*Recipe for revealing images*
"Oh, silver beneath the earth. You are an alien too", written by Emilio Chapela and Alma Grossen, as an invitation to Moon Circles Berlin that will follow the creation of a artwork related to the sun.
*Recipe for revealing images* is a reading that follows an action performed by Emilio Chapela in his studio in Berlin that lasted eight minutes and 20 seconds, the time it takes sunlight to travel from the Sun to Earth. During this time, a photographic paper coated in silver gelatin was exposed and developed simultaneously in plain daylight.
*Recipe for revealing images* (text below) was read aloud during the presentation of the Moon Circle (Berlin — Emilio Chapela). It evokes fragmented descriptions of nuclear reactions inside the sun, latent images, light, mining, ultraviolet instability, turmeric, developer, fixer, and the material histories embedded in photographic processes.
The piece was written somewhere between a recipe, scientific notation, laboratory procedure, and spoken poem. It attempts to trace some of the material transformations and deep temporalities that make a photographic image possible.
Moon Circle is a project in which participants — conspirators, witnesses, collectors — will accompany me in creating an ambitious artwork related to the Sun, which becomes part of their collections at the end of the cycle. The process unfolds across seven months, with gatherings, talks, performances, experiments, and artwork deliveries marking each full moon.
If you would like to join the Moon Circle or receive more information about future gatherings, please visit lunaserpent.com or contact me directly.
*Recipe for revealing images*
Alma Grossen and Emilio Chapela
The space between the sun and us is eight minutes thick.
Mexico - Berlin - Everywhere
Sunlight clashing onto us at 300 hundred thousand kilometres per second. Slowed by the atmosphere, light reaches us.
Redshift, scattering, diffusion, radiating rhythms of science measuring our atmosphere, turning vacuum into potential energy. latency, silver hiding imagery.
Developer. The photographer taints, moists, dissolves, revealing images that existed forever, even before appearing. The chemicals bleed reality: silver halide, silver bromide, silver chloride, the dark room as a vacuum of birthing sculptured time.
Cut time - snap a shot and frame, stop! interruption - fixer.
Darkroom chemistry.
Reduction, Amplification, look! - silver emerging.
Developer, Acceleration, Stop bath.
Interruption.
Fixer.
Stabilization.
Developer, Developer.
Acceleration, acceleration, acceleration, acceleration. Stop bath.
Interruption.
Fixer.
Stabilization, stabilization, stabilisations, photosynthesis!
Photosynthesis stores sunlight, just as sunflower seeds are condensed products of solar energy. We devour solar energy. We are devoured back.
“There’s no way to eat and not be eaten”. Quote. Donna haraway.
Inestabilidad química.
Inestabilidad ultravioleta.
Turmeric. Kurkuma.
Kurkuna in water.
Cooked from inside the sun.
Animal collagen, bone gelatine, organic matter.
Rotten. Boiled - connective tissue.
Add heat - dissolve structure.
Remove: unstable matter, scratch: Residual traces.
Silence
What remains reacts no longer.
Compression: geological. Deep time.
Mining, mining extraction!
Oh, silver beneath the earth.
You are an alien too.
Supernova
Exploded stars, now hidden in the ground.
Heavy elements, gases, liquids, gelatines, silver born elsewhere.
Many suns. Many times. Many soils.
A photograph: an image inscribed by starlight.
I used a 10 Mexican-peso coin featuring the Aztec Calendar of the Sun to block the sun and create a photograph that mimics the moon, which, paradoxically, is only visible to us because of light reflected from the sun.
As part of the evening, Emilio Chapela prepared a solar drink, a refreshing water he designed made with Turmeric/Kurkuma, which is sensitive to UV light from the sun. Get in contact to get the recipe!
We invite you to become part of Moon Circle by Luna Serpent. We hope you can join.
lunaserpent.com