Desiderea Nuncia (The Messenger of Desidération) brings together the photographs of SMITH, the texts of Lucien Raphmaj, and the micro-architecture plans of Diplomates, combining various knowledge and ways of materializing the phenomena of 'desidération'.
This mysterious term refers to the feeling of an undefined absence, resolutely linked to the stars. When sailors lost at sea on stormy nights, no longer had the stars to navigate by, 'desidération' (the absence of stars and the wish for their return) was a reality for them. Our 'desidération' manifests as the melancholic symptom of the loss of the starry sky (de-sidera) and also promises itself as a desire (desiderium): a desire in the face of the disaster of an obscured sensible world and an atrophied cosmic imagination.
This book takes us through 5 chapters, composed of mind maps in which the book moves, for a sub-lunar journey, a reverie, a ritual of reconciliation with your cosmic destiny.
Exhibited during the summer of 2021 at the Rencontres d’Arles, Desidération is a vast, multifaceted, and ever-evolving project orchestrated by SMITH, whom won the photo-text book prize at the Rencontres d’Arles 2022.
