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#TakeHeart
#TakeHeartNeustart
STUDIES FOR BOULDERING DARKNESS
THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION AS THE RESEARCH IS STILL HAPPENING, MORE MATERIAL WILL BE UPLOADED.
MOUNTAINEER :
52°27'58.4"N 13°28’11.1"E
BOULDER
Berlin DE
I got out of the appointment feeling overwhelmed, my eye sight had decreased since the last time I seen a doctor . I do all what I do, seeing less than hath of the world.
35% in one side 40% in the other.
Thinking only in biological evolution , without taking in consideration any means of ethereal perception, our species is sensorially dependent on vision, about 70% of our capacity of sensing happens though sight.
Our eyes are so important that its orientation define postural patterns, neural development, and also the overall ability of sensing , once the body has to orient itself towards sensation, having the eyes playing a key role in this interface.
The unknown is a geographic location, which invites the development of skills and vocabularies of cooperation.
MOUNTAINEER: studies for bouldering darkness, is a wish to transform my ability of sensing through an immersive exploration with the mountain as a metaphor.
The research explores blindness as a boulder, integrating range in physical lexicon with forms of navigation. Aiming to surface the particular dexterity of the visual impaired in journeying their senses in a world dominantly visual.
We are fucking mountaineers. We are breve enough to fall, bump and still carry on our routes. It takes us double of the effort to go through the day, but we ascend because patience isn’t an option but a quality we are forced to acquire.
60°26'37.1"N 22°15'06.4"E
LANDMARK/ The careful listener
Turku FN
with Sindri Runudde
Making company to what you can’t (yet) see, I lean my attention into the listening and the haptic field of what you try to say when you pause — In between the speech of your wanting, needs and desires. Orienting my own curiosity, I navigate to track the dances we still didn’t hunt. The task of predation can well take us to the limits of our endurance — our inherent physical patience.
Sindri and Madonna
We live on the twilight. For not seeing, we loose or break when not attentive. This mode of sensing only soften when our worlds go asleep — with our heads on the pillow we agreed with how good is to rest this world from its vision, allowing time for the eyes to finally forget to see. As a rescue place or either our only chance for disengagement.
The next day we sit side by side facing front, and start describing how we see. After a while we realize that the world shows itself to us as essence : whatever is in my periphery enters “the substance zone”, while what is in the center for you evaporates.
We witness the plasticity of the worlds grain, its plasma.
Our eyes do not see ordinarily. Faces of lovers become one with the background. Glasses of wine, get mixed with the counter. While by my side, I hear your voice from a diluted form that had been your body…
We aren’t losing eyesight but loosen the view… Seeing the intimacy of a world that dissolves itself into a substantial state of undifferentiated union. where everything desires everything and form comes only through the effort of attention.
The eagerness of this world to embrace itself, appears on the comfort we feel by being together.
29°29'49.0"S 50°18'36.0"W
BEARING/ WOOD LIGHT
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Maquiné BR
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Mine Retina and Fovea in the Left and Right eye
The unknown as geographical location:
THE VALLEY/RAIN FOREST
Correlations are made of observations and inventiveness, in choosing to spend time alone in the Brazilian Rain Forest, I discover a representation of my visual field on a landscape.
The specific eye retinopathy I inherit is considered rare it affect 1 in 3000 of the population, it leads to progressive loss of photoreceptors cells, starting with the rod cells in the retina, you probably have around 100 million of this cells in your eyes. This type of photoreceptor cells deal with low light levels and periphery vision.
In dim light, in the morning and evening or in woodlands, the low number of photons that a receptor cell receives start to limit the vision. Small numbers of photons, arriving at random, make to a “noisy signal” .
At the forest’s valley, Im surrounded by rods, light takes longer to permeate the landscape. The stones and hills breaks the horizon line, making it closer to you. Is easy to find the end of sight. Green is the mid wavelength we can perceive, making it for a calming colour to be surrounded by. Wood as an element, and here is where I start to mix even more with correlation and representations, is understood by Chinese Medicine as the element of the eyes, the element of movement, the element of wind, the element of the liver and gallbladder, the element associated to anger, the element that feeds the fire, the element that is fead by water, the element of vision.
This valley, of Atlantic Brazilian rain forest is also being bought, since land is something one can owns in the human world, by Chineses too, so I borrow the knowledge they bring.
In our eyes the processes that start to convert light into signals that will make images is called transduction cascades, in the valley there are few waterfalls and some bigger cascades a bit further from where I camp.
