projects2019

"sense Internet" ("without Internet") installation ⇑ with video ⇓ by Jaume Clotet , is a pseudo-rap song that expresses how sad and boring the artist's life would be without access to the internet ... a remix famous Vines and memes , I decided to present the project on a small plexiglass stand , taping an old phone I had to it that played the video ... I found an old cement pillar to raise the composition up , creating a stark contrast between the seemingly floating , exalted phone and the rugged and worn baluster ...

notes from the curator :

this collective exhibition's concept was inspired by Kate Bush's song "Deeper Understanding", released in 1989 (exactly 30 years prior to this project) and my own concerns regarding generation Z's relationship and use of digital and virtual spaces ... the show featured artists working with Virtual Reality , Augmented Reality , video games , appropriating material from YouTube , Vine and Instagram ; all current mediums in which users can create , customise , navigate through and inhabit virtual spaces ... the title is a play on a phenomenon native to generation Z called 'cyberpathology' which according to Kent L. Norman is when "individuals...become overly attached to their computers, computer games, or the Internet and spend inordinate amounts of time in front of their monitors"... I was fascinated by how rabidly humans search for escapes , be it through drugs or through a version based off --loosely or faithfully-- our shared perception of the reality of our world ... Twitch , Minecraft , tumblr , The Sims , Grand Theft Auto , Super Mario , Facebook , Wii games and other games and platforms allow the user to take a certain amount of control over the reality presented in said platform (in video games the choice of character , wardrobe , gender , race , corporal features , and in the case of social media general aesthetic customisation , profile pictures , face filters , content) ... these distortions , avatars , desired versions of ourselves , can be empowering in some cases , and in others destructive and confusing , as their realities begin to mesh and bend ...

"Deeper Understanding" by Kate Bush :

As the people here grow colder
I turn to my computer
And spend my evenings with it
Like a friend

I was loading a new programme
I had ordered from a magazine:

"Are you lonely, are you lost?
This voice console is a must"
I press Execute

"Hello, I know that you've been feeling tired
I bring you love and deeper understanding
Hello, I know that you're unhappy
I bring you love and deeper understanding"

Well I've never felt such pleasure
Nothing else seemed to matter
I neglected my bodily needs

I did not eat, I did not sleep
The intensity increasing
'Til my family found me and intervened

But I was lonely, I was lost
Without my little black box
I pick up the phone and go, Execute

"Hello, I know that you've been feeling tired
I bring you love and deeper understanding
Hello, I know that you're unhappy
I bring you love and deeper understanding"

I turn to my computer like a friend
I need deeper understanding
Give me deeper understanding

Bush's urgent yet playful premonitory poem very astutely foreshadows the imminent relationships between human and computer that would come to be in the 90s and 2000s ... our little black boxes have become , for cyberpaths , our only real friends , our refuges , our spaces of control and freedom to be whoever we want , to manipulate our appearances and identities , to morph with seemingly no consequences , and with no judgement ... the mediatorial (media , mediate) nature of virtual spaces are rather deceptive as in many cases , this freedom is actually limited given that our choices , decided by the programers and designers of these spaces , only provide a select gamut of possibilities that we can toggle through ... this is becoming increasingly more fluid and meticulous as personalisation and customisation evolves ... therefore we are subject to these limitations , which operate under the guise of freedom to choose ...

the work that best exemplifies this is Carles Castaño's ⤝ "c41582028" , a participative concoction for the show involving a 3m x 3m x 3m steel cage divided in 2 parts , with 4 actors manipulating a TV screen and 3 VR headsets ... participants were asked to download an app hosting a video game designed by Carles and were allowed in 3 at a time ... the actors would then aggressively bind the participant's hands behind their backs , tie a steel chain around their necks which was connected to the roof of the cage , insert their phones with the installed app into one of the headsets , forcing them to play the game while the actors also forced food and drink into their mouths ... the game in itself was impossible to play ... there was some triangle they had to reach to win the game ... due to the heavy visual stimulation in the game , it was hard to focus ... not to mention the heavy taunting by the actors... here , the lack of user freedom in digital spaces is brutally --and very literally-- questioned and critiqued ...

Yago Anton Lorenzo's installation was created by using Vuforia , an augmented reality SDK , installed on an old cellphone of his ... the program recognises 3D objects and uses one of their planes to activate an image in the program , in this case , animated figurines depicting famous characters from video games and movies , native to the childhoods of Gen Zs ... the user could take the cellphone and approach the different objects on the table and shelf ... Yago wanted to recreate a piece of his own bedroom , a collection of digital and physical reminders of childhood virtual spaces found in cartoons , when our imaginations were consumed with superheroes and anime characters and pokémons and digimons ...

for the show , Àlex Wifi designed a video game using Oracle studios titled "dataMaze" which consisted of the player navigating through a series of parallel hallways adorned with only two options , signaled by emojis or other pop culture semiotical devices ... based on the player's personal attractions , they would select a hallway to go down ... based on the decisions of the player , the game would recommend a product accompanied by a link to said product at the end of the maze ... in this space , there is a certain amount of freedom , yet to be able to advance in the game , one has to select between two barren and stereotyped options , only to lead to a pseudo-prize , a capitalist strategy to minimize our interests , reduce us to our clicks , key-words ...

