The silence of the snow

"The silence of the snow", if Orhan Pamuk in 2002 had decided to put and end to the very beginning, perhaps his most famous novel Snow (Kar in Turkish) would still have had his reason for being. This is obviously a provocation but there is no doubt that the snow represents in the work that maternal scenography that will isolate the city of Kars, in eastern Turkey. This is where the particular story of the protagonist Ka is set, a poet grappling with current events that attract attention and contain many of the country's political and cultural tensions in a sum of humour, social criticism and mysticism.

It is to snow and its specific role that we have turned an interest in involving the artists Erris Huigens (aka Deconstructie) and Anatoly Grinberg for this first appointment of the ALETHEIA project.

But what is ALETHEIA really? It is hard to give a univocal answer, the debate would be wide and interesting but this is perhaps not the most suitable forum. What matters is to understand at least the deeper meaning. It is therefore worthwhile to follow the meaning of Martin Heidegger who describes it in his treatise The Event as the "disclosure of a truth" or "the truth in the exact moment before its manifestation". A sort of prolonged wait, which is why the developed project exists more in its intent than as a finished work. We are in fact facing a sort of device whose purpose is to create a space for reading.

In proceeding with the concept of what you have in your hands at this moment, it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that from the very beginning we felt clear the need to create a hybrid work in which the visual and auditory systems contaminated each other for architectural purposes. We were also interested in experimenting with the creation of a tool for building a personal space to immerse yourself in reading.

Reading is a personal fact, the ratio is 1:1 so the energy of a text expands in its reference reader. If we take this eventuality for granted then why not imagine a room, better a shelter that allows us to find refuge within a new and intangible space within an already defined one? These were the premises that allowed us to develop ALETHEIA.

The finished work is made up of many elements that coexist with each other. In addition to the visual and auditory components respectively by the two invited artists, a bouquet of flowers designed for its olfactory and tactile characteristics acts as a window to give a synaesthetic balance in which all the senses are stimulated. At home, or wherever you see fit, you can recreate the environment we designed for the novel.

Designing means starting from the basics, being able to draw lines. The artist Huigens has always been interested in how a line can have a different meaning each time with respect to the context. His work is made up of clear, geometric shapes made of compound and repeated segments and an almost exclusive use of black. The work conceived for this project could be understood as a maximum abstraction and de-composition of the snowflake: no longer the one imagined in our childhood imagination, but a new, more aware form, in a certain sense sharp. His is a threatening snow. To act as a counterbalance, as if it were a dialogue between two extremes, is the audio-work conceived by Grinberg. The compositions made him by a massive use of the field-recording technique seem to draw ascending and descending parables that advance and then come back. The sounds are rich in details; we can rediscover an ancient carillon, a true leitmotif of the first track, and dances of whirling dervishes combined with echoes of drums, in the others. There is everything in Grinberg's work and this multiform world of sounds is opposed to the formal rigor of Huigens' work. Sum and subtraction therefore, as if to seek a balance between two tensions as Ka, the protagonist conceived by Pamuk, experiences his inner contradiction, poised between a Western gaze and a Middle Eastern reminiscence that is the daughter of his native land, Turkey.


CREDITS

Released Jan, 23th 2022
Limited edition of 50 copies

Double folder hard-cover album 30 x 30 cm. 11,8" x 11,8"

Left pocket: Deconstructie (Erris Huigens), 300 dpi scan printed on Photorag Ultrasmooth Hahnemuhle fine art paper, 305 gsm.

Right pocket: Anatoly Grinberg, n.6 WAV quality tracks released and published via QR code for unlimited streaming and free download

Designed by TI STUDIO
Printed at EMMECIQUADRO
Cover sleeve: ID Anastasia Cavallo
Texts: Maurizio Vicerè
Cover photo: Giorgio Liddo