Insupportable support

 

I imagine what I didn't see or what I only partially saw as though in a parallel movement to myself, I  foresee and, to some extent, I project.

I speak of these disembodied objects, of these shapeless surfaces, these contentless containers, soft things, supports, but...what of?

It might be important to recall a possible genealogy, going back nearly forty years, to speak of the soft things Richard Serra, Robert Morris or Bruce Neumann then proposed, or go deeper to the soft figurations of Dali quoting him: “ a terrifying and eatable” Modern Style.

The exhibition originates in an exercise which is, in turn, the result of research and a story; however it is relevant now to understand how it works. It depends on each of us! If you allow me a personal remark, I would say the visceral aspect of these objects immediately transported me to military training camps at wartime (colonial war) as well as to a nocturnal, initiatic exercise: intestine and its contents from which I finally emerged covered in blood and excrement after crossing the barrier-border marking the end of the pathway.

Well, on imagining the way how these objects work, I feel them as other many borders like vision, body, inside and outside.

“My body is your body is my body” Zé Ernesto de Sousa said idealistically, speaking of a world that no longer exists, in the same way these visitors of Reservatório da Patriarcal are mine, yours and mine, frontiers of a view that goes beyond epidermis.

Hence the resort to the stethoscope for watching, listening to the heart beat in the inner body, the air vibration. Between air and water, suspended, lying down, full, empty, these ambiguous beings are frontiers to be crossed as well as supports to the most diverse memories. As far as I am concerned, they may even turn into supports of the unbearable, owing to the coincidence between their matter and my memory. Thus, this exercise can indeed work as a trap to make the spectator look inside himself both in time and space.

 

José Luís Porfírio

September 2000

 

 

 

Habitar o corpo

 

O corpo como lugar de ser habitado

de ser habitáculo do outro

do outro-ser, do outro-ente

num contínuo esvaziamento de si

num devir do vago pleno.

 

habitar            sentir temporário de um lugar

lugar               local em contínua circunscrição

corpo              campo imanente da transcendência

 

 

Isabel Correia

Setembro 2000

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© 2014 Isabel Correia