Arancia bruciata

In the south of contemporary Italy, a community devotes itself to divinatory practices dating back to Roman antiquity, such as ornithomancy and the interpretation of celestial phenomena. In the midst of these tormented lands, a series of gestures and attitudes emerge, opening up new horizons.

The protagonists of Arancia Bruciata seem haunted by an ancestral age. Instead of frescos on the walls of a temple, paintings in a tunnel and tattoos convey their mindful relationship to nature. Voice messages are sent formulating urgent requests: to decipher the meaning of the storm’s rumblings or the clue given by a bird’s flight. The answers seem to be drawn from a book of spells that contains all truths. Clémentine Roy prolongs this divinatory appetite by helping us follow the swift trajectories of birds and by deviating from conventional storytelling. Rather than adopt the reassuring form of some little tale, her account employs a kind of exhilarating de-hierarchisation between action and inaction: relaxing in a hammock may be as significant as participating in a demonstration. The spoken word withdraws to reveal different ways of being in the world, the contact between skin and things: the water of a river, the flesh of a tomato. In addition to the jackdaw perched contentedly on her shoulder, the soothsayer has human acolytes, and their voices resound better when they sing. The heady tunes that the friends create together relate to an almost stationary history that stretches into the present. Yet, the surrounding world continues to advance and it may well be that divination is not merely the art of predicting what is already written, but also of bringing about the world one longs for.

Olivia Cooper-Hadjian