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João Silvério is a curator based in Lisbon. STREAM was on view at White Box Gallery in Chelsea in January.
STREAM installation view, 2007. Courtesy of White Box.This project encompasses the interconnection of works by 12 artists, which much like the irregular sway of a pendulum in endless motion, express a sensation of difference, and at times, even of opposition. This dissemblance or difference is not only formal, but also harnesses issues related to the representation of image, time, seriality, and repetition in narrative. It also addresses the artist’s search into and examination of his or her means of production. STREAM is an open-ended proposal that develops internally. The selected works confront mediums, analog, and/or digital processes, and creative methodologies in order to challenge discourse and artistic procedure. The resulting situations are intended to thwart viewer expectations.
The notion of “stream” was adopted as a key reference for this project. The multiplicity of proposals that meet within the exhibition space employ idioms rooted in sound, video, and new media. What underpins this notion is the idea of a flow suggesting a state of continued acceleration one might find in the natural world, such as in the rapid course of a river. Conversely one may find a similar kind of flow in a fluid thought process, or even in the integrated procedures of technology. In English, the word “stream” exists in scripting language (such as UNIX) to describe a specific type of command used when editing archives from large databases. By means of an input, data is selected and transmitted with greater efficiency. STREAM is a kind of irregular flow that continually redefines its boundaries. It functions like a linguistic proposition, a dissonant tone that enforces deceptiveness and the abruptness of choice.Employed in the production of the works on display are sundry everyday items which we often take as assimilated and given mediums: projectors, LCD screens, vinyl recordings, headphones, computers, screens, sensors, cameras, televisions, and even the Internet. The essential curatorial concern, however, is not the medium as a univocal channel of expression and representation, but rather the conceptual practices and codes that emerge within the audiovisual context. These sedimented and diverse practices have a common denominator: time or the duration of the work we are observing or listening to, and its conditions of display, which are altogether determined by the way each artist chooses to use, transform, and combine technology. It is not the technological device as such that is the principal concern or object of each individual artist’s research, but the transformation and reequation of an equipment’s original function.João Leonardo presents One Letter From Sol LeWitt, 2004, in the gallery’s videobox (a small show window with an LCD screen.) This piece, which has a strong poetic quality to it, departs from a letter Sol LeWitt wrote to Eva Hesse in 1972. Leonardo proceeds by working with the letter’s content, “a lengthy vote of confidence” in LeWitt’s own words. Leonardo re-utilizes the word “DO,” found in the original, but approximates his visual language to that of the video clip. With a song by Moby, this work distances itself from the promotional video it could be mistaken for by deconstructing its genesis through a dose of irony and humor that works to decontexualize and render it strangely appealing to its viewers. Fall, 2005, a video by Cristina Mateus screened in a loop, creates a sensation of discomfort and strangeness. A man (or figure) walks the length of a building. Filmed from the bottom up, this character generates a feeling of dread. The accident, which takes place rather unexpectedly, transforms the one-time character into a ghost who returns as a hobbling man close to the site of the fall. The circularity of the action suggests a universe of illusion and inebriating distress that relates to the nature and reality of the images.Departing from images from an historic archive and their re-actualization by way of a new narrative, Pedro Barateiro recontextualizes the idea of memory in his To Learn by Heart, 2007, through video editing. This work attains a sculptural dimension in space thanks to its projection within a simple structure that has been built by the artist with poor materials. Miguel Soares exhibits Jumping Nauman, 2007, a search for sites on the Internet where Bruce Nauman displayed his work over the period of a year. Nauman and his work’s constant relocation by air create the mood of this piece, which finds its metaphor in the “jumping” motion viewers observe in the unusual editing of images sourced from Google Maps.The singularity and solitude of faces who wait on a train in a station (the length of time, the absurdness of the wait) and apparently look at each other, constructs, by way of Filipa César’s precise editing, an interrogatory narrative in Romance Reedit, 2003. This place almost becomes one of encounters and what we are left with is a succession of images of faces and disembodied gazes. Luisa Cunha presents Words for Gardens, a sound piece that confronts viewers with the construction of a space by way of the denial of its possibility, expressed in the first sentence of the text she reads, which transforms language into the only medium that allows for the creation of this place. As a counterpoint, the entire exhibition is pulverized by a shower of pops and crackles that derive from a work by Alexandre Estrela, The Ultimate Relaxing Experience, 2006. This work consists of a vinyl record placed on a record table. As if the player were broken or altered, the pre-recorded sounds emitted by the player are indistinct and generate an abstract action that disturbs perception. Another (interactive) experience in which the viewer is subjected to her relationship with space is found in Struct_7, 2007, by André Sier. This work departs from an interface that is established between the projected image and the presence of the viewer in the room. It suggests that viewers (performatively) shape their presence in front of a machine that apparently responds in real time by generating a myriad of three-dimensional landscapes. These images integrate our movements but fragment the perception we have of our immediate environment.Carlos Roque’s work, Golden Age (Winter Version), 2007, presents itself as a contradiction in terms. Roque inscribes a drawing of an urban landscape where the black outline contrasts with the white canvas. The landscape is fictional and aggregates several images of urban references gathered from several sources. On this canvas, Roque projects a snowstorm, creating an environment that oscillates between the mayhem of everyday life and a reference to Romantic painting. Painting is also the object and reference to Pedro Cabral Santo’s work The Turner Pic, 2005-07. Cabral Santo questions the fragility of communication and of language between the public and the private during a conversation between three visitors to the Gulbenkian Museum who observe a painting by William Turner. Another deceptive strategy is employed by Rui Toscano in his work São Paulo, 2001. The image of a steady shot of São Paulo redirects viewers immediately to photography, or to the painting of genre scenes, namely that of landscape. Toscano plays on the ambiguity of the image, the beholder, and his or her attention in the presence of this work. Only on close observation does one perceive the image’s movement, made manifest in details such as the movement of cars on the streets and the translucent smoke that billows from chimneys.The use of image technology and protocols that are required in order to present image (formats, systems, etc.) find great expression in today’s artistic output. From this point of view, PAL, 2001, by João Simões impresses an assertive position that is both critical and political. This work was designed to run on a PAL system but is viewed on a NTSC system. Simões transforms the nature of the image by incorporating the mediums he uses—videos, systems, projectors—as elements in his production. PAL and its language are the result of the combination of all of these elements and is therefore not just a video or a sound recording.In STREAM, we are confronted with strategies that shake the observer’s receptivity and her or his expectations with regards to the appearance of supports. This obstructs the characterization or indexation of a medium, but also that of narrative construction.
