TO PURSUE AN IDEA
How many ways are there to open an element, closed, made of a certain material, with a particular form?
The pursuit of the same idea applied to the same material. To pursue the same idea generates a series of pieces that is not a series, but a group, a pack, governed by a shared axis of investigation, with a plan of operations pointing in the same direction.To squeeze that idea is to exhaust it, to leave it surrendered, to kill it.
But it is also the conquest of a new and irreversible territory.
A MATTER OF THICKNESS
If opening means forcing the thickness, overcoming the resistance of the walls and ultimately connecting spaces,
overcoming thickness is inventing new holes. Inventing new holes. Opening from another side.
Why open? or Why open again? What is the purpose of opening a hollow element that already has two openings at each end? Why open a pipe? Because there are more holes to discover, of many sizes and different natures.
To invent new holes. It is about opening from other sides. Perforating from other sides.
TRANSFORMATION
To open is to twist, to affect the resistant material and transform it into soft matter.
To bend the straight line, to break down the surface, to alter a structure.
What about the openings the pipe already has? The transformation of a single element.
Many ways of opening. Twisting, cutting, burning. Transformation.
There is an understanding between matter and its transformation. Only the material knows its own dynamics when faced with the changes I may propose. It governs its movements.
SENSITIVE MATERIAL
There is an understanding of the material when being manipulated.
That is to say: How much does the material understand and how much does it feel when transformed? The energy of matter.
AMORPHOUS METAL
The smoothness of industrial material disintegrates under the will to wrinkle it.
NEITHER HARD NOR SOFT, AMBIGUOUS
A material may have different degrees of density depending on the situation in which it is found.
Our sensitivity tends to perceive some materials as soft and others as hard, taking as reference the relationship with our own bodies: if it pricks, if it cuts, if it hurts, if it warms, if it caresses, if it supports, if it lasts, if it dies, etc. If we stretch the limits of these sensations, if we blur our perceptions, we may begin to feel materials as more ambiguous, more changeable. The ambiguity of thickness. Consistency. What does it mean for a material to be hard, or soft?
I suppose it depends on the degree to which it can be manipulated. The measure is the physical strength of the human body. That is the parameter. Perhaps this is why there are no wooden skirts or bronze shirts or metal trousers. I prefer to think of ambiguous materials. Materials of ambiguous consistency. Hard or soft depending on the situation.
Luciana Lamothe.
March 2018
