“Cyborg “sex” restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice organic prophylactics against heterosexism).”
A cyborg manifesto, Donna Haraway
The organic body, the ethereal body, is a dematerialized and deconstructed body, not through a complex theoretical analysis, but driven by condition and instinct. It leaves behind skeleton and structure, and becomes a being of flash and light that adapts to its environment, like a jellyfish, “be water my friend”.
This organic body talks about a traumatic and overanalyzed experience with one’s body, it is what happens to an overworked body, it leaves behind the solid experience and becomes jelly, transparent, made of debris. (This may interest Omi with her skeletal leaves?)
This body evolves and moves accordingly to the pedestal (emma), this body creates its own luminescent prosthesis, fixing the mistake of nature of not giving it bioluminescence itself ( gaia), this body, like a siphonophore, can be multiple and one (gloria, omi), it adapts itself to the other (barbara).
The soft body adapts itself to the pedestal.
Movement in the human body should be organic, but due to a variety of factors, both physical and psychic, little by little, its organicity is, sometimes, lost. The body becomes rigid or too lax, unbalanced. The organic body has no blockages, it is liberated of any tension that prevents you from feeling the slightest motion path; it is a balanced body, strong and flexible; it is a sensitive body, capable of adjusting its body tone in different situations; it is a body receptive to any internal or external stimulus, capable of being impressed by the slightest movement, by the most absolute silence, able to feel and create through its movement the most musical rhythms in situ.
The multiple body is made of different organisms working together to make one. The ethereal body creates its own bioluminescence. The organic body is without structure and transparent, like water.
Organicity is intrinsic to all natural phenomena. Like the tides in the ocean, that swing water, the body, occupying all the spaces of the coast. Moving, which is a natural action to any body alive. We learn from its waves what it means to move, express, exist, be an organic body, which flows, which expresses itself in the most organic way possible.
Understanding the body from its -digital- deconstruction as a data flow or stream from one medium -world- to another, we can speak of the prosthesis as its counterpart. Cyborg bodies are overcome by the transmutation of the organic body to the technological digital world: from technological to organic; from organic to digital. From the sensible to the intangible; from limited to unlimited. The hypertrophic datification of the individual body reaches a point that deforms itself into letters and numbers, and that endows it with a timeless, eternal, infinite character.
It has been a while since the body is no longer understandable just from a physical (or psychic, or religious) perspective. The body has been dematerialized in a very particular way on the digital plane, where it metamorphoses at will and becomes numbers, letters, moving pixels, avatars. The “organic” body finds another way of expression and extension through digital space, surpassing what we previously understood as cyborg. There, the body becomes infinitely alterable and plurally present data. However, the other side of this coin seems less pleasant. This is the side of the inconsistency and the rootlessness of the digital space, where we are constantly updating ourselves, following its ever-changing references and models.
It’s possible to see the network as superior to the real world from the post-technological point of view. In other words, it appears that physical reality is nothing but a hologram of information flowing through the network. This is because the body -the activity of the human brain- is simply a physical phenomenon caused by the delivery of synaptic electrical impulses. I like this a lot i will get back to this (I will write smth here about prosthesis)
Two points, first the body that can go beyond the physical limits, second the prosthesis as an instrument to creatively explore the concept of body. The dichotomy inside/out is obsolete. The limit of the surface of the skin is also obsolete.
The body goes beyond this physical barrier: metaphorically in a way but also physically. [Ornament is a part of the body, as there is no difference between form and content]!!!!!! (the form itself is already content etc), so the possibilities with prosthesis are endless. Also you can expand this electrical conscience (nervous system) with technology and stuff.
The body exists only to verify ones existence. me gusta mucho esto It’s not so much about criticizing a world immersed in technology, but rather weakening the concept of existence, identity and body in a world of chaos/order and information.
On the other hand, there is a ritual known as fechamento de corpo or the closure of the body, which is a part of the Candomblé religion.
Within Brazilian culture, in Angolan capoeira and all its corporal manifestations -dance, games, martial art, corporal expression- there is also the concept of “closed body”. This reminds us of the bodily relationship between “apparently” disparate cultural elements such as martial art and holistic practice, where symbolic integration is key to understand these processes of the body and its experiences -processes of living and learning, organization in culture-, or what’s also considered as “phenomenological anthropology”.