The valley is a dynamic place, the weather can change on unpredictable ways, the river changes everyday by drying up or getting full, the landscape too, trees fall, animals have their time and some visit around, the floor is unstable, is hard to find flat land. As it is when you deal with a progressive disease, they are dynamic and adaptation is a constant endeavour.
I felt inside a big retina, where the fovea (the little area of your retina where you make the most sharp and colourful vision) was the river. I had never camp alone before, mostly because I never felt I could, our ability of seeing is highly related to our sense of safety and security. Eyes did evolve over 500 million years ago mostly for helping species orienting themselves towards food, predation, or avoiding being a pray, and also finding mates, and recognising individuals of the same species, later also became fundamental for socialisation… and in us to cultural development, since there isn’t evolution of eyes without evolution of brains able to render the immense input of data received through light.
- THIS PLACE KNOWS ABOUT YOU -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
This place knows about you, because independent of where you are it feels what you do. A week before coming here, the weather conditions were so atypical, that I thought I would not be able to camp. It had rained more then 200 mm creating floods and leaving some areas isolated. The district of Barra do Ouro, where is the area of forest I was going, was one of the most affected. Before that there was a long period of drouth, none of this extreme conditions and sharp weather changes are normal in the region.
This place knows about you, because while I was lucky to have access to it, because the weather improved, and because I had people to guide me there, instructing me about its biodiversity and history. It made me evoke many presences, which made me company in thought, every time I stood in awe thinking how much some people I know would love there. And by that moment of insight, I brought them to that valley. And the valley knew about you.
This place knows about you, because it was gentle to me. It knew I can’t see well, and it showed me it most gentle facet. It remind me that its a landscape, and as a landscape it is always bigger and more powerful than human, when for example, in my first night the most poisonous species of spider in Brazil, pay me a visit. I had not killed, I just pushed away from the tent. In this area also lives two of the most poisonous snakes from the country. A bite from it would kill me in few hours. Also there are many species of wasps, and in this particular part of the year, they are very active. In the day of arrival, before staying alone, two of my guides where bitten by wasps, I was just by them and was never bitten. Rare to see, but here is also home for pumas. The land is very unstable, the risk of foot torsions and accidents are big, but the place knew about me.
After the week had past, a local told me I was really lucky, since they never had such a great weather continuously. It was never too cold, never too humid, never too hot, the sky was bright blue every single day. I had seen so many butterflies, many of them landed in me. I have seen dragon flies fucking, some even fucked on top of my belly. Dragonflies are bioindicators of air and water purity, since they are delicate insects to environmental changes.
This place knows about you, It knew about me, and it allowed me to explore and meet its gentle side. It took care of me, it quench my thirst and was wildly kind.
- THIS PLACE KNOWS ABOUT YOU -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
- THIS FACES THE WEST -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
- DO YOU HEAR THIS? -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
At the end of each day I sit looking the sky, and while all disappear, I watched the world be swallowed by sound. I stay in the dark, listening its voices for as long I could bare. In my first night it wasn’t more then one hour, my mind would create the most implausible of fictions to justify its discomforts. Wasn’t the movement of animals that steer fear, but my storytelling, unknown creatures, aliens, ghosts or human hunters. It took me few days to stay out and listen the night progressively getting quieter. By 2:00 the voices are softer, but they aren’t silenced. By 5:30 the birds get louder and louder as if celebrating the arrival of light. I had never seen a starry sky, but I hear about it, and I will keep going out to listen at it…
- LIGHT CATCHER -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
The wood desires is also its end - LIGHT & FIRE
In my 6th day at the woods, I felt the dampness of the landscape, the river swallowed, and I took the wood ashes from my cooking to the shore. For the first time I was seeing dead butterflies along that way. The valley knew about my mourning. In my eyes, I turn my rods into ashes, so them I cover myself in wood ash that day, and stay with for long to feel its memories. Later the same water that once fead that wood, clean the ashes that once fead the fire, that cook the minerals that had fead me.
Are ashes the memory of wood or the memory of fire?
- MY THOUGHTS ARE LAUGHTER THEN THE RIVER -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
- ISLAND OF TIME -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
- HERE FOR VERY LONG -
wood ash & water on mineral 2023
Click in the image to download a short Zine presentation of WOOD LIGHT in PDF, Portuguese/English.
this time outdoors was only possible thanks to the kindness and very informative insights of Lúcio Kerber Canabarro and Aterra-Arte Corpo e Ambiente.
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