Absent Geologies

“Absent Geologies” begins with a stone collected from Boca do Inferno, the rocky coastal formation near Cascais whose name translates as “Mouth of Hell.”

For centuries, Atlantic tides have carved cavities into its surface. The triangular stone bears marks of continuous erosion: holes, channels, and worn edges produced through the slow repetition of water against rock.

The site is associated with overlapping narratives, including the disappearance of Aleister Crowley in 1930. After leaving behind a note suggesting suicide, Crowley vanished from Boca do Inferno and reappeared weeks later in Berlin. The episode, developed through newspaper reports, speculation, and the involvement of Fernando Pessoa, occupies an unstable territory between historical event, literary fiction, publicity, and occult staging. Within these accounts, certain presences remain unrecorded, while still implied by the logic of the story itself.

A projection of Boca do Inferno lights up the darkened space. Standing within it, Inge remains motionless for at least ten minutes, dressed in white and holding the stone. The projected image wraps itself around her body. Rock formations align with her shoulders and torso. Waves move across her skin. Light produces the impression of a temporary convergence in which landscape and body occupy the same surface.

The stone’s weight gradually becomes visible. Small shifts pass through the body as balance moves from one foot to the other. Moisture gathers on her face. The effort of holding the stone accumulates in real time.

After fifteen minutes, she places the stone on a pedestal introduced into the projected field by Erwin. She speaks a single sentence:

The Scarlet Woman was here.

The statement recalls a figure present within the site’s mythologies yet largely absent from their historical narration.

She leaves the space.

The stone remains.

For another fifteen minutes nothing else happens.

The audience continues to watch. Attention settles on the object. Gradually, viewers begin to notice several individuals standing among them wearing Nabuurs&VanDoorn shirts. Printed on the shirts are questions collected during an earlier mail-art project:

What is important?

Where is the center of the world?

Do you know how to stop?

Moving anonymously through the audience, these questions circulate without resolution, passing from one mind to another.

The performance concludes without announcement. One by one, visitors leave the space. The stone remains on the pedestal, occupying the position previously held by the body.

Whether it functions as relic, witness, prop, document, or surrogate is left unresolved.