Fala dos Confins | 2010

“I spent 20 days in the territory of Bacia do Jacuipe, in the terras sertanejas (the dry lands) of Bahia, journeying through five cities with Catarina, a Volkswagen Kombi. There, I realized that nature germinates within the speech of local people and discovered that, above everything else, how the sun dries the landscape while irrigating the local speech. The dry lands of Bahia are golden.” – Virginia de Medeiros

The video installation Fala dos Confins articulates the orality of the dry lands within the field of contemporary art, in the attempt to reveal the fecund dialogue that the current position of the “sertanejo” voice draws within Brazilian culture, manifesting the richness of the language as an expression of a culture so strongly oral in character. For this project, the artist collaborated with local poets, novelists, and storytellers. Employing a digital recorder she collected stories narrated by her collaborators and later edited the raw material within the Volkswagen Kombi, installing a sound system within the vehicle, and transforming the latter into an immersive installation space. The entire journey was captured on film: images of the landscape and the roads taken are projected onto the windows of the vehicle, functioning like a projection screen that allows the screening of the video from the external and internal space of the truck. Medeiros prioritized, within the work, a state of contemplation of what is audible; a faculty that survives in the margin of a society whose priority lies in the transmission of information and accelerated rhythm. In many ways, Fala dos Confins seeks a ludic exercise that evokes memory and involves the (re) identification of the subject and his affects.