The fechamento de corpo is based on a prayer for protection that ends up in a closed body or or corpo fechado. The goal of this ritual is protecting the body against evil - spiritually, physically or both. If the point was to protect physical integrity, the receptor of the protection itself would believe to be safe from attacks regardless of the weapon, including bladed weapons, firearms or even snake venom.
The incisions that are made in the body have the objective of closing the initiator’s body to protect it from all kinds of negative influences. A powder is placed inside them, which serves to protect it. This consists of a mixture of various plants and substances, but the type used for cures also contains specific herbs to the deity of the initiator who receives the application.
On the other hand, in the Umbanda religion, less invasive methods are generally used to
and other ingredients to carefully make the cross symbol on different parts of the body of the person undergoing this ritual. Items commonly used are keys, white chalk, herbs, olive oil, chains, charms, prayers, candles, water, shells, steel chains, and garlic. Each temple leader will have their particular way of manipulating physical elements made to obtain astral protection.
“Could it be that the flowers are in fact human bones? This calls my attention a lot, it leads me to the metaphorical, which is something that interests me a lot. The vase cut takes advantage of the fact flowers and death go together in the Christian world, where the use of flowers on graves and funerals have a long history. However, flowers pay homage not only to death but also to life, as in the case of births. Perhaps it is possible that flowers frequent death because they are considered carriers of life, and that this “mixture” is what enters with so much naturalness in our daily rituals as something splendidly sardonic, wild, cruel and encouraging: just like the fall into nothingness expressed by the disturbing complicity between caricatures and violence. “There are no black flowers,” writes Jean Genet, speaking of transgression—yet, at the tip of his bruised finger, that black nail looked nothing less than a flower”
(Genet, 1974 [1952]: 37).” Taussig, Michael, The Language of Flowers P. 233.
Notes to develop by Alba: the human being as an object, a metaphore of human existence through the objects that it intervenes and that intervene it. (If you have any notes on this idea write them down)
things of past projects that i think that still inspire me and that i think that dialogue well with what has been said:
In physics, entropy occurs when exterior energy comes into a system (system = body = human) and starts to change its original form. It is an extensive property of the mass: the higher the entropy is, the greater the chaos gets. This energies that the body receives from the outside don’t let the body work properly and thats why it starts to warp. this is irreversible and untenable.
“Would not the future artist be he who expressed through an eternal silence an immense painting possessing no dimension?”(Chelsea Hotel Manifesto, Ives Klein). Gaia talks about a body that she calls organic. This is a body that flows and grows looking for its own ways of expression within the cracks of the systemic structures. A body that changes, that metamorphoses to avoid the moulds and make its way intuitively. However, she also says (or I assume she says) that, in the labyrinthine paths between matrices and moulds, this body can sometimes get lost, ending up fitting into these structures (its only reference), losing its organic nature.
Sara also insists on the idea that the organic body (following Gaia’s definition) is a body free of tensions, that does not get blocked. And, if it does gets blocked, it turns into inorganicity, into a state of imbalance that manifests itself in a condition of laxity or rigidity. Of abandonment or stiffness.
This abandoned, lax, or, on the contrary, stiff, oppressed body (in short, unstable, unable to find its own axis), suggests me the image of a woman who has not been allowed a space to create her own organic body. On the contrary, her body has been modelled by others (male eyes and hands) who have not given her a voice to express her feelings and her mind. And this way, she cannot flow freely.
Lately, reflecting on this subject, I have thought a lot about the pictorial and sculptural works that depict the myth of Perseus and Andromeda I looove the fact that you introduce this amazing greek myth into this!!!. This myth, for those who do not know it or do not remember it, is summarized as follows:
Cassiopeia, mother of Andromeda and queen of Ethiopia along with Cepheus, boasts of her beauty, to the point of saying that she is more beautiful than the Nereids (nymphs of Poseidon’s retinue). As a consequence, Poseidon enrages and decides to flood Ethiopia and send the Cetus, a sea monster, to its shores to devour whoever it reaches. Due to this, Cepheus resorts to the Oracle of Ammon, who reveals to him that the only way to stop this situation is to deliver his daughter to the monster. This being so, he proceeds to chain her to a rock at the edge of the sea, where the Cetus is lurking. At this point, Perseus, who is traveling to Ethiopia from Mauritania, notices Andromeda and her dangerous situation, so he approaches her, and she tells him what happened. Captivated by her beauty, Perseus wants her as his wife, so he approaches her parents and asks for their daughter’s hand in exchange for ending the Cetus and freeing Andromeda. The parents agree, so Perseus kills the monster and releases Andromeda.
