Author: Binaural Nodar
Catalog Number: Nodar Editions, nodar.023
Until half a century ago, there wasn’t a village in Beira where flax wasn’t grown. The cultivation of flax responded to ancestral needs for shelter, protection and body comfort (clothing or bedding), and it existed, as with other agricultural and livestock production, in the context of a self-subsistence economy, It was also common for the work (for example, spinning or weaving) or the end product (the fabrics) to be exchanged for other work or goods, or for the surplus to be sold at the fairs that existed in the region’s main villages or towns.
In 2015, Binaural Nodar began a lengthy investigation into the linen cycle in the village of Várzea de Calde (civil parish of Calde, municipality of Viseu), in close collaboration with the Várzea de Calde Linen Museum. As a result of this research, co-funded simultaneously by the Viseu Cultura Program of the Municipality of Viseu and the Creative Europe Program (Tramontana network), the bilingual (Portuguese and English) book “Várzea de Calde: Uma aldeia tecida a linho” was published, the CD “Cancioneiro do linho e da vida rural” by the Ethnographic Group of Várzea de Calde was released and dozens of sound and audiovisual recordings were made, which are now part of the Binaural Nodar Digital Archive.
Bearing in mind the rich sound and visual aspects of the linen cycle, in 2021 Binaural Nodar designed twenty sound and visual postcards, entitled “The ancestral vibration of linen” and corresponding to each stage of the linen cycle: plowing, sowing, uprooting, ripping, watering, weeding, ragging, threshing, spinning, ensiling, boiling, unraveling, washing, embroidering, dyeing, folding, warping, assembling, filling and weaving.
This collection of postcards had graphic design by Liliana Silva and sound composition by Luís Costa, and was co-financed by the Municipality of Viseu, through the Viseu Cultura Program and the Directorate-General for the Arts.