'White Island' is filmed from the window of a hotel in Manhattan, and inaugurated with the opening in the Almada Theather of the play 'What shall I do with this book?' written by José Saramago, who reports the Camões struggle for publishing 'Os Lusiadas', a portuguese epic poem. The video evokes Helena, Menelaus's wife, for whom the Greeks fought for ten years at Troy, and whose voice was never heard: "Camões couldn’t know that after his death the kingdom would fall both praised as well. Later Saramago would know it, who among other things would also know other stories of the history of the same people and would know within the bitterness of a voice that couldn’t always be heard. [...] White Island, where lies Helena forever, no voice is raised. This woman know just what other voices said about her. Her beauty caused the fall and destruction of a man, of a dynasty, of a city. [...] On the Trojan ruins, on Helena ruins, still hovering the ghosts of so many Greeks and Trojans, men with strain of heroes, endowed with cunning and with the knowledge of the art of the war, the weight of the duty, the taste of the death. [...] Nothing else we know of Helen, and consequently even in death we don’t hear her better. What would she do with her voice? What will you do with her voice? On the stakes of this petition, having heard before her version of the events, perhaps more benevolent cities should be built. What to do in those moments when some people decide by the voice of others? What to do for not to dy? What to do to listen to those who can’t talk? In what island are we?”
Emilia Ferreira, in “White Island”, exhibition foldout, Teatro Municipal de Almada, Almada, 2007
