Continuous variable f(Wijstof)
We want to retain experiences we live. Therefore, we tend to perform actions that are actually an attempt to resist the passage of time -perhaps as well, the possibility of non-existence. These actions are also a construction of identity, as we have to define ourselves against time, to adapt to it. The processes might be also a way we deal with the fact that, in our consciousness we are not infinite -or maybe our consciousness is the one that is not: as matter we might stay. This desire is revealed in different scenarios; for example, when a tourist takes a souvenir with her/him, or, when we try to preserve a deceased subject by way of collecting her/his remains. These actions can be described as an attempt of abstraction and appropriation. However, abstracting and appropriating the total reality of a space/time is impossible. I could say: despite the efforts, time passes. Identity is not fixed and death is inevitable.
In 2019, Remains Gallery offered me the possibility of performing the action of scraping on the top floor of its building, which hadn’t been restored. The action consisted of scraping a delimited area from a wall in the space, subtracting part of that other material reality. It was an attempt to abstract, measure, construct or deconstruct it. The purpose of the action was to take possession of that what has been «removed» similar to the way we keep the remains of our death relatives; an attempt to resist the passage of time.
In the video work, I extract different layers of paint, wallpaper, plaster and brick, amongst other materials that the space revealed in order to enter in a dialogue with the history and characteristics of the place through this action. By seeing the characteristics of each layer of wall and connecting with its history and materiality, I am trying to give identity to the space. However, the work reveals that this (giving identity, knowing and/or appropriating) is nothing more than an idea. The same thing happens in the action as happens to the tourist who takes a memory: it is impossible to actually retain a travel experience by just taking a souvenir. Reality seems not accessible.
Besides being an attempt to give identity to the space, the work also relates to the idea and identity of oneself, in time. I have always perceived time as problematic. Time does not belong to me. Many gestures, actions and objects have been a collection of souvenirs to me and, eventually, evidence of a problem, obsession, mania, reflection or simply the way in which I was able to recognize and assume a fear… Time does not belong to us and it is a never-ending mourning of seconds. By performing the action of scraping, time superimposed me in the space of all the people that inhabited the house: they became part of my identity and somehow -at least in my reality- I became part of theirs, just like the house. It also made me reflect about my identity, human notions of identity, a house, the concept of home and matter itself; my body as a person but also my body as matter -like the matter of a house- that goes beyond my own existence as part of the universe. The idea of: the human, the humanity, the other, I. Can one appropriate one’s self? Is consciousness of one’s self real? How can one appropriate one’s self? Thinking and/or thinking oneself is self-appropriation?
By trying to capture, imprison, acquire, and preserve or retain memory of the space, I in turn also impose my particular point of view on the space and experience. It is an enthusiastic act whose consequence is also a new space to be filled. A kind of «nothing». In any case, it is an act that, in turn, reveals the futility of effort and the being self-absorbed. A non-accessible reality survives the consummated act, the memory, the oblivion, and the being. We are everything and nothing and because we are nothing we are everything. Everything for us and only a part, beyond our own acts, thoughts and memories. Scraping, as the impossibility of retaining a time, one or several stories and one or several realities. The sacrifice and perhaps the detriment of part of a reality, as the realization of an effort which result is fiction. The memory as a tragedy and a heroic attempt, whose inevitable outcome is that it is an illusion. It is the condemnation to oblivion at the instance that the memory appears.