Art_Africa_2016_02_

ARTAFRICA

REVIEWS

LIVRO DE TODO O UNIVERSO / PAMELA STUYCK

Livro de Todo o Universo

(Chopped and Screwed)

Bianca Baldi at the Museum Plantin Moretus, Antwerp

by Pamela Stuyck

In the city centre of Antwerp, Belgium, stands the stately Museum Plantin-Moretus. Today

this 16th century building houses an important part of the city’s history. The former

printing house used to form the nucleus where knowledge was produced, composed,

printed and published. Visitors first enter the printing room — which contains two

of the oldest surviving printing presses in the world — continuing to the so-called

letterkamer (letter room), which stores countless packages holding over ten ton unused

printing letters. The intense labour of the largest typographical enterprise of the 16th

century is still tangible. En route to the corrector’s room private offices are crossed.

These chambers are lined with rare gilded leather which translates the status, luxury and

wealth of the printing house. The walls breathe the spirit and ambition of an era. It is

within this context that Livro arises on November 8th 2015.

A 17th century poem, which was published at Plantin-Moretus, evokes the spirit of

this character created by artist Bianca Baldi (born 1985, South Africa). Livro is the

personification of a book that contains the whole universe. A metaphor created by Baldi

during a residency in AIR Antwerp in 2015. It refers to her larger film project Livro

de Todo o Universo. The Corrector’s Room of the museum formed the backdrop for its

awakening.

In the middle of this dark historical room sits a figure that declaims an eight-word verse:

TOT TIBI SUNT DOTES VIRGO QUOT SIDERA CAELO – Virgin, you have as many

virtues as there are stars in the sky. The performer recites all iterations of this sentence,

consisting of 1022 permutations, the same number of stars in the Ptolemy’s universe.

Livro is encircled by an audience, spectators, who are surrounded by speakers. The

sequence of words change; the rhythm accelerates, the motion of the performer’s body

emphasizes these ‘frequencies’. Pulsating, the altering text slows down. Spectators can

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