Vacuum Corporis

"O que é contra todas as leis da vida é ficar ao lado da contenda como espectador. Sendo uma diminuição combater, é uma traição sem nome lavar as mãos do conflito, e passar as horas de binóculo assestado a contemplar a desgraça do alto dum monte. Assim é que nada se salva. Fica-se homem sem qualquer sentido, manequim vestido de gente, coisa que não tem personalidade. Porque nem se representa a inteligência, nem o instinto, nem qualquer das forças que nos fazem viver. É-se, mas apenas estátua de carne petrificada no meio dum mundo onde sempre é preciso tomar posição,
optar, para merecer o equilíbrio final que a própria catástrofe implica."

Miguel Torga, in Diário (1944)

Vacuum corporis (body's emptiness), hominem te esse memento (remember that you are a human being): two pianos (side by side) with a musical mixed discourse intersected with the projected film - pno 1 has the 'main' material 'walking' against the tide and pno 2 is trying to cease the fluidity and freedom with a 'mechanic' material in a continuous motion, joining sometimes pno 1. 

The basic idea lies on two main thoughts that work as sources of the inspirational impulse: firstly, the mechanical behavior of human 'shaped' beings accepting everything without a critical thought; secondly, and resulting from the previous attitude (mentioned in the quotation used in the piece's introduction from Diário, 1944, by the Portuguese writer Miguel Torga), the existence of human beings without 'intelligence', 'instinct' or 'personality', always choosing a spectator's role during their existence.

Apart from these inspirational thoughts, it must be mentioned not only the photos taken by the composer and well-known photographers (Lisette Model, Harry Callahan, among others), capturing streets' ambience, people walking with a posture, gesture and purpose, mixing different situations, movements, gestures, feelings, but also the research done by the film's author, Daniel Antero, influenced by Akira Kurosawa (incongruity between stillness of central motifs and the opposite movement in the background; the force of nature as a metaphor), by Noh theatre ('orchestration' of movements with unexpected elements) and by cyber punk (neurosis, unpredictable synapses, the alienation of movement, a body with spasms injected with information). 

All these sources work also as intervenient elements mixed with the musical discourse, ending up in a cohesive and interactive 'speech' (projected images, performance issues dealing not only the musical discourse but also the stage plan and details attached to it, etc.) which place this creation in the so-called Transversal Multi Art .