Rheîa Zóontes and Eudaimonia
There aren’t great certainties as to the origin of the name of the village of Fujaco, however, there’s a story that its inhabitants tell of said origin. The legend says that many years ago close by, a war took place. From the front line, a man deserted and hid himself under a boulder. To not be surprised by wolves and keep himself alert, he started to makelace by hand. Sometime passed, the man got married and established a family that gave birth to the population of Fujaco. The name of the village comes from “fujão” (“runaway”) referring to the man whoran away. Its origin could also be from the place where the runaway lived. At the bottom of avalley, surrounded by large mountains covered by low vegetation, a handful of houses are born. Small houses, all with schist rooftops. We can also find water springs, Cimeira fountains and Sarzedos are examples of water springs that feed water mills and Fujaco’s river. There’s a set of water mills that extend through the hill, connected through water paths that run at high velocities. At the top of the hill, one can see a small chapel of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios (Our Lady of Remedies) in front of the recently rebuilt school that now hosts the local association.
Happiness is the perception of its unlimited expansion. It’s usual to say that happiness is a transitóry condition, hard to obtain, and even harder to maintain. It’s also said that happiness is the result of a game of luck, whether it may be determined by the divided referee or the causality of said events. Well, all of it it’s true if we believe that happiness it’s only made of moments only conceived through pleasure and instantaneous gratification. Truth fully, happiness is a condition found in the continuity of life: happiness is life it self, its realization, itslength. Happiness is challenge, risk, ascension, and conquest. Happy is the one that doesn’t quit, who doesn’t adapt to the pace of things, who doesn’t shun away at the sight of the first obstacle, who doesn’t wait for a miracle but goes to meet life, even hosting its pain because one loves life that much, and wishes it just as it is. Happy is the one that knows that in order to live happy, he doesn’t need to look for happiness at all cost, but only be loyal to life, without waiting that long for it. Happy is the one that knows how to waive from excess, that knows how to appreciate the small things that the everyday presents him with, the one that knows how to be “indifferent” to events. In April of 2010, the artist lived in Pendilhe (Vila Nova de Paivacounty), in the margins of Mau river. Many things captivated her: its inhabitants’ hospitality and niceness, its houses, fields, water mills and beautiful landscape. Rheîa Zóontes (those who flow without obstacle) was to the artist the people itself of Pendilhe, people that lived right in the middle of the mountains, the true owners of “makaria” (happiness), ‘cause with simplicity, authenticity and a little alienation, they teach us what happiness is, restored in its original meaning.
Manuela Barile (b. Bari, Italy 1978) is a vocal and an interdisciplinary researcher and performer that lives in S. Pedro do Sul county. Her artistic research is based on a projectual work that combines voice sounds with different mediums (“field recordings”, video, photography, installations, performance, concert-performance, drawings, written work). As a vocal performer Manuela Barile has worked and collaborated with numerous artists of the northern-american experimental movement. In June of 2006, along with Pino Pipoli, Barile participated in the contemporary art event “Fresco Bosco”, of which Achille Bonito Oliva was the curator. In 2007, she initiated a collaboration with the portuguese sound artist, Rui Costa, towards the development of the big scale project called “La Scatola”, which was conceived as a series of installation and/or performances. In 2009, Manuela contrived a sequence of sound and video installations presented in several museum galleries and european/north-american video festivals, about the meaning of places, entitled “Locus in Quo”.
ARTISTIC WORKS