2024
This video is a visual meditation on writing as process, awareness, and filter. Based on the principle "there are things that should not be read," the work delves into the artistic practices of Anotio and Samuel Silva Menezes, taking two symbolic objects — a notebook and a stamp — as points of departure to explore writing not as a means of communication, but as a tool for thought.
The film unfolds over the course of an afternoon that gradually turns into night, reinforcing the idea of an internal, expanded time. Music and incense initiate a ritualistic space-time in which thought can emerge. Writing does not happen impulsively: one listens, one reflects, and only then does the act of writing take place. Writing becomes, here, a way of thinking with the body.
The writing process follows two phases: note-taking and editing. In the first, words arise from the flow of consciousness, organizing ideas in real time — a raw, immediate form of writing that functions as self-understanding. In the second phase, writing becomes editing: cutting, filtering, refining. It becomes more conscious, deliberate. The phrase "there are things that should not be read" appears as the conclusion of this process — not as censorship, but as an acknowledgment of the limits of what ought to be shared.
The construction of a typographic matrix using rubber letters marks this final moment. Writing becomes a material, almost surgical construction, letter by letter, with the aid of tweezers. This slow, meticulous gesture emphasizes that editing is an act of precise selection — and to choose is also to silence. The addition of the date to the final print links writing to record-keeping, to the documentation of thought on that specific day, in that specific moment.
By the end of the video, it is night. The incense has almost burned out. The light has changed. The thought has been written, printed, archived. And what should not be read — remains, silently, off the page.
06' 04", black and white, stereo sound, 3840x2160 (4K Ultra HD)
Anotio, 2024