SAID DOKINS (MX) - HELIOGRAPHIES OF MEMORY

'Las guerras establecían los límites de los sueños' (The war established the limits of the dreams), Heliographies of Memory series. 2018 Sverd i fjell, Stavanger, Norway.
Said Dokins in collaboration with Leonardo Luna

Said Dokins continues his stunning Heliographies of Memory series with a site-specific light painting for Nuart Festival 2018

This piece was made on the shore of the Hafrsfjord where the monument 'Sverd i fjell' commemorates the Battle of Hafrsfjord which took place in 872, when King Harald Fairhair gathered all of Norway under his crown.

From the artist:

We found it interesting to work next to this monument, since it represents war by means of weapons (swords) but also a forced peace since they are buried in the ground. This intervention of light refers to the notion of a monument as a symbol of the exercise of power and the delimiter of history, as Walter Benjamin points out regarding the dream as a participant in history: "the wars established just and unjust, as well as the limits of dreams."

About the Heliographies of Memory series:

Heliographies of Memory consist in a series of photographs that capture the calligraphic gesture; the very moment where the action of inscription is taking place. But this is not usual calligraphy writing. The texts are written with light, so the words disappear as soon as they were suggested by the moves of the calligrapher. Invisible to the naked eye, they can only be captured by a process of long-exposure photography that reveals what happened even though no one could see it. Through these ephemeral interventions with light calligraphy we capture the invisible, acting on air, using as locations iconic places: historic sites, public plazas, monuments, bulwarks, abandoned places become spaces of re-signification of meaning.