I asked Àlex if we could lean a mirror found lying around Cera 13 on the projector / laptop so that the viewer could see themselves while playing the game ...

"c41582028" by Carles Castaño

Juan David Galindo's "Sea Steading" was built by images of idyllic islands and 5+ hour beach relaxation videos from YouTube , commonly used to help those with insomnia , or to simply help one evade their present reality ... here , Juan partially imitates the rhetoric and content of the videos , yet replaces the soothing dialogue and tantric mantras with his semi-critical analysis of these beaches as phenomenological abstractions , as semiotical façades , as a background hum , and also comments on the attempts and proposals to create artificial islands for humans to live on as a response to the overpopulation crisis ... these beaches , or non-beaches , are used almost as drugs , hypnotic scapes into which we can delve and dream of where we think we'd rather be ; a constructed desire of archetypal calm ...

a small tablet nailed to the wall hosted Ada Fontecilla's "Annia inside an instagram like" , a video narrating a character , a kind of humanoid living inside the Instagram's like button ... narrated by a masculine voice in lavish French , Annia is tickled by every like she receives , constantly on a high ... humanising digital appendages such as this one signal to trapped entities that may inhabit such spaces ... despite her suspended state of comfort and attention , she desires more ... the video also comments on customisation capacities of videoscapes , how things like skies and clouds can be created instantaneously , how desires are so quickly constructed and manifested on social media platforms , where one can personalise their experiences ... but who personalises it ? who makes these options available ? if they could speak , if their desires came to the foreground , what would they be ?

N1_3l , along with collaborators , created a pulsating like-machine attached to a 3D-printed beating heart ... the heartbeats mark the double-tap used to give likes to instagram posts ... the little bot automatically gives likes to the posts , implying that a human presence isn't necessary for there to be a digital presence or fingerprint on social media platforms ... relinquishing unnecessary tasks to bots is becoming more and more popular , our ciberpathologies demanding we be digitally present and ubiquitous even when we can't be ... the bot is our substitute , with a plastic heart , that lives to like ...

to end , a sped-up video summary of the show set to Kate Bush's "Deeper Understanding" , also sped up ↡

my texts and visual poems printed and hung within the exhibition ☟

Tangent Projects Curatorial Residency

07_2019-10_2020*

Residency realized with Margot Cuevas Orteu ⥈

*note : the bulk of the interventions programmed as a part of our residency took place in 2019 with the exception of one ... the exhibition we curated as a culmination of the residency is included in the 2020 projects section ...

in August 2019 , Margot and i approached Tsering Frykman-Glen ⤐ , founder and director of Tangent Projects with regards to a possible collaboration between us and her newly inaugurated residency / gallery space in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat ... Tsering decided to attach our immanent collaboration to Tangent's 'Affine' programme : projects within projects , spanning performances , workshops , screenings , etc. ...

we then embarked on a 12-month residency with the strategy of intervening in , interrupting and building on Tsering's exhibition programme ... we were able to develop visual essays , programme performances and organise activities for 2 exhibitions and then finalise the residency with a curated exhibition of our own ...

our first series of interventions were within the framework of Irma Marco's ⇴ exhibition 'LYR' ('Liberación y Reparación') which dissected the fragility of mobile phones , humanitiy's relationship to them , their programmed obsolescence and the cyclical nature of phone production and phone repair : how developing countries with cheap labour costs fabricate the phones and when they break , people from developing countries are paid low prices to fix them ... after a series of chats with the artist , Margot and i began concocting how we were going to branch off of these concepts and complement them with our interventions ...

for the finissage of the exhibition on October 4th , 2019 , we composed a "zip-aria" in three parts that tackled several themes of the show :

1_ "Physicality , Anatomy and Corporeity" (in Catalan) ... the first part sought to make physiological comparisons between the cellphone and human body , exploring examples of their compositional similarities , their fragility , the risks we take with them (for example , comparing acts performed by daredevils with the pop culture "pinching" phenomenon where people hold their cellphone between 2 fingers and lift them over extremely high places ; both acts causing the viewer's palms to sweat) ...

2_ "Programed Obsolescence and Death Foretold" (in English) , in which we decided to hold a philosophical conversation with Siri , with the intention of enticing her to emote and talk about her feelings and opinions , which of course , she refused to do ... we then scripted a kind of apologetic elegy for Siri to narrate , in which she opens up about her fears , detachment , loss , desire , failure and the composition of her vessel , the iPhone ...

3_ "The Soul and Affectivity of the iPhone" (in English) , a suicide note written by Siri , amid images of iPhones being destroyed in savage ways , begging not to resuscitate her ...

music production by magic candy ↯

"Centrifugacions és el títol d'un cicle d'exposicions que té com a objectiu mostrar anualment els millors projectes d'alumnes de l'Escola Massana. Vol ser un reconeixement als projectes que van assolir els millors propòsits als diferents plans d'estudi que s'imparteixen. Els treballs seleccionats reafirmen la importància dels processos de recerca en l'àmbit del disseny i de les arts visuals contemporànies, amb el convenciment que cal superar les disciplines i assumir un nou rol de l'artista i del dissenyador com a investigador i pensador.

