Speak
speaks as the night speaks
speak as the mountain speaks
like they speak and we all understand
rutting earth
whispering earth
and all the folks understanding
speak like a jaw chews
speak like the night, speak!
Speak like a bone structure
speak like the mountain, speak!
Speak as the fruit ripens
and then forgets.
Pretend the dogs that pretend to sleep, deep down the ear in readiness, hence the tone
Darken like the night that lights up stars. Speaking like the mountains, silence. To speak as the sea speaks
To solfege as a hip shakes, speak!
Speak as they dance:
the mountain, the night, the earth, the sea, the jaw, the bone, the dogs, the stones.
undoing self
Silencing and speak as the stones silencing and speak
I'll devour you!
In the present, against the present and in favour of the time to come, which is also present and past - a promise that need not happen.
To move as cyclones and constellations move.

2022
instalação
Residência Artísitica Mirante Xique-Xique, Igatu, Chapada Diamantina/BRA

Speak! Fala! is an installation produced in the artistic residency Mirante Xique-Xique, in Igatu/Chapada Diamantina, in December 2021. Igatu is a village located in one of the main areas of diamond exploration and extraction in Bahia. The whole village is built on huge stones and everywhere there are remnants of the prospecting hunger.

The stones were broken down into smaller gravels, sieved to check if there were precious stones
and then left along the roads or in the woods.

In Speak!, I write each of the 160 words of the poem on one of the innumerable stones left by the miner at the side of a road. I write with a mineral ink donated by Mestre Chiquinho, a former miner, who found it on one of his walks along the trails of the Chapada. According to him, it is the same used in the cave paintings found on the rocks in the region, most of them outside the official cataloging circuit.
 
I eft on the road, in the open. It is a work that gains its own geography from the movement of stones that are being and taken by different people, throughout time, to destinations that I myself do not know.