TODOS OS MARES
Para Daniela Bousso, Alberto Saraiva e Paula Alzugaray
Katia Maciel
Para Daniela Bousso, Alberto Saraiva e Paula Alzugaray
Katia Maciel
Eu morava do outro lado da montanha. Nos fins de semana, ia à praia de carro com meu pai, minha mãe e meu irmão. Lembro que nunca sabia se estava indo para a praia ou para a serra, onde vivia minha bisavó. Sentia como se fosse uma viagem e enjoava nas curvas. Da praia lembro do estalo quando pisava na areia, que acabara de dormir, e de ficar olhando, por muito tempo, o horizonte com os braços estendidos, como se as ondas fossem subir até minhas mãos e não desmancharem a meus pés. Esperava que o mar enchesse como um copo de água e alcançasse minhas mãos.
Pensando nessa imagem, realizei a instalação Ondas: Um dia de nuvens listradas vindas do mar (2006), em que o mar reage à presença do visitante empilhando progressivamente suas ondas. Vi o mar em listras, como esperava vê-lo na praia da minha infância.
Ao olhar, hoje, esse mar listrado, penso na geometria informe de um mar impossível. O mar como superfície de azuis com linhas brancas que se quebram umas sobre as outras. O branco se desmancha sobre nossos pés e chega rápido ou de mansinho, mais uma vez, lá de longe, ao infinito. O som fervilhante afunda o sabor efervescente.
Com uma câmera caseira, filmei, na praia do Forte São João, no Rio de Janeiro, bem perto dos meus pés, as ondas que pareciam chuva de luz, pura energia a cintilar na imagem como fogos de artifício.
Na instalação reuni esses dois sentidos das ondas, onda mar e onda energia. Ondas empilhadas diante de você e ondas de energia branca sob os pés. Vemos, no final, a imagem da frase escrita por James Joyce em Retrato do artista quando jovem, quando ele se reconhece como escritor: “um dia de nuvens listradas vindas do mar”. Joyce se pergunta: “De onde veio esta frase? As ondas suspensas e repetidas nos encaminham para as nuvens moventes no céu.”
No mesmo dia em que filmava Ondas: Um dia de nuvens listradas vindas do mar, filmamos o vídeo Mareando, no qual, sentada de costas, miro o mar que, em movimentos acelerados, curtos, longos e insensatos, parece estar em um mundo diferente do meu. Buscava uma imagem que indiferenciasse objeto e referente, como o faz progressivamente a narrativa do romance A invenção de Morel, de Bioy Casares: um refugiado em uma ilha assiste a um mundo onde o real é pura imagem. Em Mareando, sou figura fixa diante de um mundo que é movimento. Aproximo, talvez, o mar do cinema do ponto de vista de uma espectadora que se move pouco diante das marés e maresias.
Vertigo é o nome da instalação em que ondas verticais e invertidas, em fluxo contínuo, nos abrigam no ponto de fuga: quanto mais nos aproximamos do encontro que ocorre no canto entre as duas paredes projetadas, maior a sensação de vertigem. A geometria surge na forma de uma mesma onda que encontra a si própria em um ângulo de noventa graus. O espelhamento de ondas reforça a ideia de uma repetição que, no entanto, parece se diferenciar de si mesma, dada a insistência do movimento de fluxo e refluxo.
Vertigem é o princípio de Vertigo, de Alfred Hitchcock, e também de A invenção de Morel: a vertigem é o amor. Nas duas narrativas, o homem afunda em imagens em busca da mulher. Mulher que é imagem de outra (Vertigo), mulher que é imagem de si mesma (A invenção de Morel). Vertigem é cinema, movimento circular a nos tragar para o fundo feito de nossas próprias imagens, posto que, como nos diz Henri Bergson, somos imagens entre outras imagens.
Mar adentro é o avanço do mar dentro das arquiteturas dos museus e galerias. O mar surge em ondas aos nossos pés, que se movimentam pelo piso coberto de areia. As ondas disparadas por sensores acompanham os visitantes e seguem muitas direções, em geometrias inusitadas. O som parece o sussurro de mares conhecidos. Mar adentro também é título do filme espanhol de Alejandro Amenábar: um homem mergulha em um mar de azul em esplendor e sofre um acidente que o deixa sem movimentos. Toda a vida parece concentrada nos tons de um mar que deixa de existir.
