Once upon a time there was a country. Full stop. New paragraph.
That country had the shape of a rectangle and it also had the shape of the letter ‘I’ or of a shoebox. That country had four main cardinal points: north, south, east and west, and the people went forwards and backwards, to the left and to the right. Like the cars, the buses, the motorbikes, the bicycles, the trains. Sometimes the people went round in circles and other times they stood still in the same spot.
In that country there were people, as in every country, and the people came in different shapes and sizes, as in every country too. There were short people, tall people, so-so people, fat people, thin people and so-so. People with long hair, people with short hair, straight, curly and so-so; and there were even people with no hair, who were called baldies. Beautiful people, ugly people, depending on your taste, of course.
In that country the people also spoke, as in every country, one main language, but you could hear other languages being spoken too, and sometimes, too, they fell silent. And the silence of this country was the same as the silence of other countries.
ABOUT THE PROCESS
For five months we had the chance to work with a group of children from the Castelo Branco area.
With them we rediscovered the ‘whys’ we too once asked, dogs that fly, cats that sing, countries unheard of until then, pictures of things in two dimensions that, together, create a world where what is essential is invisible.
