SCINTILLATING SCOTOMA materialises a worldview in which the tactile relationship with inanimate matter is the primordial source of sound construction. This concert-performance is inscribed between the material and the anima, between pre-language and surface, and operates through the intersection of four axes: the human vocal apparatus; a haptic language; refraction as a tactical mechanism of mutation and of the “rematerialisation” of time; and the camouflage of the word through the voice. It operates an intercession between the human vocal apparatus and touch, in a refraction of the voice through dysmorphia.

The premiere of the performance takes place in two contiguous zones: a haptic zone, where the performance unfolds, and a resonant zone, where the performance is diffused. Following this concert-performance, Jonathan Saldanha developed DYSMORPHIA, an exhibition that extends this investigation into the visuality of touch and the understanding of the human eye as the locus of all images and all reflections. This is not an apology for visuality as the sole point of passage between interior and exterior, but a critique of its cultural and organic predominance.

The encounter between retinal image, voice and a fluid with the sculptural-device that transitions between SCINTILLATING SCOTOMA and DYSMORPHIA compels an intersectionality of the senses. The images that appear in the exhibition—photographs of the Ver pela Arte choir, a 3D model of an eye that reflects a world it is unable to perceive, and 3D animations of oils and jets of toxins—recover the different phases of the creative process and build a universe of possible connections between what is heard, what is seen and what is felt. In other words, a new narrative of the haptic, the visible and the audible, and all their resonances.

“Reduced to listening to you, I see you with my ears...”
Jean Cocteau, The Human Voice

Scintillating Scotoma forms part of the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Portuguese Catholic University in Porto and results from an artistic residency at the School of Arts of the Catholic University in Porto.

Direction: Jonathan Saldanha; Conductor: Pedro Monteiro; Choir: Eva Braga Simões, Gabriela Braga Simões, Leonor Barbosa de Melo, Pedro Oliveira Lopes; Sound: José Arantes; Scenography: Alexandre Mota; Executive production: Joaquim Durães ; Coproduction: Soopa, Universidade Católica e BoCA - Biennial of Contemporary Arts