The room of Culturgest Porto has become, until 20 May, a plateau of reflection on the individual, the society, the human relations and the cultural conditions.

With the renowned curator, theorist and critic Delfim Sardo at the helm, the ever so typical architectural features of the historic building are now in the area consigned to its wide lobby, covered by the power of the image. The contours of the latter are the place where lights reveal themselves through different colours, hence forming a unique strength that owns the space and transforms it, leading the gaze and the viewer’s attention through the artistic work presented. The architectural environment becomes neutral and the background for the exposed medium, the video.

The work that gives life to Culturgest, specifically created to be inhabited, is authored by Tatiana Macedo (Lisbon, 1981). The artist has a particularly interesting path, being awarded at international level, and she has been consummating her artistic production mainly with and based on new media, particularly photography, sound and another one that is revealed in this case, cinema in expanded mode. These new practices and forms of creation have been occupying a central and absolutely crucial spot in the realm of contemporary art, and, exhibitions like this one, with a brilliant curatorial exercise, is where the specificities of the works are empowered, giving them the chance to have a more effective way to approach the audience.

Based on the projection of one video in four separate panels, Tatiana Macedo multiplies the image and, consecutively, also the medium itself, hence extending the possibilities of the latter, and proportionally, the experiences provoked in the viewer.

The projections are temporally uncoordinated which, on the one hand, allows to simultaneously display different moments of the same narrative, as well as to evoke and depict the passage of time. The built physical dimension is, therefore, a catalyst of the temporal dimension, with both being related, and creating, after that, a perceptive and quite particular experiential sphere.

At the same time, the disposition of the object allows a certain observational freedom, however there are two main ways of doing it, both inviting an active participation of the spectator. The first is to walk throughout the space in the gallery’s atrium, watching the video from different perspectives and, another, is to occupy the centre of the installation, integrating it. The recipient of the artistic object therefore exercises a decision about it, about the way they want to see it, choosing their starting point, observing and understanding the video at their own pace. Experiences at the most diverse levels are provided, according to the stimuli inferred from the different human senses, from the most immediate, visual, to the auditory, triggered by the video’s background noise and, subsequently, by voices, to the perceptive, resulting from the whole environment and games of light and games that make up the work. This plurality of reactions provoked in the audience is, therefore, particularly possible through the new media.

In accordance with this deep and physical involvement that is developed, an unavoidable approximation to the video’s character is also unfurled, interpreted by the renowned actor Nuno Lopes. He presents himself in deep introspection, having an inner dialogue at a certain point, a monologue to which a voice that names different storms is eventually added. Therefore, one can understand how memories from the character and from those who were part of Oporto’s historical, the space used for the film, the restaurant Cunha, appear at the same time.

The narrative language appears to be post-modernist, being densified by a scenario which, as mentioned by the curator, is diffuse and dystopian, typical of an 80s film.

Filled with sadness, nostalgia, a strong poetic trait and an equally dense mystery, Esgotaram-se os nomes para as tempestades is the work and the exhibition of a conceptual cinema, materialized through an unexpected dimension of experience, so far away from the real, but at the same time, so intrinsically close to every man.