4’33″(e tuttavia qualche cosa risplende)
2024 – ongoing
4.33 (e tuttavia qualche cosa risplende)
Text by Nicola Scinetti
Le monde, monotone et petit, aujourd’hui,
Hier, demain, toujours, nous fait voir notre image
Une oasis d’horreur dans un désert d’ennui!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Dear Maura,
As promised, here are a few notes from my journey. After getting off the train in Seville, I took a Spanish bus to Algeciras, where I spent the night. The following morning, I boarded the ferry.
In Tangier, the immense African sky came down upon me with all its weight.
Harbour, heat and excrement between the tyres of small cars disgorged from the belly of the ferry; the acrid smell of sea, earth and city. I took a taxi to the station and paid dearly for it. I have few memories of the train journey to Marrakesh, save for a heavy sleep and restless dreams in an unfamiliar language.
And now here I am, beneath the blazing sun of the Moroccan Sahara, in the dazzling reflection of the Drâa, the longest river in the country. Naivety has brought me this far: a mirage of wondrous light, tasting of hope and reeking of deception. Only those who cross the desert can reach the oasis.
A life-giving oasis, a refuge, redemption, I thought. Greenery, coolness, cold, crystal-clear waters in which to immerse oneself, as in a poem, I thought. This, surely, was the oasis. I was deluding myself. Here, nature is extinguished, suffocated, sterile. A pervasive sense of menace hangs over everything, a valley of silence without sound…
All I have left is photography. A grainy, primitive black and white to tell the story of a disorientation, my own. Still images of wild forces, territories on the margins of spaces eternally identical to themselves. “Magic and spirituality devoured by an impending tragedy.”
That is what the Berber guide said, in flawless French. A young man with pale eyes and skin like leather. “For some time now,” he said, “science has been warning of the possible extinction of Morocco’s oases. What they are undergoing,” the young man continued, “is nothing but a manifestation of the climate change taking place across the Earth. A civilisation, a people and a natural environment are disappearing.”
I told the young man that I came from a place where the glaciers are retreating. He smiled with his pale eyes and made to leave. I don’t know whether he understood. My French isn’t quite so flawless.
That’s all. Sending you a big hug,
Marcello
