Interview
Daniel Frota de Abreu
3Package Deal I Edition 2014
Daniel Frota de Abreu I Publishing
29
Sun 7 June, 09:00 PM
Daniel Frota de Abreu's studio
Wiltzanghlaan 60, Amsterdam
The Shape
of Words
Daniel Frota doesn't stick to one discipline and instead publishes books, does performances and makes videos and audio-installations. With a background in typography, he's interested in the relation between the body of language and his own body senses. And how you can use different senses for different ways of communicating. At times abstract, at times pretty specific, Frota explains his fascination for a never published book by Sci-Fi writer Philip K. Dick, blindness, and learning the fascinating technique of echolocation.
Interview Brenda Bosma
Photography Wessel Baarda
Hi Daniel, how are you doing?
I'm just resting a bit from writing. I am doing a performance next week with an artist friend of mine. We're gonna do a reading from a book.
What kind of book?
It's from a book by Philip K. Dick called The Owl in Daylight, which was never actually written. He died before he could write it, it only exists in an interview. For the performance we're appropriating the text with our own interests.
What's it about?
The plot is about communication really. It has to do with the materiality of language. He describes the book as being narrated by a person that comes from a place where there's no atmosphere – so, no sound; and because of that there's no speech.
How do they understand each other?
Through the telepathic transmission of colours. It's Sci-Fi. So what happens eventually is that the main character, the narrator, starts hearing stuff he's never heard before, like visions from another world. Eventually, he takes his spaceship and finds earth. He gets confused by how the people there communicate, by oscillating the air between two people. It's as abstract for him as it is for them to think about telepathy.
A sad story.
Yeah, but he invents devices for translating oscillations in the air into sequences of colours. Because he uses colours, he considers the earthlings
Are you hoping something strange will happen?
I'm hoping it won't sound too absurd. We'll see if it creates some sort of resonance with the audience. The whole performance will almost be like two monologues overlapping. I'll just be glad if there's some sort of connection.
What is it about language you find interesting?
This is where it gets really abstract. Coming from typography, the idea of giving form to words has really caught my interest. Like if it's a typographic form, or a sound form, or... Whenever a word is given body or shape, it also accumulates a lot of noise and miscommunication. So, there's no transparency, it's always an idea.
The message always gets distorted somehow, by its form. What I'm trying to do with my work is actually connect my body, the way that I perceive those forms
practically blind. The whole challenge is to write a text from a perspective you'll never have.
Are you hoping something strange will happen?
I'm hoping it won't sound too absurd. We'll see if it creates some sort of resonance with the audience. The whole performance will almost be like two monologues overlapping. I'll just be glad if there's some sort of connection.
What is it about language that you find interesting?
This is where it gets really abstract. Coming from typography, the idea of giving form to words has really caught my interest. Like if it's a typographic form, or a sound form, or... Whenever a word is given body or shape, it also accumulates a lot of noise and miscommunication. So, there's no transparency, it's always an idea. The message always gets distorted somehow, by its form. What I'm trying
'Coming from typography, the idea of giving form
to words has really caught my interest.'
to do with my work is actually connect my body, the way that I perceive
those forms.
Can you talk about your research for the upcoming period?
In my research, I go deep into a few aspects of my interests. For instance, I'm learning how to echolocate. This is the ability to locate the presence of objects, without your sight, through the echo of the room. It is used by visually impaired people. Some of them develop this ability by making clicks with their tongues. Through the difference in resonance, they can sense the distance and the presence of things. As soon as I started, it almost seemed like a matter of faith as well, that I could actually learn that, because it's really hard and uncomfortable to try to walk around without your sight.
What fascinates you about blindness?
I've been dealing with the idea of blindness for quite some time. As a language, braille seemed really abstract to me. The aesthetics of it – I was drawn to that. The dots almost look like bitmap images, and there are words in there. This might sound cheesy, but the fact that you can bridge different conditions through language is fascinating to me. It's the same idea as the guy who never heard anything and just communicates with colours and telepathy.
This interests me
Daniel Frota de Abreu is embedded in coalition Publishing (Mevis & Van Deursen, If I Can't Dance, Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdams Grafisch Atelier).
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