Marina Cyrino + Jorge Alcaide
Soproluz, a co-creation made together with Jorge Alcaide (Chile/Sweden). Soproluz was a performance in transformation that was created and performed during two years (2015 -2017) at Kulturtemplet , an underground cistern that is also a cultural institution run by Jorge, by way of listening to that particular site.
SoproLuz is an invitation to darken our senses.
It is a polyrhythm of night bugs.
A wish for nocturnal silence, for de-obfuscation.
An invitation towards obscuring.
The site, pregnant with darkness and silence, offers us a unique listening opportunity.
The descent. Let the box play us.
What happens to our bodies when they are bathed in darkness?
How do we move? How do we sense each other?
Where does the fear of obscure silence stir?
A common universalizing explanation for the source of this fear lies exactly in the definition of the human as diurnal: Our most precious sense of survival, our eyesight, would find in the dark its limits and then, fear. But what qualifies us as diurnals? Is the root of this fear in the eye?
“ – We learn to fear by learning what to fear.”[1]
An obvious effect of this phenomenon is the obfuscation of night through the increasing artificial lighting that spreads in vertiginous speed around the planet, embedded as an almost unquestionable need for security. Security for whom?
Who owns the night?
Who owns the light?
“We live now, virtually everywhere, in a world that is potentially permanently illuminated, in which it is generally possible to let light be at human will and in which artificial light can reach further and more effectively than the brightest sunshine.”[2]
To obfuscate the night is indeed mortal for many beings with whom we share our existence. And what is the effect on us, humans?
How to sensitize our bodies to the obscure? Is there a point in this descent?
Tonight is an invitation to darken our senses in order to reveal our own and the world’s inner nocturnal shine.
In the words of Georges Didi-Hubermann, “in order to make the fireflies reappear, it will suffice to return to the night its power of latency and pregnancy. It will suffice to accept it. To access its power of visuality named: the obscure.” [3]
Sparkles.
It is a polyrhythm of night bugs.
A wish for nocturnal silence, for de-obfuscation.
An invitation towards obscuring.
The site, pregnant with darkness and silence, offers us a unique listening opportunity.
The descent. Let the box play us.
What happens to our bodies when they are bathed in darkness?
How do we move? How do we sense each other?
Where does the fear of obscure silence stir?
A common universalizing explanation for the source of this fear lies exactly in the definition of the human as diurnal: Our most precious sense of survival, our eyesight, would find in the dark its limits and then, fear. But what qualifies us as diurnals? Is the root of this fear in the eye?
“ – We learn to fear by learning what to fear.”[1]
An obvious effect of this phenomenon is the obfuscation of night through the increasing artificial lighting that spreads in vertiginous speed around the planet, embedded as an almost unquestionable need for security. Security for whom?
Who owns the night?
Who owns the light?
“We live now, virtually everywhere, in a world that is potentially permanently illuminated, in which it is generally possible to let light be at human will and in which artificial light can reach further and more effectively than the brightest sunshine.”[2]
To obfuscate the night is indeed mortal for many beings with whom we share our existence. And what is the effect on us, humans?
How to sensitize our bodies to the obscure? Is there a point in this descent?
Tonight is an invitation to darken our senses in order to reveal our own and the world’s inner nocturnal shine.
In the words of Georges Didi-Hubermann, “in order to make the fireflies reappear, it will suffice to return to the night its power of latency and pregnancy. It will suffice to accept it. To access its power of visuality named: the obscure.” [3]
Sparkles.
Images by Marina Cyrino
[1] Ahmed, Sara. The cultural Politics of Emotion.Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2004. p. 215.
[2] Dyer, Richard. White. London and New York: Routledge. 1997.p.106.
[3] See Didi-Hubermann, Georges. “Lumière contre Lumière”. In La Disparition des lucioles. Arles: Actes Sud. 2014. My own translation.“Pour faire réapparaitre les lucioles, il suffit de rendre à la nuit elle-même son pouvoir de latence et de prégnance. Il suffira de l’accepter, d’accéder à son pouvoir de visualité, qui se nomme l’obscur.”