Performances by Ramon Amaro, AmazonPrimeQueen (Victoria McKenzie), DeForrest Brown, Jr., Kepla (Jon Davies), Jorge Lucero Diaz, Conrad Moriarty-Cole. Audio contributions by Antonio Lara. Video directed and edited by Carlos Lopes.

Darkness is often understood as the lack of illumination or absence of light, yet it is often an afterimage - or an image that continues to appear in one's vision after the original stimulus has taken place. While most afterimages are considered to be optical illusions, they suggest that what we see in the present differs from actual reality; they are fragments of the past brought forward into our present vision as deceptions and misrepresentations of the real.

Darkness, as a First Act of Creation proposes darkness not as a void or absence but, instead, borrowing from Denise Ferreira da Silva, a type of dark matter with generative potential. A ‘first act of creation’ in a continual process of creating one’s own reality.

The body performances, live DJ set, and audio-visual soundscape that compose this work, problematise genetic memory and the black body as a technology; bring darkness to life in an interpretation of the god Kulan, a spirit embodied by the Selk’nam peoples of Chile; and propose darkness as the necessary condition for self-actualisation.

‘Darkness, as a First Act of Creation’ is part of the the Dutch presentation ‘I See That I See What You Don’t See’ at the XXII Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/25945