The myth continues, but I will stop here because it seems to me that we have reached its highpoint (or, at least, what it seems to be the highpoint to Art History, which is why I am interested in commenting on it). This is the moment when Andromeda is tied to the rock. This fragment has been the artists’ favourite, as it has been represented over and over again throughout history. It is a fetishist, erotic and sadistic image, which can become uncomfortable after contemplating several works of this scene, in which that vision of the delicate, soft, languid, and beautiful body of Andromeda is shown, almost always frontal and well arranged for the observer’s contemplation, showing hardly any resistance (or, in any case, a very artificial, highly aestheticized one), unable to move, delivered to the monster, delivered to the viewer.
The myth is just an excuse to paint (create, invent) a naked, chained, passive woman who requires male rescue. To fantasize about sadism, not only by imposing a female image created to suit that hegemonic male eye, but by offering it in submission, in fragility, as a prey. (I just saw the comment adriana wrote next to the document and I thought that maybe it could be a cool idea to let people intervene in the document after it´s layed out, we could put a computer in the space and let people interact with our dialogue, as something complementary and totally in situ like, like what Narelys and Miu did for the Espacio 19 but through our already finished dialogue)
There is no room for what Gaia calls “organic bodies” in the history of Western representation of women. What we find are soft bodies, violated by rigid structures, by chains, by a frame, by an imposed pedestal.
In the art-form of the European nude the painters and spectator-owners were usually men and the persons treated as objects, usually women. This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women. They do to themselves what men do to them. They survey, like men, their own femininity. (John Berger, Ways of Seeing).
Yes, to all that Emma said, hands down. The body is tired and overworked, but not only due to the male view of it, the sexualization and idealization in art and literature. Also I feel like my body is tired of the analysis. Yes, it is important to analyze these dynamics, to educate about the exploitation of the female body, the imposition of beauty standards etc. But after a day of lectures I cannot feel like my body is mine anymore. I look in the mirror and I would just like to look and my tits and go
“I am hot af, nice”, but it does not happen, [what is there in the mirror is not just my body anymore, it is also the theories, the analisis, the studies, which got to the point to corrupt my sight as well,
taking me far away from the corporeality of myself, and creating a bigger distance from the idea of “mind” and “body”.]!!!!!!! (personally i find SO FREAKING difficult to look at my body and not see or hear everything people say i should think ‘bout myself)
LEAVE US ALONE, LET US FIGURE IT OUT BY OURSELVES,
I say to the well intended people doing yet another critical analysis about the idealization, sexualization of the body. Is it hypocritical of me saying so? As I am writing yet once again a critical analysis of the body I tell you: yes, but I don’t care.
This overstressed body can be linked directly to the hysterical body. What is an hysterical body if not a body that is giving into its most feral nervous responses to distress? In a way the hysterical body might be the first step to liberation, unfortunately Men and Science and Surrealism managed to exploit it, big time. The overstressed body makes me think about the body’s existence taken to the limit of its both mental and physical capacities in an attempt to adapt itself to nowadays society. This is defined by the term “conspicuous production”, which sums up to a fomentation of the exploitation in working environments as a competition. This is usually tied up with “conspicuous consumption” (which is the purchase of goods or services for the only purpose of displaying one’s wealth). These concepts came from David Riesman.
The different dresses I wear, I feel pretty. The electrical rush is not a “bad moon”. I am shiny and unapologetic, I am powerful. (beautiful said)
Although I would think jellyfish are not structure-less bodies, they just move in a way that as humans can’t…They perform their lives following their own natural organic body movements… We just see them very flexible and amorphous because it’s difficult for us to get to move and flex and fold and swing like they can. But their bodies have their own structure and I think that’s beautiful.
Here are some meanings of the word “body”:
1 : the physical whole of a live or dead person or animal the human body. 2 : the main part of a person, animal, or plant She held her arms tightly against her body. 3 : a human being The resort offered everything a body could want. 4 : the main or central part of the body of a letter. 5 : the main part of a motor vehicle.
