FOX TALE

Chapter I: A dead fox on the road to Milfontes from Cultivamos Cultura. Three women and a girl on a quest to retrieve its skull. The corpse had been lying on the road for a few days, there was not much left: fur, skin, bones and maggots. It was difficult to picture the fox as it had been just a few days before. After cutting its head off, bagging it and taking it back to Cultivamos Cultura, it had to be cooked to lose the remains of flesh. It then became a few shattered bones.

 

Chapter II: The house that Cultivamos Cultura inhabits. Time is layered on its walls, ceilings, rooms and quarters. The walls in the barn have scars and mending. Some of the ceilings in the rooms have caved-in. Plants, insects and other animals inhabit them. The objects in the rooms of the barn and the quarters in the house also have time layered on them. Some are lying on the ground, some are piled and some are leaning on the walls. Just like the fox, it is not easy to picture them as active participants;  today they are silent decomposing spectators of ongoing stories.

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Chapter III:: Beauty. In this hyper-aesthetized world, what makes something beautiful? How do we relate to the traditional Western Canon of beauty? Is beauty directly related to time? Do we remain beautiful as time goes by? Are the forgotten objects of the house and the caved-in ceilings beautiful? Is the corpse of the fox beautiful? Some of the physical spaces in Cultivamos Cultura are inhabited. Some are not. The ones that are not, are forgotten.

 

How do we prevail as active participants in this world? What do we need to do so we are not forgotten? We could think about being necessary, useful, or even being loved, in order to persist. Do we need to remain beautiful? The issue at stake is not only to remain as active participants, but also to remain desired. Is being beautiful an imperative to be desired?

 

This work explores transubstantiation as a way of persevering in the world and as a reinterpretation of beauty.