Uma vez sonhei com uma casa de vidro perto do mar em que o piso era feito de ondas azuis, tudo era azul. Mar adentro é o piso de ondas, é o mar produzido pelo encontro de ondas que cada visitante acrescenta à instalação. A presença e mais uma presença e outra presença geram o mar e outro mar e outro mar.
Tanto mar. Tanto mar.
As praias dos piratas na Bretanha e no Caribe, o mar da China, as praias de Arraial, as praias do sul de Torres a Mole, as praias azuis mediterrâneas, as dos penhascos portugueses, as pacíficas e mornas do Nordeste, com a força do Paracuru e a gentileza de Patacho. Muitas praias. Escrevo este texto na praia de Santo Antônio, perto do cabo Polônio, uma praia selvagem como a do início do mundo: estou no Uruguai, mas estou na minha infância quando atravessava o verde e chegava, pisando de mansinho, na areia que estalava.
ALL SEAS
To Daniela Bousso, Alberto Saraiva and Paula Alzugaray
Katia Maciel
To Daniela Bousso, Alberto Saraiva and Paula Alzugaray
Katia Maciel
I lived on the other side of the mountain. On weekends, I’d go to the beach by car with my father, my mother and my brother. I remember never knowing whether I was going to the beach or to the mountains, where my great-grandmother lived. I felt as if it were a journey and got sick as we drove through the bends. About the beach, I recall a crackling sound as I walked on the sand that had just gone to sleep, and observing, for a long time, the horizon with my arms stretched out as if the waves were going to rise up to my hands and not break at my feet. I expected the sea to fill up like a glass of water and reach my hands.
Thinking about this image, I made the installation Ondas: Um dia de nuvens listradas vindas do mar [Waves: A Day of Dappled Seaborne Clouds] (2006) in which the sea reacts to the presence of the visitor by progressively piling up its waves. I saw the sea in stripes the way I expected to see it on the beach when I was a child.
Today, looking at these dappled waves I think about the formless geometry of an impossible sea. The sea as a surface of blue shades with white lines breaking into each other. The white dissolves at our feet and comes quickly or softly, one more time, from afar, to infinity. The fizzing sound engulfs the effervescent flavour.
With a domestic camera I filmed, on Forte São João beach, very close to my feet, waves that looked like a rain of light, pure energy scintillating in the image like fireworks.
In the installation, I brought together two meanings of waves: sea wave and energy wave. Waves piling up in front of you, waves of white energy under your feet. We see, at the end, the image of the sentence written by James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, when he recognises himself as a writer, “a day of dappled seaborne clouds.” Joyce asks himself: “Where did that phrase come from? The suspended and repeated waves lead us towards the moving clouds in the sky”.
On the same day I shot Waves: A Day of Dappled Seaborne Clouds, we shot the video Mareando, where I appear sitting with my back to the camera looking at the sea, which in fast, short, long, and absurd movements seems to be in a world different from mine. I sought an image which would render object and referent undifferentiated, as is progressively done in La Invención de Morel [The Invention of Morel], a novel by Bioy Casares in which a refugee on an island watches a world in which reality is pure image. In Mareando, I am a fixed figure in front of a moving world. I bring, perhaps, the sea of cinema closer to the viewpoint of a spectator who moves little in front of the tides and sea airs.
Vertigo is how I named an installation in which vertical and inverted waves, in a steady flow, cover us at the vanishing point; the closer we get to the meeting between two projected walls, the greater the sense of vertigo. Geometry arises in the form of the same wave which meets itself at a right angle. The mirroring of waves reinforces an idea of repetition that, however, seems to differ from itself in light of the insistent ebb and flow movement.
Vertigo is the principle of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and of The Invention of Morel; vertigo is love. In both narratives a man dives into images in search of a woman. A woman who is the image of another (Vertigo), a woman who is the image of herself (The Invention of Morel). Vertigo is cinema, a circular motion that swallows us down to the bottom of our own images, since, as Henri Bergson tells us, we are images among other images.
Mar adentro [The Sea Inside] is the sea’s encroachment into museums and galleries. The sea appears in waves at our feet, which move around the sand-covered floor. The waves, triggered by sensors, accompany the visitors and move in many directions, in unusual geometries. The sound is like the murmur of known seas. The Sea Inside is also the title of a Spanish film directed by Alejandro Amenábar which tells of a man who dives into a splendorous blue sea, suffers an accident and loses his body movements. All life seems concentrated in the shades of a sea which ceases to exist.
Once I dreamed of a glass house near the sea whose floor was made of blue waves, everything was blue. The Sea Inside is a floor of waves, it is the sea produced by the encounter of the waves that each visitor adds to the installation. One presence after another after another generate the sea and another sea and another sea.
So much sea. So much sea.
The pirate beaches of Bretagne and the Caribbean, the beaches of Arraial, the beaches of the south, from Torres to Mole, the blue Mediterranean beaches, the beaches of Portuguese cliffs, the pacific and warm beaches of the northeast region with the power of Paracuru and the gentleness of Patacho. There were many beaches. I write this text on Santo Antônio beach, near Cabo Polônio, a wild beach like the ones of the beginning of the world. I am in Uruguay, but I am in my childhood, where I passed through the green vegetation and treaded softly on the crackling sand.
Thinking about this image, I made the installation Ondas: Um dia de nuvens listradas vindas do mar [Waves: A Day of Dappled Seaborne Clouds] (2006) in which the sea reacts to the presence of the visitor by progressively piling up its waves. I saw the sea in stripes the way I expected to see it on the beach when I was a child.
Today, looking at these dappled waves I think about the formless geometry of an impossible sea. The sea as a surface of blue shades with white lines breaking into each other. The white dissolves at our feet and comes quickly or softly, one more time, from afar, to infinity. The fizzing sound engulfs the effervescent flavour.
With a domestic camera I filmed, on Forte São João beach, very close to my feet, waves that looked like a rain of light, pure energy scintillating in the image like fireworks.
In the installation, I brought together two meanings of waves: sea wave and energy wave. Waves piling up in front of you, waves of white energy under your feet. We see, at the end, the image of the sentence written by James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, when he recognises himself as a writer, “a day of dappled seaborne clouds.” Joyce asks himself: “Where did that phrase come from? The suspended and repeated waves lead us towards the moving clouds in the sky”.
On the same day I shot Waves: A Day of Dappled Seaborne Clouds, we shot the video Mareando, where I appear sitting with my back to the camera looking at the sea, which in fast, short, long, and absurd movements seems to be in a world different from mine. I sought an image which would render object and referent undifferentiated, as is progressively done in La Invención de Morel [The Invention of Morel], a novel by Bioy Casares in which a refugee on an island watches a world in which reality is pure image. In Mareando, I am a fixed figure in front of a moving world. I bring, perhaps, the sea of cinema closer to the viewpoint of a spectator who moves little in front of the tides and sea airs.
Vertigo is how I named an installation in which vertical and inverted waves, in a steady flow, cover us at the vanishing point; the closer we get to the meeting between two projected walls, the greater the sense of vertigo. Geometry arises in the form of the same wave which meets itself at a right angle. The mirroring of waves reinforces an idea of repetition that, however, seems to differ from itself in light of the insistent ebb and flow movement.
Vertigo is the principle of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and of The Invention of Morel; vertigo is love. In both narratives a man dives into images in search of a woman. A woman who is the image of another (Vertigo), a woman who is the image of herself (The Invention of Morel). Vertigo is cinema, a circular motion that swallows us down to the bottom of our own images, since, as Henri Bergson tells us, we are images among other images.
Mar adentro [The Sea Inside] is the sea’s encroachment into museums and galleries. The sea appears in waves at our feet, which move around the sand-covered floor. The waves, triggered by sensors, accompany the visitors and move in many directions, in unusual geometries. The sound is like the murmur of known seas. The Sea Inside is also the title of a Spanish film directed by Alejandro Amenábar which tells of a man who dives into a splendorous blue sea, suffers an accident and loses his body movements. All life seems concentrated in the shades of a sea which ceases to exist.
Once I dreamed of a glass house near the sea whose floor was made of blue waves, everything was blue. The Sea Inside is a floor of waves, it is the sea produced by the encounter of the waves that each visitor adds to the installation. One presence after another after another generate the sea and another sea and another sea.
So much sea. So much sea.
The pirate beaches of Bretagne and the Caribbean, the beaches of Arraial, the beaches of the south, from Torres to Mole, the blue Mediterranean beaches, the beaches of Portuguese cliffs, the pacific and warm beaches of the northeast region with the power of Paracuru and the gentleness of Patacho. There were many beaches. I write this text on Santo Antônio beach, near Cabo Polônio, a wild beach like the ones of the beginning of the world. I am in Uruguay, but I am in my childhood, where I passed through the green vegetation and treaded softly on the crackling sand.