Santiago Díaz Escamilla

Clarão. That from Which Things Become Manifest

2018

Single – channel video; Thirty eight digital 35 mm slides;
Archival pigment print on Backlit paper, mounted on Lightbox

Come, I shall tell you of the (sun) origin from which all the things we now look upon have become manifest, earth and billowing sea, damp air, and Titan aither who fastens his circle around all things. (1)

 Empedocles

In the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, the foliage density that makes up the forest canopy —where temperature, humidity, and light constantly vary— only about 1 to 2% of sunlight manages to reach the ground, resulting in much of the ecosystem remaining in the shade for most of the time.

Over the course of several days, starting in the early morning hours, as light filters intermittently through the thick mass of vegetation, I seek to follow its path through the spots it creates on the ground and in the trees. Then, with the help of a mirror, I reflect this light back to the sky. 
Likewise, I record the sunrise at dawn. As light emerges, it increases the visibility and warmth of the place, thus determining the rhythms of the forms of life occurring there.

How does light travel in the rainforest? How can this biome be experienced in terms of luminosity, transience, intensities, layers? How is one’s time perception affected when permeated by an infinitely complex diversity of stimuli and interspecies interactions?

The forest absorbs anyone who enters it. As one walks and traverses, the physical link with the environment becomes more instinctive and increasingly distant from intellectual reasoning.
Clarão. That From Which Things Become Manifest proposes a reflection on contemplation and direct experience of place, an exercise of imagination on the limits of what can be perceived or understood.

The work comprises three elements: The first is a single-channel video showing an intermittent flash, directed towards the camera lens and generated through the reflection of sunlight on a mirror. Secondly, a series of thirty-eight 35 mm slides projected by a carousel projector, coming from a video that records the Sun from a fixed frame as it rises from the early morning hours until it filters thoroughly through the jungle canopy. The star’s growing brightness creates a halo of light that eventually fills the entire shot.

Finally, a photograph mounted on a lightbox, the result of an accident: Near the end of my stay, I review the trip’s photos and find a ray of sunlight that I managed to capture —without realizing it— during one of my hikes.


* I developed these works during the LABVERDE. Art Immersion Program in the Amazon residency program (Manaus, Brazil) with the support of the LABVERDE Grant (awarded by the organizing institution) and a National and International Circulation Grant for artists and other agents of the Visual Arts from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia.

(1) About the work’s title: In Portuguese, the word Clarão alludes to the difficulty of seeing by the effect of observing —either directly or by reflection— towards a high-brightness light, such as that produced by the Sun. That from Which Things Become Manifest derives from Empedocles’ quote at the beginning of this text. I retrieved this passage from: (Sallis, J. (2016). The Figure of Nature: On Greek Origins (Studies in Continental Thought). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 46.