INDEPENDANT CURATOR
THE DURATION OF THE PRESENT | Cicus Ubicua, Seville (Spain) | 2014
Exhibition curator: Lina López
Artists: Lina López / François Bucher
“The blind and the elephant” is an Indian parable that reached a wide spread throughout the world. It tells the story of six blind men who went to touch an elephant to see what it was like: The first one touched his paw and said that the elephant was like a pillar. The second touched his tail and said it was a rope. The third touched his trunk and said he was like a serpent. The fourth ear and said it was like a fan. The fifth touched his belly and said that it was like a wall and the sixth touched his fang and said it was like a spear. The six of them touched the same animal, each perceived it differently, but no one perceived the whole elephant.
“The duration of the present, notes on the frequency” begins where this parable ends. It is proposed as a search for the relationship with the whole; as if one were entering a diagram of the “art of combinatorics” where each particular aspect is in a complex relationship with others. The pieces of the exhibition then inquire about the dynamics of the whole and its part; point to a forgotten knowledge –sometimes repressed– a magical science, which is the science of the irreducible.
The route begins with a corridor that has been converted into a solar observatory; It has become a body that experiences the sunrise and sunset. From this movement, one can grasp the origin of each denomination of time: the minutes, the hours, the days, the months, and the year. Through the observation and periodic recording of solar events, one can become aware of a notion forgotten by our body: that time is not governed by the hands of the clock, but by our relation to the movement of the sun.
After crossing this corridor of time we are faced with 7 hanging spheres, they are Helmholtz resonators – created to analyze the perception of the tones at the physiological level. Manufactured on a larger scale than the originals of the nineteenth century, these spheres capture planetary frequencies imperceptible to the human ear and feel a new approach to correspondences, between the Universe and the body.
Turning to the corridor on the right, we find 7 time disks; This installation refers to Chris Marker’s “La Jetée”, which tells of a journey through time, through the conscience of a man who accedes to the past to visit the moment in which he perceived the image of his own death, in the future.
This piece consists of a series of discs in descending scale. Each disc is a time that contains other times. Its combinatorial turns the one who walks them, into a time traveler.
The concept of an exponential time refers to the multidimensional, a present of living codes: mythic time. The 7 seeds allude to a myth of the Kogi culture (ÁRBOL DE LA SIERRA), where a rainbow tree is described, the most sacred tree of all trees. This one has pink and violet leaves, and when the wind touches them they become butterflies.
The tour ends with an inverted word that can not be read directly; Can only be read through a mirror of water. The major aim of this piece is to reveal the random nature of a concept that can only be perceived as a reflection.