SPOKEN PLANTS: VEGETABLE MEMORY ARCHIVE
A mixed-media exhibition by Binaural Nodar

Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde
Várzea de Calde, Viseu (Portugal)
29 November 2019 til 31 March 2020
Opening: 29 November 2019 at 17:00

Since their birth, the inhabitants of Portuguese rural villages have been introduced to a series of relationships through which they obtain food, clothing and shelter; they symbolize the strongest transitions in their vital journey, they transform their own surroundings with works and tools, they take care of and graft domesticated and wild plants, they sow chosen seeds, in vegetable gardens and in plowed lands; they shroud altars and homes; they ask for protection against storms, they energize and purify with vapors, fumes and baths; they play with fibers, wood, fruits and flowers, building themselves and their place in the world.

Throughout 2019, a series of interviews were conducted in the villages of Várzea de Calde and Cabrum with men and women who were born between the 1930s and the 1990s, with the aim of talking about the various existing links with the plant world, which have developed over time. Starting from this objective, a series of sound excerpts were published and are now available to the public. These are part of a plot that we call an archive, in which, through digital technology, individual, family and collective memories rooted in the same territory are related.

The mixed-media exhibition SPOKEN PLANTS: VEGETABLE MEMORY ARCHIVE, which opens on November 29th 2019 at the Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde, started precisely from the concept of archive, reflecting on the possible combination of a catalog of archived documents and the evocative presence of material elements: plants, images and sounds linked to plants and their local uses.

This exhibition is dedicated to those who slept on rye straw mattresses, to those who wore and wear some linen clothes, to those who think about what they eat, to those who choose what they eat or eat what they can, to all those who have sweated and avoid sleeping to produce food for their family and animals, those who keep a tool or a piece of furniture made by a relative, those who were cold, who wear clogs, who built their own toys, those who were moved by contemplating a landscape they inhabit, who stole a flower or do not forget an aroma.

Special thanks go to António Santos, Emília Bernardino, Herculano Gonçalves, Isabel Filipe, Joaquim Gaspar, Laura Filipe, Leonel Oliveira, Lorena Vicente, Lúcia Ferreira, Manuela Correia, Maria Cidália Santos, Mariana Campos, Mariyam Ali, Miquelina Campos, Virgínia Maurício and all the support provided by the team of the Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde, as well as the magnificent welcome from the community of Cabrum.

Simultaneously with the opening of the exhibition SPOKEN PLANTS: VEGETABLE MEMORY ARCHIVE, the Várzea de Calde Linen Museum will open its VÁRZEA DE CALDE MEMORY ARCHIVE, a searchable repository of more than one hundred sound and audiovisual documents from the village of Várzea de Calde, addressing various topics such as the linen cycle, beekeeping, the relationship with plants, the celebration of Queima do Toco, the traditional local songbook etc. and consisting of interviews with inhabitants, records of agricultural and forestry activities, calendar celebrations, traditional singing and soundscapes.

The exhibition SPOKEN PLANTS: VEGETABLE MEMORY ARCHIVE and the VÁRZEA DE CALDE MEMORY ARCHIVE are part of the Viseu Rural 2.0 project, co-financed by the Viseu Cultura Program of the Municipality of Viseu.

Credits:

Fieldwork conducted by Ana Rodríguez (interviews and sound records) and Liliana Silva (photographic records)
Graphic design by Liliana Silva
Texts by Ana Rodríguez
Text translation by Luís Costa