“The second type is the organic corporeality, for which the environment is a part of itself, an effective environment belonging to the body and which confronts the medium and, of course, also the body of which it is the environment. Living things, unlike the previous ones, have the environment as part of themselves, as part of their bodies. The relation of the body to its environment is a relation of him with himself. In this case we have the relation C-C-M. (bodybody-medium) (I understand that this is a quote but I got completely lost, explain plssss) We find here a “duplicity of aspect” or “double aspectivity”, since living beings differentiate in themselves an inside and an outside; “through their relation to the environment they are at the same time directed outwards, beyond the body that is, and, back again, inwards” (Understanding the human being from the organic. The proposal of Jonas and Plessner. Juan Jesús Gutierro Carrasco).
“ Y la cuestión es: ¿ Por qué soy alguien y no, más bien nadie ( siendo-podríamos añadir el ser nadie harto más simple y fácil que ser alguien)?” [ Jose Luis Pardo]
Is it the absence of the gaze or its presence what allows the body to become organic? Is there really something like an absence of gaze in society? And what is the organic of a body without its disposition for life, or its capacity to change?
So what is left there? The organic body, the shapeless body, the everchanging body. I find my corporeality again through the shapes of invertebrates, a different, non-anthropocentric (excellent! I get tired of reading about humans…although I am also one). kind of beauty, stunning nonetheless. Yes this structure-less body can get lost in a world of structures, but the voyage does not scare me.
If I had to situate the organicity of the contemporary body, I’d possibly fix it in that mutilation of structures, from rigid and predetermined ones to flexible and ambiguous ones. From a subject that seeks through the other ‘s one gaze to recognize what he cannot see in himself, becoming an approach to what could have been. In this way, the gaze Emma and Gaia highlighted, the one that overloads the body of information (prejudices and stereotypes), the one that ends up becoming a builder of that body and an element of rejection at the same time.
The organic body can be conceived, therefore, as an inevitable result of the accelerated and constant process of social deconstruction, it is the opposite of what it would like to be in the form in
form in which it’s required. It’s the path between the need of having recognition from the other, and the fear of being exiled in no-man’s land. However, wouldn’t that be outside limits, the absolute manifestation of this body?
Therefore, it would become something like a virtual body, a virtualization by disconnection regasding a particular environment: starting from the first unicellular organisms, to birds, reptiles and mammals, virtualization had opened “to living beings, spaces always wider and ever more numerous possibilities of existence” [Reichholf, The Appearance of Man]. A body that “goes from a given solution to a (other) problem. It transforms the initial actuality into a particular case of a more general problem, in which the ontological accent is integrated, from now on. In this way, virtualization makes instituted distinctions more fluid, increases the degree of freedom, and deepens an empty engine. [...] this implies irreversibility in its effects. [...] Virtualization is one of the main vectors of realitys creation.”
[Pierre Lévy,What is the virtual?]
Básicamente intento abordar el cuerpo desde la no-danza o la no- coreografía, me apoyo en la tesis de Paz Rojo, Dance in a eye of future, donde describe un cuerpo post-academico y desinteresado de cualquier interés capitalista. Ella tiene una pieza que para mi define un poco la tesis, se llama “lo que sea moviéndose así” (I just love this idea of Paz Rojo, I’m interested in this attempt of mind/culture/capitalism disconnection from the body) Basándome en esto, hasta ahora he probado con dinámicas en la que abstraigo las formas del cuerpo acomodándome en espacios de una arquitectura del espectáculo !!! (la no- racional) como lo es la Facultad de Bellas Artes (i didnt get this. do you see the academic space as an irrational place??) normalmente lo hago con movimientos muy lentos y suaves, en los que trato de trabajar como si estuviera totalmente dormido; combinados con movimientos más agresivos como intentando llegar a movimientos asincopados, buscando la sensación de un loop del gesto o algo asi. También [he trabajado con algunos objetos que generan movimiento e inestabilidad en el cuerpo.]!!!! jiji perdón por tanto pastel (it’s allright, I love cake)(Toni isn’t participating anymore but, should we keep his text?)
i love everything everybody is saying and how cult everybody is. i sometimes wish i was like that but honestly, my work isnt that intelectual. it i tend to work and do art depending on the context and by reading and talking to you i only can think of what i actually want to do. ive been thinking on doing an art work mixing a bit of everybody’s works. (you’re gonna create the body of us all together, like this document but your way, how you see us all united) . i dont really know how i will do it but i just want to, somehow, recollect trash or leftovers of all of your works. it would be, literally, the physical version of what the diary, the dialogues and the video calls are. i think about the artwork as some collage and as an organic body (when i talk about body i don’t mean human body). as i have said before, chaos is something i like in my pieces so i want to do something like that. i think it could be good. i dont know. i have to think about it. (Love the idea Glor).
