Entre o Céu e a Terra (Okeanós)
2015, Full HD video, PAL, 16:9, colour, two channels, 8′ 11” (loop)
Edition of 3+1 artist’s proof
Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection – Quartel da Arte Contemporânea de Abrantes
This video piece, as its Portuguese title indicates, places us “Between Heaven and Earth”, by invoking Oceanus (Okeanos), firstborn son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth) in Greek mythology. The titanic god of running waters, Oceanus was tasked with regulating the rising and setting of the celestial bodies as they emerged from and dipped into his waters.
On a grey background, a bird’s flight situates us in the earthly panorama’s atmosphere. Slowly, we come to perceive Oceanus, who first reveals himself through the luminous reflection of a celestial body. A volatile luminous patch, multiplied and convulsive, growing increasingly more clear until the appearance of dancing, solenocyte-like circles that seem drawn with fire.
Finally, Oceanus appears in all its splendour, displaying his cosmogonic majesty and the scintillating mass of the great cosmic river that surrounded the world in primeval times, out of which eventually emerges the body of a bird that flies into the atmosphere, in a suggestive loop effect.
This video builds up its poetic narrative in a photographic dimension, based on the epic tonalities of black-and-white images. The adagio-like temporal cadence explores tonalities, tonalities, luminosities and contrasts, elements that enhance visual motion, in contrast with certain monochrome moments that cause time to now and then stop as an analogy to the hiatuses of creationist beliefs.
Adelaide Ginga
