✦ SLOW & SESTA WIN THE RACE


2022-

May our ancestors rest in peace andour descendants rest in life.
May thisbe the beginning of the end of ourlegacy of exhaustion.


Alentejo is a region in the south of Portugal known for its restfulness and slowness, often connected to rurality and scarcity. The most popular anecdotes in the country always depict a local inhabitant (described as a rural, old countryman) in his laziness and slowness, an assumed lack of cognitive speed capacity. Its inhabitants, ‘Alentejanos,’ are arguably known for taking a nap, even though such a practice is considered obsolete today. But as ‘Alentejanas’ ourselves, we do not regularly practise napping. We have trouble doing so, and have inherited a particular hustler culture from our direct family.

Sesta has been intrinsic to rural labour—agricultural, pastoralism and transhumance—in the south of Portugal. In the last century and during the fascist dictatorship, Alentejo has been promoted as the ‘bread provider for the country.’ It housed a monoculture of wheat, where the productivity mindset of ‘sun to sun’ forced all life dimensions to morph into the schedule of the working day for reasons of efficiency. Thus, napping integrates a circadian rhythm from sun up to sun down. It is perceived as a summertime natural practice: a necessary pause for the labouring body as a response to high temperatures reaching 45ºC in the shade.




We return to the landscape were once born. We left it many seasons ago.
Over the years, has the landscape left us?

With our attempts to nap again, we can come back home to Alentejo.
We ventured into this natural setting, pondering the question: what aspects of Alentejo landscape still evoke the spirit of the sesta?

In Alentejo’s vagar, the quality of time exists in its steady and spaced rhythm, not in its briskness. Therefore, vagar is by definition disconnected from efficiency. A popular adage ‘Devagar se vai ao longe,’ translated as ‘slowly you’ll go far,’ stems from this unique attitudetowards productivity. As it is fortunately still possible to hear this proverb in the region, perhaps our legacy of exhaustion will not persist. Just as liberalism and capitalism (which might have ledto the disappearance of sesta) are at their peak at this particular moment in time, this vagar and way of being might prevail and have an honoured return soon enough., Like the dolmens, they may be what stand in the landscape.