Fire Escape
June 2022
Salzburger Kunstverein Salzburg - Austria
The project deals with the power of the written word; who's stories get to be told or listened to, and the distorting perceptions that may arise from this unbalance, at the same time as writing can be a vehicle for healing. A text creeps into the nook of the staircase, setting the context in which the Malleus Maleficarum was written: out of revenge against one woman, and serving to condemn so many more thereafter, distorting our perceptions of what it means to be a woman with power till this day. A poetic prose creeps up the winding staircase, accompanied by fire drawings, making parallels between the act of writing and giving birth, comparing blood flow and writing flow. A staircase is the vascular system of a building’s architecture, allowing for the flow of visitors. In this active reading, the visitor treads through fact and fiction, in a process of slowing liberating narrative.
Basement essay and fire drawings by Dandara Catete. Poetic prose and photograph by Aleta Valente. Blood crayons and pastels based on the Aborto Series, by Rachel Azoubel, and produced in Austria by Dandara Catete. Concept by Dandara Catete.
[ENG]
<< They say Austria was one of the last countries to ban witch trials. What here begam was to end here; the full circle. Heinrich Kramer, right-hand man to Archbishop Bernhard Von Rohr, wrote the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487, after having been expelled from Innsbruck for misconduct in the trial against Helena Scheuberin, who was acquitted of the charges of witchcraft. She was to be one of the last to deny and survive such an accusation.
While at first his theories were largely discredited, time erases context and what is left is the work of literature. A piece of art, an enrapturing fiction that drew in the fantasies of men for the next 300 years and reaches us still. The perfect excuse to justify the takeover of female-owned property, knowledge, and power over our own bodies. The academic craftsmanship of the word, one of the world’s most successful campaigns of fake news.
* * *
In the University of Salamanca, one of the oldest known academic institutions of Europe, graduating students borrowed from the Christian emblem of the Chi Ro to leave their blood mark on the walls, where their names immortalize their presence and serve as proof of knowledge, but also wealth and status.
Traditions have a way of seeping into our subconscious until we believe them to be knowledge. The witch hunt is not over if the book still influences how you think.
We burned, and were born again. And now we, witches of today, hereby mark our ground, celebrate our knowledge, our craft.
* To all the women who have lost their lives by the hands of men who persecuted their power. >>