L’écho du néant
1980, Caribbean Sea, Jamaica
An eternal silence
The visual echo of a primordial stillness resonates through the encounter between the sea and the sky.
And everything lies still.
There is something oddly comforting about sharing a quiet space with art, where customary comprehension becomes inaccessible, where we are allowed to seek consolation in peacefulness.
Nevertheless, we spend our lives running away from the absence of sound. Why?
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Caribbean Sea, Jamaica (301), 1980.
A reality made of perpetual small talk and despairing attempts to fill the room
The profound aversion for tranquillity is nothing but the symptom of a society prone to making anyone not ready to engage in the most animated encounter at any moment feel inadequate, a society busy with keeping busy, and in which time cannot be used to simply contemplate the boundless nothingness.
Every gathering only succeeds in its intent if a stimulating conversation or an indispensable oversharing of information takes place, while genuineness bashfully tries to find its way through the ocean of forged pleasantries and tireless idle dialogues.
Stillness as dark foreboding
In our world, silence precedes calamity: we are brought to think that when something ceases to move, it is mercilessly waiting for catastrophe to happen. Accordingly, we are taught to dread the calm before the storm without any prospect of a rainbow afterward.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Theaters.
The living misapprehension of the emptiness of silence
Silence can often appear deprived of any meaning or power. In the quiet of sound lingers the ghost of a show stopped long ago, waiting for a new one to start.
The abandoned place words leave behind is filled with reflection and memory, taken away from the passing of time.
And thought thrives.
The paralysing fear of contemplation
Nowadays, the dying myth of critical thinking is nothing but a buzzword destined for collective oblivion, and anything that anything that allows us to analyse ourselves or the world is to be dreaded. As life withers, volumes grow louder and recollection shyer.
It was Jose Saramago who, in Ensaio sobre a cegueira, said:
“Calemo‑nos todos, há ocasiões em que as palavras não servem de nada, quem me dera a mim poder também chorar, dizer tudo com lágrimas, não ter de falar para ser entendida.”
“Let’s all keep quiet, there are times when words serve no purpose, if only I, too, could weep, say everything with tears, not have to speak in order to be understood.”
Picture by Matilde Pierani