2024
Durante la residencia en La Casa Móvil (Algodonales, Andalucía, España), indagué en la idea cuerpo-como-casa, casa-como-cuerpo, explorando relaciones entre realidades (lo que sean construidas u orgánicas) – internas y externas, del mundo viviente, que habito y que me habitan.
Como viajadora, busqué materiales portátiles, ligeros y cotidianos en la papelería local, y planteé preguntas abstractas para abrir un diálogo con mi cuerpo-casa y la casa-cuerpo del entorno más amplio.
Realicé el proyecto a través de metodologías encarnadas y expandidas, y salió un proceso fluido por medio de la escritura y dibujos lúdicos, y un video como registro de huellas dejadas del entorno en mi cuerpo-casa.
Pasé horas en la sierra siguiendo senderos de cabra, abriendo mis sentidos y saboreando las llamadas de las chicharras, los susurros de los árboles, olores de paja y tomillo silvestre, las texturas de rocas jurásicas, colores y sensaciones del seco y ardiente entorno natural, bañándome en el río, tomando el dulce agua subterráneo y poniendo atención en los animales y plantas alrededor. Jugué con realidades y sistemas construidos como lenguaje – intercambiando las definiciones de cuerpo y casa y experimentando con interconexiones entre sistemas orgánicos.
Fue una experiencia única y experimental de autorreflexión, flujo y conexión corporal que – gracias a tener tiempo, espacio, y desconexión de responsabilidades diarias – me permitió claramente identificar patrones y huellas ecoculturales, seguir un sendero interno, interconectar una red de fragmentos por trazos e hilos, transponer capas de realidades y canalizar ideas conceptuales, internas y externas. El proyecto continúa! Como una rica fuente de ideas.
Letra de la Calle (Street Lyrics)
2022
Multimedia indoor and outdoor / public installation exhibited in Buenos Aires, Argentina, following a one-month residency at Proyecto ‘Ace, April 2022.
Weeeeeeeee
They eat it
They chew it
The white ice
The wet mice
Tie the team
Beat the heat
Bed heat
Debt beat
Ewe meat
U me
Tu y...
Che
Bite me
Cite me
Meme it
Hit it
It wit
It huit bit
Weetbic
Hey
Ce mec
He twee
We he
Tee hee hee
Heeeeeeee
Paso 1: bien comunicada
(Step 1: well connected / communicated)
Referencing concrete poetry and the Situationists’ Dérive as a jumping-off point, the video and installation work Street Lyrics explores abstract notions of the street and language, the familiar and the unfamiliar.
It’s a playful, personal response to the unique urban environment of Buenos Aires.
The street is often a habitual mechanism, a well-trodden linear route from ‘A’ to ‘B’ (like stubborn cerebral pathways). A logical, alphabetic system of succession, traversed automatically and repetitively in everyday life. Yet the street, like language, is also an abstract, chaotic, magical space of random exchange, offering infinite possibilities. Traveling to somewhere unfamiliar is a way to de-rail our day-to-day repetitions of both street and language, reminding us that both the street and language are active worlds, living entities, in constant states of change and evolution.
As we go from A to B in daily life, pathways of experience connect us and surrounding matter. We leave invisible woven jet streams over time and space, building up rich tapestries of memory in the ecology of the street and in our bodily memories. Las veredas (the pavement and footpaths), also record traces over time, storing memories fastidiously as cracks, scuffs, residue, and discolouration. They slowly wear down and decay, destined to eventually be updated or replaced. Like language, the street is alive with relational meaning, loaded with signs, symbols, history and politics.
Paso 2: la calle me habla
(Step 2: the street talks to me)
The work emerged by exploring the city of Buenos Aires on foot, absorbing, observing and thinking as I went. Walking over 70km in the first week of the residency, I set destinations in unfamiliar areas to carry out everyday, mundane tasks, taking routes which piqued my interest in the moment. The walks and conceptual parameters were influenced by the midtwentieth century practices of the Situationist International movement (the dérive and psychogeography).
From the first day, I was drawn to discarded metal shapes on the street, unwanted machine offcuts. Aesthetically scattered on the pavement like poetry, claves, clues.
Worthless treasures waiting to be interpreted. Quietly asking to be reassembled, scrambled, scrabbled... Como la calle me habla! Taking a playful approach (and having realised with delight that the metal offcuts are ubiquitous and familiar to Porteños / locals of Buenos Aires), I developed videos by building an extemporaneous poem out of 11 metal shapes, from which I could form 12 makeshift letters.