(Can I just say…before you start that you share some very random aesthetically pics in my opinion…I just find them immersive, thanks for that Gaia!) This is the structure of a fungi (mycelium) net system. This reminds me of your work a lot (gloria), and of the idea of connecting organically all the artworks. The fungi net works as a communication “device” between trees, and I think it can be a nice analogy of what we are trying to do. wow, gaia, this inspires me so so much.
I find it very interesting to generate a polyhedral body in which there is a piece of each one of us.
It could be said that each one is an energy that has come to break into the others’ lives, causing them changes, reactions, giving them ideas... Which is something that seems comparable to the concept of entropy as you defined it earlier in this text. i love this so soooo muchhhh
Furthermore, beyond the individual level, this project for In Situ is also generating a methodology in the group, in the collective body, which is adapting to the place and the project, while seeking to maintain a certain distinctive character.
I think it would be very interesting that these frictions and search for agreements get to be reflected in a piece that weaves all of this together and tries to unite/build our collective body, which is what has been developing through this dialogue and is what will occupy the showroom.
As you also said above, this may be a somewhat deformed body, built on consensus and dissent. A body that is not entirely stable, nor infallible. That is not categorical (but neither does it seek to be). Rather, it is a body that shows itself in all its facets, in the most fragile and in the most consolidated (all of them decisive for the whole). A perhaps deformed, but honest, body.
I consider the idea very interesting, especially because, in the end, what happens when we read or listen to a text is that we fracture it, we crumple it, we fold it, we relate it, we twist it, we sew it up again and we make a mess out of that apparent order. Linearity is lost, we remake the text until there is almost nothing left of it. We join fragments of the text with fragments of our “own”, of our “insides”, and this relationship between the making and direction of our thoughts and the meaning of the text is very inspiring to me. These actions have a lot of room to play with, especially with the hypertext that we generate, because that playing field is widened, those connections, fragments and intermingled wool balls. It can be a great piece.
I find interesting to conceive the artwork (usually considered as individual) as an own entity, formed by a miscellaneous of things here and there. At the end, we also build ourselves the same way.
Idea for the layout: making a typography with each of our hand writings - I like it. Or maybe instead of using a typography that is similar to our handwriting, we could simply make a selection of well-distinguished typefaces that are in line with the character and aesthetics of each one of us. We will have to talk about it. - The other day you were talking about the possibility of making a fanzine out of it and not in the conventional catalogue way. I like all your ideas, I just want to stop using this fluor poink for writing.
I would like to leave this text that made me step up towards making this document visible from a digital medium, in order to generate a story in line with these virtual spaces that interest us and that are i would do a digital version in PDF to make it more accesible for everybody reunion, link and coordinate axis of this group work. It is a disposable idea, but I hope it can be of use:
A continuum extends, therefore, between the individual reading of a precise text and the navigation of vast digital networks, within which a multitude of people annotate, enlarge and connect the texts with each other through hypertext links.
A thought is actualized in a text and a text in a reading, an interpretation. Going back to this pending update, the passage to hypertext is a virtualization. Not to return to the author’s thought, but to be from the current text one of the possible figures of an available, mobile, reconfigurable textual field at will; even to connect it and make it reach an agreement with other hypertextual corpus and with various instruments to help interpretation. In this way, hypertextualization multiplies the occasions for the production of meaning and makes it possible to considerably enrich reading.”
[PIERRE LÉVY, What is the virtual?]
My idea comes from a frustrated artwork that I didn’t do in Creación because of lack of time and it’s basically about multiplying (big time) that encapsulated body in a rigid and artificial structure, that restricts it and on the other hand protects it. Everything comes out of that encapsulated little wood piece down there.
