the blink of an alien
This project is a laboratory: a set of experiments, reflections, machines, sketches and prototypes after the idea of the octopus as a ghost of extinction ...
…. a ghost of the Anthropocene.
,,,, The work is articulated through two ideas:
The dark side of knowledge and technique understood as a Pharmakon, something that is both a cure and a poison. The technology and scientific development that has created us as we are is also a monster that threatens to lead the planet to collapse, with the extinction of thousands of species including ours. What creates us destroys us.
...and the figure of the octopus as the ghost that would give shape to this moment: the animal that seems to be able to survive a mass extinction and evolve by developing a brain and an intelligence at least similar to ours is at the same time the ship-eating Kraken monster of the past....The atavistic fear that terrifies us since antiquity is the same ghost that threatens us from the future.....the dark tentacle shape of the animal that will replace us in this era of extermination that we have already begun...
…….,,,,
All that remains is for us to fall in love with this extinction aesthetic...
To understand the landscape of devastation we have created as anaesthetic ideal
... as an ideal state
we need the art to shape our own destruction...
If modernity dreamed of the future, the Anthropocene dreams of ghosts of the present seen from the future. The specter of extinction invites us to imagine a future world in which an alien geologist in the shape of the terrible octopus of the past detects the layers of our existence
... a brief blink in the history of the earth
... in the eye of an alien.
Ghosts //Series of performative sculptures. Alchemical artefacts that seek to give shape to perfect monsters, yet it is not their function that matters, but the inner life of each one.
They all work by generating a material that collapses the machine, creating slightly recognisable ochtopod shapes leading the machine to a sculptural state of ruin. This material is extracted to be used in the rest of the pieces, thus articulating the project.
Ghost #1 at work
Ghost #1, #3,#7 , #9 and 11
Fragments of crystallised material from the sculpture have been given to different diamond cutters with the sole instruction to treat them as if they were a diamond, obtaining a brilliant cut.
video_the blink of an alien
performance-dinner
Biotope#1// This octopus was rescued from poaching, and while it was recovering from this traumatic episode in a tank, was part of the exhibition. an investigation and several processes took place in order to create a scenario, a kind of habitat or a home. He coexisted with different objects related to the project and, while using them, he modified and gave their final shape in order to use them in its survival, taking at the same time the form of an installation or an artistic set. The piece remained on display until it acquired its definitive configuration. Later it was transported to the sea where both, the animal and the artistic piece continue living, continue evolving together out of human control....
experiments
