SARAMAGO. Maybe only silence exists…
A sound installation by Joan Cerveró
From November 16th to January 31st, 2023 (Saturdays included)
Space n-1 (first floor General Library) Building 4L
José Saramago wrote in one of his Lanzarote Notebooks: ‘All the characteristics of my current narrative technique (I would prefer to say: of my style) come from a basic principle according to which everything “said” is destined to be “heard”’. With this premise, it is not surprising that one of the most direct and intense ways to penetrate the real – or imaginary – world of the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner is sound: voices, sounds or music and, much more than that, silences. And this is what this installation is about: what is written, what is said, what is heard and what is silent – in short, the sound world of José Saramago and his works.
To penetrate the writer’s mind through his sounds and silences, with references, suggestions and metaphors, is a highly speculative act. This is an installation that goes beyond passive contemplation, as it requires the visitor to penetrate, to venture into the cavern that is the mind of the creator, to physically feel the crack, to listen to the objects that live inside him, in his memory and in his everyday life, to welcome his doubts and certainties, to recognise the light he demands and to accept the darkness that his texts provoke, texts that speak and are silent, cry, cry and love.
An installation to be heard – although, as Saramago reminds us, perhaps silence is the only thing that exists…
Joan Cerveró, composer.
Opening, Wednesday 16 November at 7.30 p.m.