riders inside huddled to make space for yet another set of travelers with heavy hearts: routines, high taxes, big dreams. The performers of the trains are not the break-dancers, singers or preachers you see on social media. Nah. We are the real performers of the train. We assume a stance, we tense our hands, we grow eyes behind our backs, we’re ready to roll and, if necessary, fight.
When the masses of strangers, tourists, and drunks fill the cars, we cram inside. We loosen our joints and hold our breaths. Our solar plexus vibrates with fire. We twist and turn to modify our muscles. We blend into one another like contortionists. When the train stops dead on its tracks, we bump into each other like dominos. At that moment the self disappears. Our bodies join into
one wonder
one marvel
one fear
at this majestic yet destructive system.
We take one collective gasp.
Together.
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
The Other Half
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
When Álvaro awoke in the morning his feet ached to find the other half. A few weeks ago, he’d perused a Havana flea market for roller skates, but only found one. ‘When will I find the other half?’ He thought and walked in flip-flops to his school day. A cracked sidewalk tore his right sandal, and he hopped on the one skate. That’s when it happened. The cobble stones turned the color of rust and the street klaxons transformed into trumpets, a brass symphony. He wobbled then balanced with skill, a sense of completeness invaded his veins. He glided by
neighborhoods, parks, bodegas and shops. He flew right past his school, through alleyways and into Havana’s Central Train Station. On a corner, there it was leaning on a wall waiting for him… the skate. But he didn’t wear it. A boy, about 13, like him, waited barefoot on the train platform. Álvaro gifted him
the other half.
“Take it.” Álvaro said.
“Fly.”
“Find me.”
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
The King of the Carton Castle
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
On Christmas morning the SoHo apartments were filled to the brim with toys, gadgets and ostentatious offerings. The streets were littered with boxes and carbon dioxide from Santa’s delivery elves. Brandon experienced severe panic and ran through the streets to find the gift he had mistakenly thrown out with the boxes. A few weeks ago he’d bid on the Louis Vuitton sneakers Kanye wore on his reconciliation tour with Taylor Swift, a spot on X’s first mission to Mars and the Adidas J.D. Vance wore the day he entered the presidential race. A left on Greene Street, a right on Broome. There, on a tiny castle made of boxes: Vance’s sneakers. The owner of the carton castle claimed “This was my Christmas miracle," to which Brandon replied, “no, it is MINE." Brandon lifted his phone and said, “I will pay anything. Name the price.”
While the king of the castle pondered, Brandon asked in a serious tone of voice:
“Do you prefer Bitcoin or ETH?”
“ETH, always, ETH, my son.”
Collectors will receive an airdrop of this NFT with the narration audio file attached.
Listen to the narration
Dark Palate
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
After an agreement with his master, the shadow walked to Dark Palate, where patrons enjoyed dinner in the dark. He sat, drank. “We live to avoid invisibility,” a male voice quipped. “Not me,” the shadow replied. He felt the man’s hand on his. They were consumed by a silent kiss. It was a short lived affair. The shadow ran, entered his place and rested on his master’s skin. The master awoke with a terrible longing. He looked at his phone and booked a table… at Dark Palate.
Listen to the narration
Bonnes Fêtes
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
This holiday Annie replaced me with a new iPhone. Ten years in the lap of that brat - gone! I wandered Rue Mayet, deep in cherry and mulled wine, bitter, angry, inebriated. Who will cuddle you at night? You’ll seek approval from that device but it was I who told you, you were beautiful. Remember the sickly nights? Or the tea parties? What is the point of being manufactured to love and then be destined for disposal? Bonnes Fêtes, mes amies. Bonnes, Fêtes, mon Annie. Salut.
A bien tôt.
Listen to the narration
Jesus Spinner
Edition of 1 | Reserve Starts at 0.50 ETH
Father Tavares pulled out his crucifix spinner. It expanded 30 times its size to become a boomerang that swatted across the A train decapitating the mercenaries who’d infested the subway system that New Year’s Eve. A towering mercenary, 7 feet tall. Father Tavares kissed the spinner before it split into twin sai. As the sai entered and exited the monster’s torso, the doors opened to the Time Square stop. Screams. Pleads. Father Tavares whispered, “Stay clear of the closing doors, son”.
Listen to the narration
Super 8
Sold Out
As the fisherman pulled on his rod, the hook anchored in a cloud and ripped the landscape apart. A flood of light poured from the tear. He saw his daughter, nieces, nephews, late wife, and the choir in Lisbon where he sang as a young pupil. He’d torn through the time/space continuum and all his memories played before him like a Super 8 film. He never knew he’d vanished. His life projected onto the Atlantic Ocean, over and over… like the waves.
Listen to the narration