Art Encounters Foundation (ISHO House)

Sunstone

What are we looking at? What is up and what is down? The first frames in the essay film Sunstone are topsy-turvy, introducing the viewers to roaring ocean waves and ragged rocks, and further to a poetic archaeology of optics. A system of lighthouses along the coast of Portugal serves as the starting point for Filipa Cesar and Louis Henderson’s exploration of the current epistemological crisis, connected to, among others, the new planetary digital communications infrastructure. Today these beacons, the inner structures of which look like abstract sculptures, are rapidly being replaced by GPS and other novelties. Mirroring the technological development of lighthouses, the poetic film, itself, includes, for example, 16mm celluloid film, 3D CGI and desktop technology.

 “We need a lighthouse philosopher”, says one of the few remaining lighthouse keepers in Portugal in the film. Through his narrative, we learn about the sophisticated analogue technology of lighthouses which use glass prisms to repurpose light. The son of a former colonial subject, himself, he talks about lighthouses as a key to navigation and, therefore, part and parcel of European colonialism. Today they are automated and supplanted by satellites as nodes. At one point the lighthouses were run by the Royal Post Office and then by the military, similar to numerous satellites today. Pirates, spies, morse code, 9/11, underwater telex cables and an angry octopus join the story, which involves footage of the machine manufacturing of optical lenses, the first Tricontinental meeting in Cuba in 1966 and Op Art exhibitions. ML