Study Proposal

Focussed on nostalgia of both post-modernism and modernism I aim to produce a series of installations based on the notion of intellectual legacy. The definition of this intellectuality is necessarily an opposition to both technically and conceptually specialized creativity. However I can try to define my goals for this year to be as theoretical as they are practical. I am not exclusively interested in the obvious historical contextualization of my work through specific movements such as minimalism, art&language or even contemporary artists such as Keith Tyson or Keith Sonier. I am more interested in the interaction of the act of writing and the studio activity. My priority is to get input from philosophers who transformed the contemporary paradigm (such as Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Heidegger, Derrida and even Deleuze). I do not specially want to refine a method of work either. What I desire is to establish installation as the media I use to rethink the editing and validation processes that interfere in the production, post-production and even “observation” of the exhibited object.
The city I’ve been immersed in is becoming a strong impulse to transform “poison into medicine” and in that sense make work out of waste, install photographic slide shows by recycling visual pollution and repeat mistakes or banal ideas until the scale changes their nature. Mixed with this positive action I also enjoy using low tech media to expose paradoxes or unexpected intensities that enhance the crucial importance of technology.
The reason why I chose this media has to do with its exclusive flexibility and capacity to integrate any manifestation of either language or studio findings.
What I believe I need to improve during the next year are both the editing and language skills related to my work. By editing I mean the selection of projects, consideration of their presentation or curational alternatives and finally investigation strategies which will lead to a deeper theoretical dialogue. Through the exploration and exploitation of each specific project I will try to develop a vocabulary that will hopefully allow me to write and talk about each work without corrupting what it might signify.
What I believe is the linking thread of my work is not just the media and method I use but also the interaction I always develop with architecture (through site specific and site adapted projects) and certain areas of visual culture which are degraded and that I frequently use as a resource. Another major goal in each project is to develop a layered object, working in several interpretation and engagement levels. These project’s stratified structures will be achieved sometimes buy the use of sound in the installation or the physical overlap of objects with different properties. This formation emerges from my interaction with dated or low technologies that can be quite diverse: from a typewriter to images I collect from the tube or any found object selected for its formal or physical properties as well as what it signifies and does.
From the philosophers I mentioned before I hope to extract thoughts on technology from Benjamin and Heidegger, on one hand, and engage in a contemporary understanding and deconstruction of language with Derrida and Wittgenstein (as opposites).
Historically I would have to frame my practice between Duchamp and contemporary installation artists, bearing in mind, others as diverse as Kandinsky and John Cage might sometimes be obvious references. None the less those same projects will concern writing and other subject matters which might be unrelated to those. A few of these areas that are likely to become relevant are art school (as an institution), science and subtle narratives of time and error developed through the repetition and pace of a particular action.
As one might imagine the multilayered signifiers usually bring forward the pleasure of dealing with the barely readable, the absurd or sometimes just resistance played by its different elements.