The Ancestral Vibration of Linen
Exhibition of a collection of visual and sound postcards about the linen cycle
Opening, August 28, 3:00 pm
Varzea de Calde Linen Museum
(Parish Council of Calde, Municipality of Viseu)
Until half a century ago, there was no Beira village where flax was not cultivated. The cultivation of flax responded to the ancestral needs of shelter, protection and comfort of the body (clothing or bed linen), and it existed, as happened with the other agricultural and livestock productions, in the context of an economy of self-sufficiency. subsistence, in which the majority of fabric production was for family use, it being equally common that the work (for example, spinning or weaving) or the final product (the fabrics) could be exchanged for other work or goods, or even , that the surpluses were sold at the fairs that existed in the main villages or towns of the region.
In 2015, Binaural Nodar started a long investigation into the flax cycle in the village of Várzea de Calde (Calde parish, Viseu municipality), in close collaboration with the Várzea de Calde Linen Museum. As a result of this investigation, co-financed simultaneously by the Viseu Culture Program of the Municipality of Viseu and by the Creative Europe Program (Tramontana network), the bilingual book (Portuguese and English) “Várzea de Calde: A village woven with linen” was published. the CD “Cancioneiro do flax and rural life” by the Ethnographic Group of Várzea de Calde was launched and dozens of sound and audiovisual recordings were made, which are now part of the Digital Archive Binaural Nodar.
Taking into account the rich sound and plasticity of the flax cycle, Binaural Nodar conceived in this year 2021 twenty sound and visual postcards, entitled “The ancestral vibration of flax” and corresponding to each phase of the flax cycle (plowing, sowing, plucking , ripping, watering, boring, tackling, sedating, spinning, braiding, baking, unscramble, washing, bundling, staining, folding, warping, assembling, filling, weaving), which will be presented in the form of an exhibition that will remain on display until end of 2021 at the Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde.
This collection of postcards had a graphic design by Liliana Silva and sound composition by Luís Costa, being co-financed by the Municipality of Viseu, through the Viseu Cultura Program and by the Directorate-General for the Arts.