SETE DE BICO
In Vilares, situated on the slopes of Corno de Bico, until not so long ago, people lived at a different pace from the rest of the territory. The local landscape, a robust consequence of a long sedimentation of agrarian customs, was ruled by the cycles of translation and rotation of the Earth. The constancy of the sun on the ground and its beings perpetuated a way of inhabiting time deeply immersed in the reality of the place and perfectly oblivious to the surrounding world. Even today, through oral testimonies and popular humour, the memories of the old time difference between Hora do Bico (Bico Time) and the official Portuguese time are preserved.
Motivated by the understanding of the Hora de Bico as a sign of resistance to the imposition of the clock as a metric of control, we propose, through a regulated structure, the concretization of the clash between experienced time and fictionalized time.
The intervention emerges as a provocation to the temporality of the place: It is a line described by seven regular, equidistant and rhythmic elements; A line, deformed by colour, that accuses a never equal passage of time; An interrupted line, as a possible, palpable and non-specific allusion to any ruled duration; An imposed line, that by its rigorously calculated absence, measures an arbitrary interval; A dematerialised line, superficially reflective of the immediate surroundings. A line as an artifice achieved by the occult and its opposite, which aims at punctuating human (im)permanence.
This work is part of the program of Artistic Interventions and Community of a set of 24 municipalities of Minho, in the north of Portugal.