(don´t be too bothered about that , if you can’t come up with a huge concept it´s that maybe it doesn’t need it, not everything needs a pile of books behind, sometimes the artwork is about experimenting with a material or it’s really literal and needs no further explanation, which is your case, a clean work with a poetic interpretation, interesting, easy to read and accessible)
Also i’d love to do a collab with someone. For example, the other day Omi and I were talking about making a piece together with some of the materials she’s been working with.- The most recent thing I’ve been working on has focused on the material part, where through a chemical process, absorbs the color and burns the first layer and most rigid of the leaf, giving rise to what I call “skeletal leaves”. They are visually transparent and in some cases have a thin white layer. An essential element to carry out this chemical reaction is the use of caustic soda. As a curious fact, it is an element that is usually used in crimes to undo skeletons, and I was interested in that wink of how we seek to represent something, but the ingredients that I use in that process seek to make them disappear. (omg this is reeeeally cool)
This is why we consider a good idea to fuse those transparent encapsulated bodies that she creates.
It is really interesting how both elements, besides being interveined, have the same origin: nature. It makes me think abot the construction before destruction. I mean: its escense is changed and it
Well girls, I´m not going to lie, apart from the fact that I haven’t been able to sit down and look further into our project, I´m also in a moment of crisis here, I see you all with really clear ideas and, when I look into myself, I’m completely empty. I remember one of the first days here in Antwerp that I told someone, I think it was Gloria, I don’t recall, “I feel like an ant”, in this city everything is huge, everything fits big on me, mainly artistically. If I had to use one of those metaphors that I like, I would say of my creative block that it’s pretty similar to what Emma and Gaia were saying about the female body, destroyed by others judgment, but also, it’s related to something that hasn’t been said yet, the fact that we are continually comparing ourselves to the other, to the ones we feel that are better than us, not only corporeally, but in every field. And that’s me right now, with my InSitu colleges and with you and your great ideas. This ant doesn’t know what to do. It’s not only that Antwerp feels too big for me, Tenerife and art itself does.
The ant is not a single body, the individual is part of a hive mind colony. There might be an interesting concept here, if you want to look into it :)
I´m going to think about it, give it a million thoughts if it’s necessary, because this project deserves it, but I’m really scared to let you down, the studio and myself, I´m obviously the most terrible judge that exists. Sorry for all of this huge text, I guess every dialogue has some dramatic parts from someone in the group, and that’s obviously my role lol :):)
This is the sketch I’ve created to plan the installation of the machine that will help me collect different imagen drawn by the organic movement of water in the ocean:
The Ocean has its silent caves, Deep, quiet, and alone; Though there be fury on the waves, Beneath them there is none.
The awful spirits of the deep Hold their communion there; And there are those for whom we weep, The young, the bright, the fair.
Calmly the wearied seamen rest Beneath their own blue sea. The ocean solitudes are blest, For there is purity.
The earth has guilt, the earth has care, Unquiet are its graves; But peaceful sleep is ever there, Beneath the dark blue waves.
Let’s find out what this organic Water body has to say…
Is this poem yours??!! Absolutly not hahaha It is from NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE But I’ll share with you all some of mine..
YASSS Really wanna see this coming along!!!!
It may seem stupid but, I´m going to do this as a survey to see what you think about it. I was just thinking, “what can I do that represents how I feel and that´s able to say something about the importance of a group?”. As I feel like an ant, and I think the space for me in the exhibition is going to me small, I was thinking of inhabit it literally as an ant, (love this ) It would basically be small ants made of clay or something like that, that I can put all around the exhibition area, there´s a corner that´s not even withe anymore, and I really love that spot, maybe I could put the source of ants there (their home) and after that, let them inhabit your works like admiring them. It actually speaks a lot about my feeling and my admiration for you, also about the fact that an ant isnt something we usually give importance by it self, only if it´s at the correct place or as part of a grou, this work just aims to give some humour to my own eperience and to the fact that some things just become relevant when they are reiterated and it´s an action supported by a group.
answer, anonimously if you want, with a I: Think about something else girl:
I like it lol: IIIIII
Other stuff (add a note, ideas, whatever):
I find that that intervention can be pretty curious, after all, simulating and impersonating in one piece the character of the curator, observer of the artwork and the space. It’s also curious to turn a small and everyday element into a protagonist, as well as the fact of directing his gaze to certain aspects or elements, that unconsciously can legitimize the objects it observes.
It is interesting that it isnt a protagonist. An art work doesnt have to be big to be an art work. I find curious this hiding piece.
