Fiat Flux (?)

Angela Rosana
Apr 26
2 min read

imagem p&b silhueta pessoa braços abertos segundo plano mao aberta — Image courtesy of Alexandre Vianna 🇧🇷

What if what we call chance is merely the most believable form of what we do not understand? There are flashes that erupt from a tear in time, a brief lapse in order, when reality folds in on itself and something emerges—almost imperceptible, laden with ancient density. Sometimes, we mistake these irruptions for errors, for irrelevancies, as if life could only fit into the predictable forms we have learned to name. Yet it is in these spaces—in these subtle misalignments, these improper plays with meaning—that the most subversive forces of creation are hidden. And perhaps it is necessary to relearn how to see, how to move within the flux, how to listen to what never asked to be spoken, and thus recognize what, being so free, almost goes unnoticed.

Figura em movimento borrado diante de porta, com traço de luz branca desenhando curva no ar — fotografia de Margot Barcelos — Image courtesy of Margot Barcelos 🇧🇷

Everything that escapes carries a rumor of beginning. It does not require attentive eyes: it requires available eyes. When matter falters and time dissolves into silence, something, unhurried, happens. It is not necessary to name it. It is not necessary to understand it. Some things only become visible when we give up chasing them. Perhaps reality, in its most exact moments, prefers what unravels to what is fixed, what insinuates itself to what imposes itself.

Fotografia em preto e branco de close no rosto de uma mulher com os dedos diante do olho, segurando uma pequena esfera translúcida — imagem de alta luz, com linhas desenhadas na pele, entre o ver e o ocultar. — Imagem courtesy of Spo Insta 🇧🇷

There are presences that refuse to be contained. They exist in a state of almost—of almost being, of almost saying. Sometimes, all that can be done before them is simply to remain. It was this impulse—or this refusal to fix—that moved artists such as those of the Fluxus Movement in the 1960s. They were not interested in the finished work, but in the movement that slipped through the hands, in the instant when meaning unraveled before it could even be established. Almost imperceptible interruptions: a tear in the habitual order of things, a useless instruction left in the middle of the street, an object forgotten where it was not supposed to be. It was not about building something new, but about weakening what seemed definitive. Just the minimal fissure through which another reality could begin to breathe. An empty glass forgotten on the table. A leaf carried by the wind.

Fotografia em preto e branco de María Tudela Bermúdez, com campo de espigas altas ondulando sob céu nublado e difuso — atmosfera de névoa, silêncio e leveza em suspensão. — Image courtesy of Maria Tudela 🇪🇸

There is a particular beauty in things that refuse to be whole. In what wavers. In what fragments before affirming itself. Perhaps because life is also composed this way: not of certainties, but of approximations. Not of fixed truths, but of detours that contour what cannot be touched. Some insist on capturing, naming, fixing. But there are also those who prefer the opposite: letting it escape. Not defining, but opening space for what is not yet. And perhaps it is there—in that almost nothing that insists—that something truly happens.