The links above are to mov files.
Sorry, they may take a few minutes to download.THE INVISIBLES
The work I have in progress for the exhibition Multiple choices: all of the answers above is the development of the piece A brief note about the space surrounding things that are unexpected and easy to be dismissed, made for the exhibition Six Outdoor Projects at LIU (summer 2005). For this show, on the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University, I looked for an object of which the main quality was to belong to that landscape. I selected a flower plant, or rather, two flowers plants, around a large tree on the central area of the campus. Then, for three months, I made these flowers spin quickly at 2 minute intervals.
This project reflects some of the ideas of my work, which has consistently involved the action of creating a merging field for elements and procedures coming from unrelated areas of our experience. In overlapping elements that are foreign to each other the intention is — by removing the viewer from the comfort of habit — to propose an “estrangement” to everyday activities and objects and then, to step back and observe the identity issues that will arise from this interaction.
For the last several years I have been sewing stones, dressing empty spaces, zippering leaves. I have also motorized strings of pearls, so they could turn into a percussion instrument and establish a drum beat. More recently I have been working on an ever--unfolding piece titled The World as an Orange. It consists of familiar objects such as buckets, sneakers and coffee cups, submitted to the same treatment we impart to fruits and vegetables on a kitchen counter – slicing, peeling, halving and chopping.
The process requires precision. Each piece must consolidate unconnected aspects, and yet, appear completely natural – as if this improbable identity has always been some kind of hidden possibility. By sliding elements from one field to another, the intention is to suggest an open chain of meanings that could be assembled like beads of a broken necklace, one after the other but not necessarily in the same order.
For Multiple Choices: all of the answers above I am expanding the idea of the “spinning flowers” project. A group of objects, so common and unnoticeable that become invisible, would be submitted to very discreet performances at regular intervals: in a bowl of fruit sitting on a desk, an orange would give a little jump; on a wall shelf, a bottle of Coca-Cola — on top of a horizontal pile of books —would slide to the left and back to the right; on an office conter, a bowl of information fliers would spin periodically.
These objects would be spread throughout the office area of OKF and instead of being offered the focused attention meant to art objects, they would exist to be perceived out of the corner of the eye. Not everybody would see them, but once perceived, the unexpectedness of their movement should put those viewers in state of alert, intensifying the space around them, as visual hunters in need of maximizing their observation skills. I am calling this group of work The Invisibles.