I used mainly English and borrowed from the other languages insistently chattering in my head: Spanish, local Rioplantense, which I’d heard on the street, and French. The abstract assemblage of words follows an irregular yet rhythmic flow and a slow, pedestrian pace. The distinctive veredas of Buenos Aires provide the centre stage for this dialogue with the calle.
Paso 3 (Step 3): calle-to-action
The posters echo the material forms in the videos while calling upon the vernacular of street publicity. The photos of the veredas were taken while walking, some accidentally, some impulsively and without a particular intention. Pasted as an indoor installation and out on the street, the posters may appear to advertise something by following the logic of sharing details of a service. But there is no commercial purpose, no contact details, no call-to-action or social media handle. They repeat the abstract poem lines from the videos with the same metal letterforms, offering tabs to be torn off and kept. Somewhat opaque, they evade accepted systems and expectations. They propose possibilities of confusion, annoyance, pointlessness, mistranslation and misunderstanding (a passer-by was overheard saying they were about the council repairing the footpaths). Yet also of imagination, open interpretation, connections and random exchange, not conforming to the linear A to B logic of language and the calle.
A familiar public language with unfamiliar intentions. A playfully open proposition which carries no expectation of return. Sólo letras ensambladas con la música de la calle (Just lyrics / letters assembled to the music of the street).
2022
Multimedia indoor and outdoor / public installation exhibited in Buenos Aires, Argentina, following a one-month residency at Proyecto ‘Ace, April 2022.
Weeeeeeeee
They eat it
They chew it
The white ice
The wet mice
Tie the team
Beat the heat
Bed heat
Debt beat
Ewe meat
U me
Tu y...
Che
Bite me
Cite me
Meme it
Hit it
It wit
It huit bit
Weetbic
Hey
Ce mec
He twee
We he
Tee hee hee
Heeeeeeee
Paso 1: bien comunicada
(Step 1: well connected / communicated)
Referencing concrete poetry and the Situationists’ Dérive as a jumping-off point, the video and installation work Street Lyrics explores abstract notions of the street and language, the familiar and the unfamiliar.
It’s a playful, personal response to the unique urban environment of Buenos Aires.
The street is often a habitual mechanism, a well-trodden linear route from ‘A’ to ‘B’ (like stubborn cerebral pathways). A logical, alphabetic system of succession, traversed automatically and repetitively in everyday life. Yet the street, like language, is also an abstract, chaotic, magical space of random exchange, offering infinite possibilities. Traveling to somewhere unfamiliar is a way to de-rail our day-to-day repetitions of both street and language, reminding us that both the street and language are active worlds, living entities, in constant states of change and evolution.
As we go from A to B in daily life, pathways of experience connect us and surrounding matter. We leave invisible woven jet streams over time and space, building up rich tapestries of memory in the ecology of the street and in our bodily memories. Las veredas (the pavement and footpaths), also record traces over time, storing memories fastidiously as cracks, scuffs, residue, and discolouration. They slowly wear down and decay, destined to eventually be updated or replaced. Like language, the street is alive with relational meaning, loaded with signs, symbols, history and politics.
Paso 2: la calle me habla
(Step 2: the street talks to me)
The work emerged by exploring the city of Buenos Aires on foot, absorbing, observing and thinking as I went. Walking over 70km in the first week of the residency, I set destinations in unfamiliar areas to carry out everyday, mundane tasks, taking routes which piqued my interest in the moment. The walks and conceptual parameters were influenced by the midtwentieth century practices of the Situationist International movement (the dérive and psychogeography).
From the first day, I was drawn to discarded metal shapes on the street, unwanted machine offcuts. Aesthetically scattered on the pavement like poetry, claves, clues.
Worthless treasures waiting to be interpreted. Quietly asking to be reassembled, scrambled, scrabbled... Como la calle me habla! Taking a playful approach (and having realised with delight that the metal offcuts are ubiquitous and familiar to Porteños / locals of Buenos Aires), I developed videos by building an extemporaneous poem out of 11 metal shapes, from which I could form 12 makeshift letters.
I used mainly English and borrowed from the other languages insistently chattering in my head: Spanish, local Rioplantense, which I’d heard on the street, and French. The abstract assemblage of words follows an irregular yet rhythmic flow and a slow, pedestrian pace. The distinctive veredas of Buenos Aires provide the centre stage for this dialogue with the calle.
