no. 23 Editorial
Moodboard

ISSN · 2183-5527

Visual Essay + Author in residence

7 Portraits

7 Portraits

João Fonte Santa

VHS, 29' By João Fonte Santa, assisted by António Caramelo The video Sete Retratos was created for the exhibition Mundo de Aventuras, curated by José Alberto Ferreira, and features 7 video portraits, …

7 Portraits

B, Y, R

Visual Essay

B, Y, R

Henrique Biatto

Água Viva

Visual Essay

Água Viva

Lander Patrick, Gonçalo Marques, José Soares

Through the longest path

Visual Essay

Through the longest path

Margarida Rodrigues (MAR)

Working with mountains is easy

Article

Working with mountains is easy

Isadora Alves

Process Of Unframability

Sound Essay

Process Of Unframability

Frantz Loriot

Drowned, in the shame of light

Visual Essay

Drowned, in the shame of light

Isabela Abate & João Castro

Workbook on the adaptation of the play The Man Outside (1947)

Visual Essay

Workbook on the adaptation of the play The Man Outside (1947)

Pedro Paiva

Sightings

Visual Essay

Sightings

Francisco Novais

HALF A STEP FROM HOME

Visual Essay

HALF A STEP FROM HOME

António Olaio

Misfits

Visual Essay

Misfits

Fabrizio Matos

Out Of Here

Sound Essay

Out Of Here

Quatroconnection (Carla Santana)

Weiße Rose

Visual Essay + Author in residence

Weiße Rose

João Fonte Santa

it was just drained, drained

Sound Essay

it was just drained, drained

André Hencleeday

Lavagem

Visual Essay

Lavagem

João Jacinto

XXX

Visual Essay + Author in residence

XXX

João Fonte Santa

The hand with no specialty

Visual Essay

The hand with no specialty

Carolina Lino

Wrong Wrong n.23

Misfits

Visual Essay 07.06.2018

After the Abyss

Magda Delgado

PROLOGUE
– About the distancing of Nature towards Humankind –

THE BUSH'S CALLING

Once there was a fertile bush born to give to birds and humans alike the juices it produced day and night from the things it pulled from the earth. The World punished it in its calling, because the sweetest unknown fruits fell to the ground after their glorious sweetness, with a skin so tense from its juices.

After many years of lost fruits the bush cried tears of salt that slowly burned its roots away. Never again would there be sweet fruits, for nobody ever came to collect them.

DARK LANDSCAPE

On the first day after the End of Humankind, Earth was immersed in darkness. How long it lasted is unknown. Even though the sky was clear of clouds, it is known that it was impossible to see the stars or the moonlight and that, with the disappearing of the Moon, the tides ceased. The landscape was of total darkness. This darkness was distinguished in tones of black, instead of light variations as you would expect. The types of blackness would be the source of any contrast.

The sea was crude, the trees were charcoal, and the sky had lost the atmosphere that retained the old cerulean blue and oxygen, showing the Infinite Abyss. Perhaps the night stars were sucked by enormous space vortexes thirsty for light. (...)

All this would render in ecstasy any exceptionally furnished eye with cells for sight without light source, for all that existed was under a sky of Emptiness, and so, un-scoured in its real depth.

Never the less, in untouched corners of this landscape, there were many pairs of closed eyes (...).

SINGLE CHAPTER

The remaining inhabitants didn't manifest any unrest or fear with the vanishing of the humans. They slipped into a hibernation from which they would awaken when the darkness was interrupted by an Autumn bright, fresh and golden light.

The pig-nr.508 woke up without any disturbance, with the sun shining on his small eyes coming from the small window in the pen. Today mother did not come to give him food. She was also mother for all other pigs but also to the cows, sheep and of all the animals he knew since he was small.

It was mother that fed them after the breastfeeding of the pig-mother that sustained pig-nr.508 as well as some of the brothers: those that were also pigs. (...) the pig-mother only fed some of the pigs: the small starving ones as long as her big body could take it to satisfy them. She did it up until the day the she was taken by the mother-of-them-all never to return. Something bad must have happened because inside the pen they heard her scream in fear until a desperate silence settled. (...) He felt the smell of pig-mother on the mother-of-them-all for a long time and that caused a hard to define sense of something missing, missing of a lost warm cuddle. The attention given to the pen daily by the mother-of-them-all made nourished affection and trust. Only because of that did he and the others stand the visits of the veterinary (...). Never had any pig returned.

Pig-nr.508 never got to know where all the pigs that left went because the mother-of-them-all was going to take him on the day of the Apocalypse: the day when she and all the other humans ceased to be heard outside. (...)

Now awaken from such a long night, he wanted to see where mother was. He woke up very hungry and started to rummage on the ground in search of food without finding a single human scent. Mother had not returned and there was no food. (...) When reaching the outside he found a sun too hot for his skin. The world was full of beautiful colours and of an undisturbed peace (...).

The sky was of a pink like he had never seen before from the small pen window. He went back to call his pig-brothers and, to his surprise, ducks, cows and sheep outside also looked at him. He spoke in a recognizable way, he know how to talk like the mother-of-them-all. They all understood him and so he thought: «Mother did not leave, she is inside me».

When all the pig-brothers woke up they all spoke like this, full of meaning: ducks, sheep, brown cows and muscled pale cows. The humans had ceased to exist and now They had the voice.

[Excerpt from the tale «After the Abyss»]

Last Beauty before the End of Humankind

Dream Ternion