Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Project 2013
[Theatrum Orbis Terrarum 2013, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum 2013 — Core of the Project]
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Project (2013) comprises the installation Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (2013)— core of the project, and the film Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (2013).
Commission: Temps d’Images, MNAC – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea
Production: Lamaland
Coproduction: Dupla Cena
Additional support: MacDowell, Screen
Support: MNAC – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Temps d’Images
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, regarded as the first modern atlas, is a sensory journey that blends cartography, history, and adventure. ‘When I look at the sea for long, I lose interest in what happens on land.’ Guided by a shaman whose gaze often drifts from land to sea, it evokes the secretive Padrão Real of the Casa da Índia, a map constantly rewritten with each expedition.
Navigators measured distances, traced lines by the stars, and reshaped borders upon return. Though the original map is lost, surviving copies capture the ephemeral nature of these utopian or dystopian representations, where territories were imagined, contested, and remade.
The project was initiated under the frame of a commission by Temps d’Images. The other productions were developed due to other partners and exhibited accordingly.
THEATRUM ORBIS TERRARUM, 2013
HD video, 16:9, color, Dolby 5.1 sound, 23 min., PortugalTHEATRUM ORBIS TERRARUM, 2013
Three–channel HD video installation, 16:9, color, stereo sound, 26 min. sync in a loop; DVD, 4:3, black and white, silent, 5 min. loop on TV monitor, Portugal
The way I interpret your installations, but also the rest of your video work, is that they problematize seeing as a way of knowing. Merely looking (or doing so quickly) is not enough. We must continue working, over time, to be able to see. At a time when all seems to be rushed and superficial, you make us stare at time, at the pass of time. The complexity of your work frustrates the presumption that recognition is simple, immediate, and in the viewer’s control—as in Latin, damnat quod non intelligunt: they condemn what they do not understand. It is amazing to me to realize that the first considered modern atlas was called Teatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the World). Just this title already seems a critique to the guided lines that the author drew. The map was written by cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius in 1570, in Antwerp, Belgium. It seems that he also imagined that all the land was joined together before drifting apart, understanding that things change and move. In your installation called Teatrum Orbis Terrarum (2013), a video that includes professional actors, you present images of the ocean as a medium that not only brings objects to the surface, but also bumps against the rocks from the land, eroding them over time, changing the sketching lines of those divisions. I feel that in your work you present a situation or a landscape and say, “look, is this a map or a labyrinth?”
Monica Saviron, On Theatrum Orbis Terarrum
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is a theoretical exploration of landscape as a dialectical problem. Will we be Cartesians or Heideggerians? Are we going to apply the templates of abstract knowledge in order to artificially rationalize our relationship to the lived environment, or are we going to recognize our “thrownness,” our mutual dependency on and envelopment by the spaces in which we dwell?
Michael Sicinski, On Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
The way I interpret your installations, but also the rest of your video work, is that they problematize seeing as a way of knowing. Merely looking (or doing so quickly) is not enough. We must continue working, over time, to be able to see. At a time when all seems to be rushed and superficial, you make us stare at time, at the pass of time. The complexity of your work frustrates the presumption that recognition is simple, immediate, and in the viewer’s control—as in Latin, damnat quod non intelligunt: they condemn what they do not understand. It is amazing to me to realize that the first considered modern atlas was called Teatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theater of the World). Just this title already seems a critique to the guided lines that the author drew. The map was written by cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius in 1570, in Antwerp, Belgium. It seems that he also imagined that all the land was joined together before drifting apart, understanding that things change and move. In your installation called Teatrum Orbis Terrarum (2013), a video that includes professional actors, you present images of the ocean as a medium that not only brings objects to the surface, but also bumps against the rocks from the land, eroding them over time, changing the sketching lines of those divisions. I feel that in your work you present a situation or a landscape and say, “look, is this a map or a labyrinth?”
Monica Saviron, On Theatrum Orbis Terarrum
Monica Saviron, On Theatrum Orbis Terarrum
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is a theoretical exploration of landscape as a dialectical problem. Will we be Cartesians or Heideggerians? Are we going to apply the templates of abstract knowledge in order to artificially rationalize our relationship to the lived environment, or are we going to recognize our “thrownness,” our mutual dependency on and envelopment by the spaces in which we dwell?
Michael Sicinski, On Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
Michael Sicinski, On Theatrum Orbis Terrarum