THE SILENCE TALKS

RAISA MAUDIT MAR GUERRERO

Sound is a reaction of vibrations that expand in an elastic medium in the form of waves, that is the reaction of matter to movement and its interaction with itself. Silence is understood as the total absence of sound, which is physically impossible without technological intervention or total absence of matter in which to expand these vibrating waves. Silence is also understood as the absence of voice, the absence of a regulated account. Is sound possible beyond matter and physics? Is sound possible without artificial intervention? Can voices speak from another time without any vibration what so ever? Can we turn the sound into silence?

Where nothing leads to nothing begins in the water and ends in it again by introducing a strange element that activates a game of perceptions and uncertainties through light and color, by mixing the photographic image with the photographed motif. If we assume that while the universe destroys, it also builds, we cannot really determine, by a superficial observation, if something is evolving to or from. While "towards" generally tends to manifest itself in things a bit dull and darker, things in evolution "from" tend to be a little lighter and slightly more striking. In this sense, nothing in itself, instead of being an empty space, vibrates with possibilities, keeping the universe in a constant movement towards or from the potential. Through the images collected and their subsequent transformation and staging, it is intended to emphasize a temporary experiential issue, using water as matter and as the transitory element of generating thought.

The film Here it is, the march of things explores the residence King Carlos Alberto of Sardinia lived for three months and died in exile from his homeland, sick and sad in 1849 after losing the war against his own son, a conservative and absolutist. The house located in the center of the city of Porto was converted into a Museum (currently the Romantic Museum). Its figure travels through space in the imaginary domestic recreation of fictional layers. Different contemporary objects that pretend to be historical are mixed with personal objects without any distinction and the rooms allude to being inhabited while preventing that very possibility. The interior design of the house was last redesigned by the scenographer Tito Celestino da Costa. Plastic food, stuffed animals and game rooms that cannot be played are mixed. The film is a journey between these layers of fiction, inhabiting the house when there is no one really there. The sound, collected from field recordings of the noises of an empty house (the creaking of the wood, the wind in the windows, velvet brushing velvet, unfinished harpsichords) composes a sonic landscape, like the living breath of that dead house while a subtitled text alludes to the fiction layers of that story. Here it is, the march of things is a phrase written by Allan Kardec (father of the spiritualist current) to contrast materialism and spirituality. How in materialism matter is the cause and its interaction produces an effect, and in spiritism the spirit is itself cause and effect at the same time, generating the theory that invisible actions can marry visible effects, the creaking of wood, the wind in the windows, velvet brushing velvet. What does that sound in a dead house that pretends to be alive means?