Illuminating the Void
2023 – ongoing
Illuminating the Void is an ongoing artistic research project on memory, silence, and the repopulation of Envall in the Vall Fosca. Through fieldwork, oral transmission, photography, and abstract cartography, the project explores the relationships between absence, light, and history, and moves towards an installation conceived for the old church of Sant Jaume d'Envall.
With the support of Xarxa Prod and OSIC - Generalitat de Catalunya. Cover photo: Loida Camats Quer.
Works and series
Texts and documentation (3)
Works and record
Bibliography
Envall, a small village in the Vall Fosca, in Pallars Jussà, was almost entirely depopulated between the 1960s and 1970s. After decades of abandonment, it has been inhabited again since the beginning of the twenty-first century through a cooperative-led process of repopulation.
Illuminating the Void is an ongoing artistic research project into the ways in which the memory of a place is preserved, transmitted, and lost. The project takes shape through walks, conversations, images, and abstract cartographies. Rather than reconstructing a continuous history of Envall, it attends to its discontinuities: inherited memories, partial accounts, silences, and stories that persist without being fully verifiable.
The void in the title refers not only to a material absence—the vanished houses and the plots left among the ruins—but also to the interruption of oral transmission and to what a community chose not to tell. It is not a lack that the research seeks to fill, but the structure from which it interrogates the territory.
Light introduces the project’s second axis. From the beginning of the twentieth century, electricity generated at the Capdella power station supplied Barcelona while Envall remained off the grid: «La primera llum que va anar a Barcelona passava per aquí davant i no va arribar mai aquí».1 Electricity did not reach the village until 2013. This asymmetry connects the modernization of the valley with the local experience of abandonment and the transformation of its imaginary.
As a method, the project adopts the image of a lacuna in a restored fresco. Where the paint has been lost, the absence is not reconstructed: it remains visible and becomes part of the work’s contemporary reading. Illuminating the Void treats documentary gaps in the same way. Testimony, evidence, silence, and legend may coexist, but they are not presented as equivalent: each material retains its visible status.
The research moves towards an installation conceived for the old church of Sant Jaume d’Envall. The municipal government intends to restore it as a public facility, but the project has yet to secure funding or be carried out. In its current phase, the work unfolds through the Envall Notebooks (2023), the photographic field notebook, and the research hypertext, which continues to grow alongside the project.
Credits
A project by Marco Noris, funded by Xarxa Prod (2023 Mentoring Programme) and the Office for Support of Cultural Initiatives (OSIC) of the Government of Catalonia, in collaboration with Envall Cooperative.
Thanks to: Josep and Maria, and everyone at the Envall cooperative; the residents of the Vall Fosca, especially Anna, Feliu, Manel, Jordi, and the whole extended family in la Pobleta; Sandra, Assunció, Laia, and Eva from the local council; Laura, Pepe, Anna, and Alba for sharing their story; Loida Camats Quer; Dolors and Josep Maria from Estavill; Maria from Mont-ros; Josep from the Arxiu Gavín; Agustí from Antist; Celeste Reyna for her support; and everyone who continues to contribute to the project.
Photographs: Marco Noris, Loida Camats Quer, the family of Laura Fité Monje, and Arxiu Gavín.
With the support of:
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Josep Plasencia, conversation with the artist, Envall, 7 June 2023. ⤶