THE SPACE BETWEEN THINGS
2021
Installation, (26 drawings, 1 time measuring device, 1 gravity measuring device, 6 sculptural gestures, collection of deformed plastic animals, 1 mono channel video with
broken porcelain bowl, 1 sketchbook with annotations about the clouds, 1 sketchbook with annotation of the constellation formed by fallen leaves, 1 grid with collected leaves, 1 magician hat made out of tinfoil)
7 m x 1,20 m x 85 cm
This installation is the accumulation of a series of divination games that I carried on during the quarantine,supposing the interconnectedness of everything but doubting the exact path of those connections.
In it, I used drawing as a tool for divination.
As an instrument to fill the gaps. Following the ideas proposed by theories of complexity, the universe is an infinite web of relationships between systems. A complex of systems within systems, where each element is just a node connected to everything else. That means that I know that everything is connected at some level. I just don’t know exactly how. The mesh of the universe is too tight to follow a thread.
Following this path of causation is fundamental for the understanding of knowledge making within the scientific paradigm. If the connection is certain, if the path can be retraced again and again it’s considered as a fact. If a wrong turn is taken in the process, if the path gets deviated, then that would be called superstition. I’m interested in how blurry the line between both denominations is for most of us, ( even if we don’t want to accept it).
I’m also interested in the images that we produce to explain these relations, to explicate the inner functioning of the universe, what cannot be experienced directly, just imagined. These images that tend to be some sort of drawing ( diagrams, schemes) are usually insufficient at conveying what they pretend to, and for that same reason become poetic as they show us the limits of our own tools for understanding.
This collection of divination games consisted in reimagining the meager experiences of everyday life in isolation (the way fallen leaves deposited on the floor of my garden, the resulting shape of a bowl that broke unexplainably, the form of the cloud I could see through my window ) as indexes of greater, more important happenings, somewhere else. However, all the piece proposes is just the methodology, there are no results.
As a structuring thought for this project, there was a question embedded in these games. About the very nature of the structure of the universe.The question is simple: are things fundamentally separated? or is connection and entanglement the rule and nature of things?. Is the universe a multitude of discrete objects or an indivisible entity with a myriad of faces? This question seemed important and pertinent in a moment in which isolation became the norm but only as a consequence of an increasingly connected world.
Regarding the answer, both ideas seem to be true, depending on the level we observe things at: The nucleus of the atoms never touch each other, at an atomic level there is a diminute gap between everything. However, at higher levels of complexity, everything exists only by interaction. The space between things is blurry as it changes depending on where we stand and which instruments we use to look at it.
The procedures were compiled as a constellation in a 7 meter long table that prompted the viewer to interact with it spatially. The walk around the table is an index too, a reference to a long period of time compressed into the displayed objects and images.
The piece had a second life as a publication of the same name, which circulated after the exhibition was over.
As a structuring thought for this project, there was a question embedded in these games. About the very nature of the structure of the universe.The question is simple: are things fundamentally separated? or is connection and entanglement the rule and nature of things?. Is the universe a multitude of discrete objects or an indivisible entity with a myriad of faces? This question seemed important and pertinent in a moment in which isolation became the norm but only as a consequence of an increasingly connected world.
Regarding the answer, both ideas seem to be true, depending on the level we observe things at: The nucleus of the atoms never touch each other, at an atomic level there is a diminute gap between everything. However, at higher levels of complexity, everything exists only by interaction. The space between things is blurry as it changes depending on where we stand and which instruments we use to look at it.
The procedures were compiled as a constellation in a 7 meter long table that prompted the viewer to interact with it spatially. The walk around the table is an index too, a reference to a long period of time compressed into the displayed objects and images.
The piece had a second life as a publication of the same name, which circulated after the exhibition was over.