I think it is brave to approach creation from a state of vulnerability. And also, very honest. From there, you will surely find some drift, or at least more strength to tackle creation. I like how this document and this project in general represent a safe space to comment on the insecurities or questions that each one of us has. No one here has the last word. Each one approaches the dialogue from their position, from their background, from their emotional state (some are insecure wondering if their work is “conceptual enough”, others are deeply involved in the story they have built around their creation, some are pecking here and there trying to find their path, others have their ideas quite clear...). And, this way, a very enriching mixture of temperaments is created, where all ways of working are valid and constitute an important ingredient for our creative adventure together. I think it is very nourishing for all of us to see different ways of approaching production and witness them from the earliest stages, in which there is always a certain vulnerability or insecurity, in which things are not entirely clear to us yet.
I think it would be cool if you developed this idea. I think the combination of scattered ants and tree trunks could create a lovely and interesting unifying ecosystem !!!, hehe. (I will add the ocean ;) not to be repetitive, but a whole environment with all its interaction that constitutes what could be considered a “body”, a single organism True!
I love your view about the project :):)
«However, the other side of this coin seems less pleasant. This is the side of the inconsistency and the rootlessness of the digital space, where we are constantly updating ourselves, following its ever-changing references and models».
What form does a body take that cannot take shape by directing itself towards attainable “objects” inscribed in a habitable space? According to Sara Ahmed in Queer Phenomenology, to be oriented means to have references, to be directed towards certain objects, to recognise space and oneself through them. This orientation also carries over to the specific aspect of sexual orientation: what does it mean to live sexuality as oriented?
Orientation is a matter of inhabiting space. Queer geographers show us how spaces are sexualised, and how this orientation is a phenomenological question. Orientation, the body, space - spaces - inhabiting a body in a space, directing it, and, above all, being disoriented, is what interests me - introduced to a digital, virtual and technological realm.
Objects, spaces and media are devices of (dis)orientation within queer phenomenology. It is therefore of considerable importance to queerise these proposed points of view, these bodies that differ from the very concept of orientation. Nor is disorientation an unfamiliar concept within queer theories. Maurice Marleau-Ponty, a phenomenologist, proposes that moments of disorientation involve “the vital experience of vertigo and nausea that is the awareness and horror of our contingency”. It is that less pleasant side.
The specific bodily experience, of that obsolete body whose representations have been exhausted - those we are so tired of - and seeks, creatively and critically, to abstract itself,
allows me to play with the constructed experience of a body, that is, a fiction, but which, as Donna Haraway well constructs in “Cyborg Manifesto”, are social reality. “Irony is about humour and serious play”. A search for a space in which to orient oneself, but which, both physical and digital - or even virtual? We try to escape from dichotomies through codes, systems of signs that structure and determine all social aspects. And it is from these codes that nothing can no longer be uninspected, simulated and integrated into larger structures [Baudrillard]. Nothing can escape the code - codes have colonised the planet - and at the same time, we are code - genetic, historical, social, cultural. [Haraway] They are also the tools of war between the territories of production, reproduction and imagination: the spaces of virtualisation.
In short, it is not an oriented body. It is not a body in a non-sexualised space, it is not a body that manages to abstract itself; it is a body that, from the limits, needs to abstract itself, but does not succeed, since although the codes are empty surfaces, the spaces are not, and the virtual and the actual, the real, are complementary, and develop, so far, at the same speed, and are reflections of each other.
“Be Water, My Friend. Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle.
You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or it can crash.
And here I am, trying to invent a device that helps me transform the language of the movement of an ocean’s body into a simple paper with drawings that will initially be abstract but with which I intend to somehow give voice to something other than myself… although I do it because I am interested in what this body can tell me.
Don’t get me wrong, I already read things in the water...I already understand, what I think I can understand...but I’m afraid I’ll never have the chance to be water, nor put myself in its skin... because it doesn’t have it, because it’s not human and it’s one of the furthest things I’d ever imagine being able to copy.
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Although we are more water than anything else, we can onlycopy its movement... we will be a cheap copy even though we are made of it. However, I am interested in investigating and approaching it, other bodies, other living or dead existences, from which I can learn and thus give meaning to my human existence that wants to “be everything”.
