Transverberrar

Transverberrar

As a transitive verb, “transverberar” means to reflect; to let the light or colour pass through. 

As an intransitive verb, is the act of piercing something, to manifest. The installation Transverberrar consists of three plaques of wax, each one engraved with a part of the word: TRANS – VERB – ERRAR.

There is an intentional mistake on the spelling: instead of “tranverberar”, I use “transverberrar”, with two ‘r’. 

The split of the word into parts and its incorrect spelling aims to unfold a combinatorial game that generates other meanings. 

‘Transverberrar’ is for me then a holophrase for:

ERRAR (In Portuguese, “to make a mistake”);

B-ERRAR (to shout);

TRANS-ERRAR (exceed the error through the error), and 

VERB-ERRAR (a linguistic corruption of “verbosity”: quality of using more words than needed).

The plaques of wax are fixed on the wall laying on metal supports that heat thanks to an electrical system. They slowly melt down, dripping into its negative container placed on the floor. And once all is melted, the positive plaque goes up, and the transformation cycle restarts.

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