It´s the magic with no magic.

Edith Derdyk

Rasures I, 1997 22.000 meters of black cotton line, 20.000 stapples and 13 days of setting up Galeria Adriana Penteado, São Paulo, Brazi photo: Gal Oppido


Projects and sketches, 1999/2001
Ball-point pen, paper

Projects and sketches, 1999/2001
Ball-point pen, paper

Slope

NOEMI JAFFÉ

There’s a story telling that if all the people on Earth decided to give a step backwards at the same time, the planet would get out of orbit,. That’s probably impossible. All the people together, calculating an average weight of 80 kg per person, weigh about 480 billion kilograms. The weight of the earth was estimated in six sextillion tons. But the truth of the story is not so important. To imagine all the people, everywhere in the world, stopping everything they do every day at the same time, in Nigeria and Mongolia, going to the bathroom, brushing their teeth, making the stock exchange go up or down, discovering a new drug for the cure of cancer, all of them together giving a step backwards, is a very nice thing. And if it doesn’t take the Earth out of orbit, it should.

And why is it also so impressive to know that a woodpecker, now for real, slowly squabbling a large tree, is capable of putting it down for good?

And that knotted black threads, as in a labyrinth, like people talking, women gossiping, or the silence of pure making, could hold a white, heavy, peaceful plan?

Someone could tell: it’s the beauty of persistence and patience. That’s the only way for the weak to support or tear down the strong.

But that’s not it. Worms and plants do hold a mountain. Movement holds repose. The unexpected can support the predictable.

What attracts us in Declive / Slope is not its patience. It´s the magic with no magic. The lightness of the bird, straightforward, or the lightness of the feather, that flows randomly? The weight of lead, massive, or the weight of time, accumulated?

If the plan is sus-pended, it’s because under (sous) its pending something is keeping it. In the case of Declive / Slope, with the delicacy and intelligence of worms that get in and out, people who give a small step backwards in Jamaica or China, Edith Derdyk stapling threads that come and go.

What supports the integral suspension, which is always on the verge of falling, is also the tension. The movement supports the rest, but it’s in the alternation of the movement that one supports the other. The secret of suspension is the point that both separates and unites the threads to the plan.That’s why we feel both safe and threatened. Safe under the threads, threatened by the plan.

No wonder weaving (in Portuguese) also means believing. It’s necessary not only to know what we see, but it’s also necessary to believe in the threads.