Aquesta tercera edició del cicle l’hem subtitulat _davant la incertesa amb la intenció de potenciar idees implícites en molts dels projectes presentats. Preocupacions i neguits que es transformen en accions, amb reflexions sobre la precarietat laboral, sobre la vulnerabilitat acadèmica i professional, sobre el desassossec que produeix el context de creació actual, sobre les estructures polítiques i culturals de producció, etc. En definitiva, sobre la certesa que els projectes en l’àmbit de l’art i el disseny poden actuar com a eines processuals per tal d’ajudar a assimilar, alleujar i fins i tot solucionar neguits, aportant coneixement útil per poder entendre i així poder respondre al nostre entorn complex. En aquest procés, es dissolen les hipotètiques fronteres entre allò polític, social i personal, esdevenint possibles i noves estratègies afectives de resolució de conflictes."

for the second intervention of the night , we invited Natalia Carminati ☛ to do a performance she called 'Killing Screen' ... the spectators were asked to watch the performance on Tangent Projects' live stream ... Margot filmed the live stream , which showed Natalia atop a ladder , watering a phone on the floor with a pink watering can ... i then called the phone being watered ... the spectators could hear it ring and then eventually die after being drowned ... while the whole performance was happening , a small camera projected in real-time the spectators watching the performance ...

for another intervention , we invited the collective Oblicuas ⟶ to hold a workshop on September 22 , 2019 ... their investigation revolves around critically rethinking everyday objects , transfeminist methods of protection and innovating design mechanisms with gender theories ... this edition of the workshop 'ASE' ('Ajustaments de Seguretat Externs' , 'external safety adjustments') , which they had been giving in other spaces , involved participants equipping their phones with decorative armour and subtile weapons , intended as a subversive method of everyday safety , specifically for walking home alone at night ...

for our final intervention , we were invited to intervene in Australian artist Katy B Plummer's ⤻ exhibition 'Armour for Flowers' which dealt with heavily personal themes of family history , white supremacy , neocolonialism , Christian conquests and the obliteration of ancient spiritualities and folklore , and unseen worlds that are present in post- or ongoing-colonialist spaces ...

Margot and i had trouble deciding how we were going to intercede gracefully and gently in the exhibition given its sensitive themes ... ironically , the person we ended up collaborating with integrates punk culture , occultist magic , dark symbology and satanic numerology into their expansive work ... Marc O'Callaghan ⥇ is in fact gentle in all ways possible , despite the seemingly aggressive nature of his work ... he felt obliged to compliment Katy's exhibition given his partial disagreement with one of the themes touched on : the romanticisation of tribal and folkloric traditions as non-misogynistic and non-exclusive spiritualities ... according to him , Christianity is one of many oppressive , hierarchical , violent and colonialist spiritualities that greatly predated said Western religion ... he outlined this in a handwritten letter to us :

to bridge this very unique friction between the artists , i wrote a loopy , non-linear poem that was presented with Marc's performance on January 24th , 2020 ...

two excerpts from a very extensive chain of emails exchanged between the four of us , discussing the angle , approach , tone of the performance named 'A.D.Q.' ... in these two , Marc details the contents of the performance in a first idea and then a second that fused ideas form the first with new ones ...

Centrifugacions III. _davant la incertesa

Artists: Raquel Bautista Useros, Jordi Lacroix, Max Azemar i Carnicero, Meritxell Romano Sánchez, Martí de la Malla, Júlia Lloveras Garcia, Marta Anglada, Marta Vicente Solanilla, Mònica Casugas Iserte, Òscar Cabrejas Bermúdez, Josefina Espinoza, Sandra Freijo Serrano, Bérénice Courtin and Javier Bravo de Rueda

17_10_–20_12_2019

Curated and designed by Gabriel Virgilio Luciani, Pep Dardanyà and Èlia Clemente Vinzia

At Espai Busquets, Escola Massana Centre d'Art i Disseny

graphic design by Bendita Gloria ⥛

note from the co-curator :

upon graduating from Escola Massana in 2019 , i was invited to co-curate , along with two professors , an annually held show that brings together a selection of graduating students' final projects that received the highest notes ... after a series of meetings and brainstorming sessions , the curatorial team decided that the subtitle and theme would be '_davant la incertesa' ('facing uncertainty') which signaled to the way young artists used their woes , fears and insecurities in their individual practices as a way of facing the future and its unpredictability ... these are documents of young voices dealing with the uncertainty regarding their economic stability , the academic and institutional structures that they are subject to , personal narratives , familial plights and struggles , threats to the environment and so on ... the investigation and realisation of said projects may have helped students alleviate said pain and even help develop solutions ...

the design of the space was intended to evoke uncertainty as we flipped huge panels on to their faces and then on top of one another , let projects trickle out of the exhibition space and moved away from centrality and hierarchy by dispersing and scattering the works ... i worked to make sure that the conditions and placement of each project aligned with its atmosphere and concept ... below is the exhibition text (only available in Catalan) :