AN ASININE TALE
An artistic research by Luís Costa
May and June 2025
Castro Daire (Viseu Dão Lafões, Portugal) and Villalcampo (Zamora, Spain)
At the crossroads of ethnography and poetic imagination, An Asinine Tale imagined an encounter between two donkeys—one from Portugal’s Viseu Dão Lafões mountains, the other from the Castilian plains of Zamora, Spain. Though separated by borders, they shared a silent, ancestral wisdom and inhabited landscapes marked by the quiet yet enduring presence of donkeys—animals long marginalized but essential to rural life.
The work explored how animals perceived territory not as ownership, but as an extension of their bodies and memory in motion. It recalled the tragic dignity of Balthazar in Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar and the gentle soul of Platero in Platero y yo by Juan Ramón Jiménez.
An Asinine Tale offered a poetic tribute to radical otherness and interspecies communication—an invitation to see the world through the slow, attentive gaze of those who listen and remember as they move.
Produced by Binaural Nodar, the project formed part of the author’s doctoral research at ID+ (University of Aveiro) and LiDA (ESAD, Caldas da Rainha), with support from AEPGA and the Tramontana Network, co-financed by Creative Europe.