Paso 3 (Step 3): calle-to-action
The posters echo the material forms in the videos while calling upon the vernacular of street publicity. The photos of the veredas were taken while walking, some accidentally, some impulsively and without a particular intention. Pasted as an indoor installation and out on the street, the posters may appear to advertise something by following the logic of sharing details of a service. But there is no commercial purpose, no contact details, no call-to-action or social media handle. They repeat the abstract poem lines from the videos with the same metal letterforms, offering tabs to be torn off and kept. Somewhat opaque, they evade accepted systems and expectations. They propose possibilities of confusion, annoyance, pointlessness, mistranslation and misunderstanding (a passer-by was overheard saying they were about the council repairing the footpaths). Yet also of imagination, open interpretation, connections and random exchange, not conforming to the linear A to B logic of language and the calle.
A familiar public language with unfamiliar intentions. A playfully open proposition which carries no expectation of return. Sólo letras ensambladas con la música de la calle (Just lyrics / letters assembled to the music of the street).
Outdoor poster installation, across various areas in Buenos Aires, 2022
Indoor video projection and poster installation, Proyecto ‘Ace, Buenos Aires, 2022
Patience and Solitude
2021
Keys
sneeze
crises
cheese
bluetooth keyboard
double ply seesaw
vacuum up the egg
with the leftover pegs
put it in a pot plant
triple ace sock pants
and whisk them all together
in a game of
one.
Patience and Solitude (1) proposes a personal and collective sense of losing control and grip on reality, a conflation of mounting personal anxieties and global crises, confined to the top of a coffee table.
Ordinary objects are markers of identity and storage devices of memories, that make up the democratic and familiar visual language of the everyday, articulating the realities we’ve constructed, anchoring the narrative to a particular time and place.
Pandemic lockdowns have provided a magnified study of the absurdity of everyday life in general.
Confined to domestic spaces, we feverishly repeat habitual routines, express frustration, longing, love, hope and embrace unusual makeshift coping mechanisms.
Mundane repetition and a semblance of order continue,
as globally, shit unravels in epic proportions at an alarming rate, within a universe dancing to unknown laws of physics.
Contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel believes absurdity itself resides in the human ability to step back, appreciate the absurdity of existence, and then carry on with the repeated banalities of everyday life, regardless.
A micro to macro conflation of seriousness and humour, purpose and meaninglessness, order and chaos.
Patience and Solitude playfully touches on themes of repetition and pattern, existentialism, excesses of mass consumption, perception, fragility and constant states of change.
It enacts the elusive complexity of the everyday, by inviting connections and valuing ambiguity and indeterminacy as ends in their own right.
2021
Keys
sneeze
crises
cheese
bluetooth keyboard
double ply seesaw
vacuum up the egg
with the leftover pegs
put it in a pot plant
triple ace sock pants
and whisk them all together
in a game of
one.
Patience and Solitude (1) proposes a personal and collective sense of losing control and grip on reality, a conflation of mounting personal anxieties and global crises, confined to the top of a coffee table.
Ordinary objects are markers of identity and storage devices of memories, that make up the democratic and familiar visual language of the everyday, articulating the realities we’ve constructed, anchoring the narrative to a particular time and place.
Pandemic lockdowns have provided a magnified study of the absurdity of everyday life in general.
Confined to domestic spaces, we feverishly repeat habitual routines, express frustration, longing, love, hope and embrace unusual makeshift coping mechanisms.
Mundane repetition and a semblance of order continue,
as globally, shit unravels in epic proportions at an alarming rate, within a universe dancing to unknown laws of physics.
Contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel believes absurdity itself resides in the human ability to step back, appreciate the absurdity of existence, and then carry on with the repeated banalities of everyday life, regardless.
A micro to macro conflation of seriousness and humour, purpose and meaninglessness, order and chaos.
Patience and Solitude playfully touches on themes of repetition and pattern, existentialism, excesses of mass consumption, perception, fragility and constant states of change.
It enacts the elusive complexity of the everyday, by inviting connections and valuing ambiguity and indeterminacy as ends in their own right.
Gertrude Street Projection Festival, 2022 (Photography by Astrid Mulder)
Handy Footage
2021
Mini projector installation. Looping hand-held video footage from four continents.
Playfully contemplating ecological imprints between earth, body and place.
2021
Mini projector installation. Looping hand-held video footage from four continents.
Playfully contemplating ecological imprints between earth, body and place.
