CILINDRO/SITE-SPECIFIC

FACTORÍA ITALIA, SANTIAGO, CHILE.

 

PLASTER.

EACH PIECE: 180 X 40 X 30 CM

First and foremost, it is important to situate the context in which this work was installed: CILINDRO, a site-specific curatorial space developed in collaboration with Factoría Italia. A transitory place that repurposed the disused material structure of the chimney from the former Girardi Hat Factory, which had been installed horizontally. The project invited artists to reflect upon and create interventions connected either to the formal presence of the chimney or to its historical significance. From the outset, the project emerged with an awareness of its own impermanence: the chimney would exist as a “place” — a receptacle for artistic and architectural interventions — for only a few months. CILINDRO was conditioned by finitude.

In Principios mecánicos I, I took the chimney’s rivets as an initial point of reference. From them emerged two sculptural pieces made of plaster, constructed from wooden moulds whose forms began to resemble coffins. From this moment onwards, the work underwent a shift in which all of its elements gradually began to converge. The horizontal positioning of the chimney allowed me to associate it with a tomb, transferring the notion of finitude — inherent also to our own existence — onto the pieces themselves: they were destined to be destroyed, to die.

Before this tragic conclusion, however, the pieces first had to be transported to the “sepulchral cylinder”. Due to their weight, each sculpture required four people on either side to carry it, and so I relied upon the generosity of anyone willing to assist in the journey. Thus began the funerary procession: three cars travelling in convoy towards CILINDRO. Once installed and brought into relation with the space, the pieces were finally stripped of their material condition. The plaster ceased to be plaster and instead became body. The former chimney ceased to be a former chimney, transforming instead into a crematorium, a sepulchre, or a spacecraft. Each was reciprocally re-signified through the other. The ephemeral and the intangible came to permeate the space.

After inhabiting the site for a week, the pieces were destroyed, reduced to rubble, and taken away by a municipal truck to some landfill where other debris had likewise come to rest. Principios mecánicos I reflects upon finitude as an everyday condition to which we ought, perhaps, to be accustomed, yet which continues to provoke fear, unease and sadness.