In every school playground it is possible to hear certain words and expressions that the children use and that are not to be found in dictionaries. Words that are entirely made up or words that evolve from existing ones, or have been given new meanings (in games, in bullying, in rhymes and rigmaroles). Most of these words and expressions fall out of use with time because of their transient nature (they are the craze of a moment, or will last for a school term - disappearing the next, or are never to be used again as their speakers grow up).

Some of these words are restrained to a small community, in a particular school, class or group, while others are adopted from television and are more commonly used. Nevertheless, very seldom, there are some of these words and expressions that accompany the children in their journey into adolescence and become the mark of entire generations in adult life, eventually making their way into the Portuguese language.

This video is the outcome of research that the artist conducted in this field while he was working as a teacher of extracurricular activities in grade school. After school, when pupils, teachers and staff had left the premises, the artist recorded on video the school buildings, the classrooms, the corridors, the windows, stairways, playgrounds and the sports field. The contemplative shots record uninhabited space, and yet the presence of the daytime occupants and their everyday activities pervades everything.

The artist seems to recall experiences from his distant past, that overlap with more recent ones. From a space recognizable to everyone, and from language games that everyone has experienced in a similar context, we are taken back to memories that are simultaneously personal and collective. Relations are established between language, memory, childhood, architecture, the artist’s personal experience and a given social, historical and cultural context.

The title refers directly to these issues and was suggested by a poem by Herberto Hélder.