To end this random-ish heaving I share with you all a Walter de María text I find really charming:
(I wish I could transform into water sometimes lol)
OH! Another gem:
ill.Gates - More
Tea (https://youtu.be/6r_m_NDOC28 ) (in love, this is the track sound in my mind, I believe, while writing this piece of text and I didn’t know ‘til now hahaha, thanks to the person who added this tune).
(I wasnt expecting to listen to something like that ahahhahaha)
Although I am not a fan, far from it, of Bruce Lee, I admit that these words have always accompanied me as part of those “sayings” that my father told me.(that´s so cute) The funny thing is that at first when I heard that about “be water my friend”, I did not understand that they were talking about its fluidity and adaptability, since I had not heard the full explanation of the saying. Back then, as a child, I appreciated other things about water: that it was cool, its blue color, that it shone like glitter…
It’s funny because I don’t know of another species that tries to copy as much as the human being. I know that chameleons change color to survive and adapt, parrots sometimes speak in hoarse lordly voices or whistle and hum. There are other species whose bodies favor them to fly or swim endlessly. From our side it seems that we want to do everything, try everything, or whatever we feel like, of course. And we also believe that we can achieve it sometimes. For me I see it as a game that has helped us become whatever we are, for better and for worse. (certainly for worse lol)
I don’t think art can stand up to nature too, but that’s not our aim, isn’t it? We are just playing and doing things that entertain us.
It may seem it’s got nothing to do with the matter we are in but I just read it and decided to share in case someday you would like to try and do this wonderful activity De María suggested. And that’s all for now folks…
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The concept of void within the oriental culture is considered as a determinant that has two functions, on the one hand, it allows to inhabit the space:
“Doors and windows open in the walls of the house, and it is the empty space that allows the house to be inhabited.” (LAO TSE)
While, on the other hand, it conceives the functionality of objects. The idea of void has been installed as a specter of post-contemporaneity, as a concept oriented towards that way of dwelling rooted in the speed in which everything can be replaced. That generated symptomatic in the exhibition space, in which the pedestal was extra-dimensioned to become what we call the “white cube”, changed the void into container and content, and therefore the way of looking at the artistic object. (how are you going to adapt this idea to a place that isn’t a white cube??)
Thus, in the exposition “Experimental Circle” by Graciela Carnevale, the exhibition space was turned into a container with the enclosed spectator inside, which culminated in them breaking the structures of the space in order to get out of it. For his part, Ives Klein investigated through his proposal at the Iris Clert Gallery, approaching the concept as “a testimony of the presence of pictorial sensibility in the initial state of matter”, a half game between the appropriation of the immaterial and its privatization.
It is in this rupture or questioning of the artistic structures that the void brings with it, as O’Brien proposes, what leads the void to turn to itself to create its own content: the dematerialization that takes precedence over any form of matter.
With my project I’m interested in proposing an approach to that transmutation in the way of contemplating and inhabiting the artwork that comes with this concept of emptiness, as well as posing an allusion towards that state of pictorial sensibility that Klein talked about, using light as an element that allow us to recognize de void at the same time that inhabits the space. (love this so much) could be fun one day to try it as well with sound, like an echo sonar or smth!!
Dolphin Echolocation Sound (https://youtu.be/m3luMGZ7kqA)
pardon my fishyness, but like I find it super interesting how sound (like light, they r both waves) fills the space and can be used to see, just like we see with light. this is actually reeeeeally interesting too!!!! something to develop some day for shure Meditating about spaces I find myself considering vernacular architectures (also known as popular architecture) as bodies. These kinds of structures are the material testimony linked to a particular place, culture and tradition, and they can define the identity of a territory and a culture. They’re built up to serve specific needs from the territory and the habitants that live there, and precisely because of this, a number of architectural models, special designs and unique characteristics appear in these buildings, usually made with elements from the surroundings and humble materials. In this way, we as humans and a community DO NOT HAVE TO ADAPT OURSELVES or our needs to the space but we build a space that adapts and serves US.
“That is why the value of the vernacular lies in the fact that they are documentary texts, open books that tell us about the past and the present, about the evolution of a community. Thus, populations and their surroundings, regardless of latitude, become very specific scenarios, cultural landscapes in which to perceive and contrast all that interplay of relationships between human beings, and between them and their natural environment.”
(Arquitectura vernácula: entre lo local y lo global Pedro Miguel Jimenez Vicario , Amanda Cirera
(Do you mean in this sense or the new contemporary adaptation of the vernacular architecture)
