CARVALHO, Isabel — Texto-obra exposto na exposição XIX Encontros da Primavera
Original version in Potuguese and Mirandese
The Dark Side of Light
By a movement that calls for the observation of the stars and the experience of the infinite!
Popular Appeal
I arrived in May, during a new moon of this spring that is now in full bloom, searching for the night that is not dark here. I saw the river, out of sync with the sky, seemingly unable to mirror the guiding stars, flowing opaque, devoid of its expected brilliance.
Heading towards it, I walked the streets lined with planted lampposts, rootless trunks, stable and secure, more a symbol of modernity, progress, and advancement than of function and necessity, for it is convincingly said that artificial light, an imitation of the sun, brings us safety. But, among tame dogs and wild boars, not to mention the frogs, toads, graceful moths, and other insects we persist in finding bothersome, I am at home.
And who could come to give a scare? Would it be a spirit, ghostly apparition, lost ancient soul, or a mischievous prank? The best people I’ve known do not scare me. Much less beings of charms and enchantments, of supernatural dialogues in dim moments. Could it be against the presence of the heretical imagination, rich paganism, that the intense light has settled here?
I sought bats and heard night-singing nightingales, cuckoos, and various species of discreet owls with a somber appearance. I looked for stars, the shooting ones, and the rhythms of the celestial bodies, their guiding glows, movements that guide walkers who embrace the cool dark to marvel, wandering and fabricating memories, a result of the ancestral sharing of a common belonging.
My eyes strained to see, in the clear night that seemed more like day, a glimpse of the immeasurable universe and perhaps a mark of our destiny. I followed new stars, satellites, and airplanes, also the routes of airports, ports, roads of clouds, and nearby desert dust, but the infinite was defeated.
It’s not just these lampposts that form, in patches of blackout and anonymity, a milky ceiling, but also the carried illumination that navigates and contaminates, ignoring borders. From the north and the east, the west and the south, from much farther than we think, we have already grown accustomed to the ostentatious display, a branch of the vanity politics, that illuminates stadiums, monuments, and reliquaries, while finding natural sanctuaries strange.
There are flowers here, of more than three colors, there is honey here of many flavors. There is much more here than that. But what about the night? Only at night does the magic of transformation happen, untouchable metamorphosis, when the unknown opens up, from the crossing of special species, immediately benefiting the flowers that even without knowing their names, we guess are visited by unlikely pollinators, promoters of such rich variety.
However, the day came when we rebelled and said: how long? Without night, it is not only we who lose the magic of valuable contact, but also the families of the most fragile and subtle other presences that depend on it for their routes, reproduction, and existence.
From now on, we confidently follow knowing that our words are water, power, and energy; they are flow and reflux that contest the fixed concrete; they are force and reality. We will then lead them through furrows, lines, and paragraphs, through mouth-barrages, of muscular flesh and life, to say, between poetry and propaganda, that even before being announced, we could write modernity. And with sedimented knowledge and technologies of ancestral creativity, we use them to join together, those from far and near, and claim the night and the experience of the infinite Universe.
By a movement that calls for the observation of the stars and the experience of the infinite!
Popular Appeal
I arrived in May, during a new moon of this spring that is now in full bloom, searching for the night that is not dark here. I saw the river, out of sync with the sky, seemingly unable to mirror the guiding stars, flowing opaque, devoid of its expected brilliance.
Heading towards it, I walked the streets lined with planted lampposts, rootless trunks, stable and secure, more a symbol of modernity, progress, and advancement than of function and necessity, for it is convincingly said that artificial light, an imitation of the sun, brings us safety. But, among tame dogs and wild boars, not to mention the frogs, toads, graceful moths, and other insects we persist in finding bothersome, I am at home.
And who could come to give a scare? Would it be a spirit, ghostly apparition, lost ancient soul, or a mischievous prank? The best people I’ve known do not scare me. Much less beings of charms and enchantments, of supernatural dialogues in dim moments. Could it be against the presence of the heretical imagination, rich paganism, that the intense light has settled here?
I sought bats and heard night-singing nightingales, cuckoos, and various species of discreet owls with a somber appearance. I looked for stars, the shooting ones, and the rhythms of the celestial bodies, their guiding glows, movements that guide walkers who embrace the cool dark to marvel, wandering and fabricating memories, a result of the ancestral sharing of a common belonging.
My eyes strained to see, in the clear night that seemed more like day, a glimpse of the immeasurable universe and perhaps a mark of our destiny. I followed new stars, satellites, and airplanes, also the routes of airports, ports, roads of clouds, and nearby desert dust, but the infinite was defeated.
It’s not just these lampposts that form, in patches of blackout and anonymity, a milky ceiling, but also the carried illumination that navigates and contaminates, ignoring borders. From the north and the east, the west and the south, from much farther than we think, we have already grown accustomed to the ostentatious display, a branch of the vanity politics, that illuminates stadiums, monuments, and reliquaries, while finding natural sanctuaries strange.
There are flowers here, of more than three colors, there is honey here of many flavors. There is much more here than that. But what about the night? Only at night does the magic of transformation happen, untouchable metamorphosis, when the unknown opens up, from the crossing of special species, immediately benefiting the flowers that even without knowing their names, we guess are visited by unlikely pollinators, promoters of such rich variety.
However, the day came when we rebelled and said: how long? Without night, it is not only we who lose the magic of valuable contact, but also the families of the most fragile and subtle other presences that depend on it for their routes, reproduction, and existence.
From now on, we confidently follow knowing that our words are water, power, and energy; they are flow and reflux that contest the fixed concrete; they are force and reality. We will then lead them through furrows, lines, and paragraphs, through mouth-barrages, of muscular flesh and life, to say, between poetry and propaganda, that even before being announced, we could write modernity. And with sedimented knowledge and technologies of ancestral creativity, we use them to join together, those from far and near, and claim the night and the experience of the infinite Universe.