The Guide to the Unknown. The Reluctant Reconstruction of Not Experienced is a book documenting impressions of the rural mountains of the Viseu Dão Lafões region in Portugal - impressions based solely on the Binaural Nodar Digital Archive - and was created during the Virtual Rural Virtual Residency Program.
The book is a collection of short poems, free writing and abstract illustrations. It is a guide, albeit not in the traditional sense.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, I spent a significant amount of time staring at photographs and videos of places I could not go or return to.
I kept relying on others to document parts of their reality and share them – sometimes with me alone, sometimes with a broader audience.
And I kept doing it myself. I kept collecting pieces of my everyday life to show those who could not be with me in person; with whom
I could not be in person. We kept exchanging photographs of beautiful landscapes and everyday meals in hopes of experiencing them together for real soon.
This kind of second-hand experience always came with a set of very mixed emotions.
Joy went pair in pair with melancholy.
Nostalgia overshadowed the sense of togetherness.
We kept telling ourselves this was all temporary, and we needed to wait just a little bit longer.
Humans have always relied on archives to learn things. However, they were either a gateway to or a way to solidify the first-hand experience.
Amidst lockdowns and constantly changing restrictions, second-hand was often all we had.
An archive is supposed to be a place of remembrance. And yet, it became a place of being present as well.
The Guide to the Unknown began with the question about intention – I was wondering whether the reason for documenting something may actually be of more importance than the documentation itself. I was curious whether recorded experience eventually becomes diluted and loses its meaning when shared over and over again.
In the course of working on the project, my personal circumstances changed. And so, new questions arose. I started to think a lot about the concept of home and having a deep attachment to the place of one’s origin (which I have never experienced myself). These new inquiries seemed to connect well with the original outline of my work.
Early in the process, I made a decision to experience the archive more intuitively and emotionally. I did not mind not understanding the words and did not pay too much attention to going through the archive in any particular order.
The book was supposed to be a guide.
But my work is a recollection of someone’s recollection. Dream-like impression of places and concepts foreign to me.
I can only offer hints and not full answers. I can only offer the direction that will take a person halfway.
The rest is always up to the traveller.
The Guide to the Unknown, book, 2022