The Dante Quartet

Tlaltícpac

A vast and enveloping sound environment encompasses the scene. We are rotating. Our framing is under the spell of a rotating movement that makes us advance along a path that allows us to glimpse riverbanks on either side of the frame, these banks continuously change position due to the random rotation of the frame, the movement of this sequence shot is nourished by chance and is derived from a calm, serene, calm fluid that we do not see but that perhaps we can guess at, it is a fluid in a narrow channel, we imagine that it is a river or stream but without the turbulent or agitated qualities of a river, in any case our point of view is being moved and guided by an “eidetic” river in a path that makes our gaze rotate 360º. The directions of this rotation are determined by chance and the drift as our camera collides against the two banks that we can see, though these collisions do not modify the pace of movement, or agitate the movement, they simply change the direction of rotation, making our frame rotate to the left or right, without transmitting tremors, convulsion or shaking to our viewpoint. The cadence of the movement of the plane is what we could consider a “suspended” cadence or a ritual cadence, a liturgical “rest” in movement or an eidetic drift. An endless andante.

    Our framing allows us to see fragments of roots that emerge from the banks, as well as the earthy formations on those banks. We see trees of a particular type enter the frame, we contemplate them from their lowest part where they root on the banks up to their branches in the highest part, passing through the peculiarities (twists, inclinations and branches) of their stems and trunks. Trees, shrubs and grasses border our moving picture and due to the rotation of our point of view they randomly enter the picture, all this silhouetted against the gigantic rotating dome of the sky.

    Soon men and women enter the picture. They are young and old and dressed in a peculiar way. Bells cover their legs, plumages adorn their heads, feathered headdresses extend beyond their hair. Jade, pyrite and obsidian adorn their necks, in their hands and arms they carry instruments. They hold censers that give off the smoke of the copal. Multicolored garments wrap their bodies. They wear sandals. We see them rotate in their immobile positions: Illusion, our gaze and our point of view is what is rotating. They lie motionless on both shores, some lie bent over, with their knees to the ground, creating a dramatic foreshortening that rises towards the sky. They look at the camera, that is, they look down, towards the floating object, towards our point of view. They contemplate. Their gaze follows the movement and the drift of our point of view, some leave the frame and others get up and walk along accompanying the drift of our frame. There is curiosity on their faces and gestures at what they see. They pass by one another to get a better look at what is moving, what is passing by them. We hear their steps: the sound of the bells as they walk.

     Little by little we hear sounds that begin to be articulated in a composition that adds to the sonority of the huge soundscape with which we began the sequence. A musical composition begins to emerge, a composition materialized with sounds produced by pre-Hispanic instruments: turtle shells, stones, flutes, bells, stretched animal skins, wood, etc. The clay sounds. The wind sounds. The earth sounds. The fire sounds. It is a rhythm that echoes, unfolds and accompanies the cadence of the shot. A voice adds to the cadence, it is type 3 of the voices, it is the voice of the poet Nezahualtcóyotl reciting verses in Nahuatl language such as:

“Does one really take root on the earth? Not for ever on earth: Only for a time here… This is our nature. We are mortals, like a painting, we are fading. Like a flower, we are withering, here on earth… Think on it, lords. Eagles and Tiger [Jaguars]. Even if you were of Jade. Even if you were of gold, you would also go there, to the place of the fleshless. We all have to disappear. No-one will remain.”

After some time the voice and verses of the poet begin to be interspersed with another Nahuatl voice, this is the healing and diegetic voice of a Nahua woman. The woman moves a censer in circles near our point of view, leaving smoke behind it that spreads through the rotating space. The woman recites a prayer and evocation to the earth, the moon and the sun. The woman and the other Mexica follow the drift of our point of view. Finally the woman who recites leaves the censer on one of the banks, takes a cloth and covers the frame until it is dark. The resonance of sounds and verses continues for a few more seconds. Total darkness.

Our point of view now glimmers under the spell and trance of the things gathered together, it is the order of things in a trance, the dance of things, a gathering of objects, the rapture of things, the coexistence of objects in an intermittent and stormy turbulence: a fluttering between things. All this filmed and mounted directly in camera, even the superposition of different image layers will be done in camera. The qualities and properties inherent to the Bolex camera will allow us to elicit this rhythmic vision in trance. The possibility the Bolex allows of filming frame by frame will enable us to integrate a constant modification of the frame in each frame that makes up a second of filming: 24 modifications per second, 24 turgid orders per second, 24 consecrations per second, 24 differentiated intensities per second, 24 optical volumes per second, but also interleaved bursts of 12, 16, 18, 24, 32, 46 frames. The materiality and perceptual speed of the type of film (the sensitivity and materiality of the film emulsion) is also essential. We also intend to include transformed and mobilized frame volumes by differential lenses of 10mm, 25mm, 75mm, 120mm, 400mm. A contraction and expansion of the sequential volume of things. Here the objectification of the gaze experienced in the first part is drilled into, dissolved and released in a dance of reality. Finally the visual dimension of our molto vivace expands and vibrates (it has expanded and vibrated from the beginning of this third part) in a percussive sonic dimension. A composition and musical improvisation performed by a Mexican percussionist on this luminous writing will consecrate the breath, the fluttering and the rhythm of things. A composition and improvisation on the embers of the Earth.

by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos