Asking questions about myself and the relationship i have to the materials i use made me realize that as much as i’m interested in universal processes and natural phenomena, I’m also piercing fibers that speak about my own identity. During this month of process I’ve been paying close attention to my emotions, gathering them as they came into mind, as well as encountering a lot of obstacles on how to articulate them with my own making…
Revisiting previous video i made interacting with needles and magnets in space made me think of me embracing something larger: Needles as emotions, placed in a semicircular shape creating a boundary with which i interact, stirring them round and around. Rehearsing this motion with a reflective surface underneath provided a smooth surface allowing me to move freely while my voice was playing in the background repeating in a loop…walking in circles, round and around.
Something about my voice was soothing during the whole act of gathering this sharp edges while moving them around. There was a point in which the whole thing became more like a dance….
I Re-envisioned a landscape of needles within boundaries. For which i assembled an object as boundary: a transparent semi-sphere hanged from the ceiling with a rubber cord, suspending steel bars (taken from a bicycle wheel) on magnets, above and bellow.
object as boundary
Rehearsing gathering needles
The elements:
-I created an atmosphere of sound using a vocal processor adding layers of noise and breath and leaving them looping. This sound connected me with the ocean, the sound of breath exhaling through the mouth as when breathing through a tube when diving.
-The camera was set up from above, on a top view position. A drawing previously done (posted above) gave me the hint of such perspective, a body seeing from above with open arms.
-Needles were placed around scattered on the floor, largely enclosing the central object hanging from the ceiling.
-I used magnets in both my hands holding them with medical bandages, which represent a state of being wounded but are also used for practical and self care reasons.
The performance:
I attract needles with both my hands and transfer them into a larger container (object-boundary): the whole act goes from needles being scattered on the ground without limits to needles back into a defined area, for them to be seen and heard…
An amplified space is created for needles and it is through boundaries that the qualities of the needles are embraced, seen and heard.
Being raised with unhealthy boundaries is what triggers this investigation around identity, boundaries and space.
marks of action
a universal process: “stars born from clouds”
(notes taken from a visit i did to the hall of human origins at the museum of natural history of New York)
Our galaxy is rich in nebula, star-forming regions of gas and clouds. Within these immense clouds, small areas sometimes collapse under the force of gravity, begin spinning around their centers, spiraling inward and flatten into disks. It is said that our own solar system began this way.
What happens then within these spinning disks of dust and gas?
Evidence from meteorites demonstrate that in our solar nebula, small bodies such as chondrules (spheres of minerals) collide with other objects and stuck together to form larger bodies, eventually giving rise to planets.
Investigating the deep core of planets has been possible through Meteorites, some of them come from pre-planetary formation that melted causing the rocks and metals to separate into distinct layers cooling slowly (some as slow as one degree every million years). This is a process called differentiation and appears to be the same process that caused the layering in planets in which the rock and metal separated to form the core, the mantle and the crust. Meteorites with high content of iron and nickel are the ones who survived impact when falling onto the earth, more than those with rocky content and for thousand of years these fragments of iron from space provided the strongest metal available for humans.
Visiting the meteorites room (hall of human origins- museum of natural history of New York) made me think of August Rodin’s sculptures. I left the room with the impression that something very strong drives the creative process of a sculptor: perhaps as fiery and intense as the collision between bodies in space…
In my case, I was always attracted to metals and their properties, what hits me is their malleability as well as their ability to remain sturdy and to bear weight. My first interactions with metals began when (driven by a (*) deep-rooted pain / frustration ) I decided to start welding, pounding, cutting, and folding metal. It was the trans-formative aspect of the whole performance at the shop that left me exhausted and at ease…
When that blockage was released I found space and my whole relationship with metals became much more fluid and gentler. I stopped pounding metal understanding that my body was aching instead of feeling relief as in the beginning and went about experimenting with magnets. Magnets were around in the shop to be used as props to hold metals when welding, while using them as props I also became very curious about this phenomenon and that’s what directed me to investigate and inspired me to create a whole series of pieces around it.
(*) My body as the site of an unresolved pain turned into frustration
Today i woke up thinking: what if time was experienced backwards?
Per se, if i go to bed at 7 AM i would be looking to wake up at midnight.
I mean, i wasn’t looking forward for time passing but instead moving backwards.
This doesn’t make sense now but it did! when i woke up
Perhaps and what makes the most sense it is the longing to come back to the slumber
that oscillates between a state i’m not fully awake yet aware…
Notes from my dream journal / September 2018
Time has been implied in my past sculptures as an element of change (motion). I have approached time as a measure of change and now i’m starting to see it as a limit/ boundary constantly moving and adjusting to space…