”L'innommable”

© Rui J G Ramos, 2024 | archive h409

October 26th, 2024, was the election day for the 45th president of the United States. That night, this work was done while something unnameable happened.
 
These "nameless stones" tell us of the fragility of their solidity, of the apparent unity and strength that disintegrates before our eyes. Subtly, what you see is not what it seems; insecurity and distrust settle in the images.

Looking demands attention! Measuring, deconstructing, checking and comparing is a necessary attitude of constant questioning about what we look at. Nothing can be taken for granted in the images that are presented to us daily. We shall not cease from exploration.*
 
If the title of this work copies the name of “L'innommable” (1953, Éditions de Minuit; published in English, 1958) by Samuel Beckett, its presence in this work is transmitted with the knowledge of the musical piece “Sinfonia” (1968) by Luciano Berio. This work by Berio uses excerpts from “L'innommable” (“The Unnamable”) in its third movement, along with excerpts from Gustave Mahler or quotations from Claude Lévi-Strauss and many other authors. This musical work by Berio can be understood as a musical reflection of its time in the complex and dense decade of the 1960s.

(*) T. S. Eliot, 2004 (originally published, 1943), "Little Gidding", Quatro Quartetos (Four Quartets), Lisboa, Relógio d'Água [translation by Gualter Cunha]