O Sonho de Diana Valentina & Caledônia Cage
— Mariano Marovatto


I have a poet friend called Mariano Marovatto who wanted, in the middle of 2007, to publish two of his latest works by that time. So we started to think of something, some support for the poems, and I called another friend to help me out, Leon Vilhena.

In the beginning, according to Mariano’s suggestion, we considered some way of distributing the material through the Internet, allowing people to download it and print it for themselves. However we found too many problems organizing the content in an easy way for people to do it, which lead us to reconsider the printed material one more time. We made this decision also because we believed in the importance of durability, and we have noticed, through some experiences, people’s recognition of the intrinsic value of printed material.

Besides, Leon and I are fascinated with printing anyway, and were happy with this opportunity. Mariano told us that the poems were going to be distributed by him in a important literature event called Flip (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty), that was going to happen in July of that year. He gave us the freedom to interpret his work in any visual experience, and expected us to go beyond the poems themselves in order to contribute to what should be more than just a support.

For that purpose, he showed us how the poems were born, from which personal reflexions and experiences they were expressions, in other words, what was in question in each one of them. In relation to the first poem called O Sonho de Diana Valentina he presented us with references that went from the landscapes from Los Angeles in 2019 as shown in the Blade Runner movie, to Vienna by the time of Mahler in 1900, and also the city Cuiabá in Brazil.

In Caledônia Cage the process was a little different. The poem was a result of a ‘virtual’ trip to an island in the Pacific Ocean called New Caledonia, using the GoogleEarth software. Mariano gave us many images from the place and told us to listen to a John Cage record called In a Landscape.

Knowing our references well, Leon and I started working from those images. We felt the work needed to be more than just typographical. Drawing over many ‘virtual photographs’ and ordinary images from Google, we also tried collages. Due to the evident presence of erudite music in the work we began reproducing and printing over blank music sheets, unconsciously adopting the absence of colors and grays. All drawings were being done with Chinese ink. Leon started using translucent paper to reconstruct the landscapes, adding the white in addition to the black.

Considering the mixed origins of the first poem, we started to create odd images: Vienna’s furniture with parts of a roof from a Blade Runner’s skyscraper, a 19th century house with a silo on top, etc. For Caledônia Cage we looked up for Cage’s strange music sheets – sequence of dots and lines, graphics of modulation and rhythm – and noticed its similarity to the contour of mountains. We draw the limits of the island’s landscape as if they were musical notations, after selecting a lot of Google images from New Caledonia.

At a certain point we thought we had enough raw material to work with, but not yet images that were worth printing. Scanning and layouting would not be enough. We froze.

In parallel, I had already done some experimentation concerning size, number of pages, binding and typography. We decided to go with the simplest binding with staples, considering the costs. I was convinced, once more by my friends, to use my Inocência typeface.

So our time was running out, and we had to take action somehow. An idea came at the last few days: to take new photographs. Assuming the absurdity of a virtual trip, we decided to extend this to the ‘objectiveness of photography’, forging new landscapes in laboratory. In fact, we didn’t know what to expect from this until we start producing the first images.

We simply took everything to the lab and started to mix the drawings (printed in transparencies) out of order, ignoring if they were related to the first or the second poem. Those random collages and overexposures were composed directly below the photographic enlarger.

The photograms were, of course, black and white. Not only due to the drawings and collages we were doing previously, but also because (I think) we were searching for the atmosphere of legitimacy that surrounds old nature photography. Just think of the power of Niépce earliest ‘record’ of a scene. Old photographs of landscapes are valuable historical documents, and so to fake ‘authentic’ places is a way to relate to a trip made ‘through’ a computer software. Photograms of landscapes are, at least, ridiculous, if not impossible.

The printing production was hell, and the job almost wasn’t finished. I did the graphic production myself and regretted it; this takes more talent and dedication that I can offer. Looking for a low cost printing service I found a bureau in Vila Mimosa, a famous brothel neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. They committed a lot of mistakes, but we have to consider some of them (as strangely as it may sound) as unpredictable contributions.

In the end, we were in love with the photograms, and so was Mariano. After the poems were printed we three divided the original images amongst ourselves and kept them as if they were a work apart.

June 2007
150 × 220mm
16 pp in Portuguese
typeface: Inocência
Offset 150 g/m²; no distinct cover
offset
[photos by Natasha Gompers]


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