ÉVEIL/ALIVE at SESC Santana

The exhibition brings together kinetic and robotic works which use movement to express the essence of the living. By way of various technologies, these works cause their components move, shake, wriggle and unfold in a way that evokes biological processes and primitive living beings. They are of the order of the pre, the sub or maybe the intra-human. Not a single work among them even represents an animal species or a recognizable organ or organism. Thanks to this semantic imprecision and the rudimentary forms, they confront us with the living in its secret and intimate dimension.

Life begins with small matters. Though Chico MacMurtrie’s big organic arches unfold in a process that reconfigures the surrounding space and incorporates us, they also have a formal affinity with inner bodily architecture, recalling cellular, muscular or skeletal spaces. For their part, the delicate creatures which make up Steve Daniels’ installations are more likely to evoke small organisms or insects, for instance. They attract attention, stimulate observation and elicit surprise.

In walking through the exhibition, one is never quite certain with what sort of single-cell being, animal species or internal organ one is dealing with. One remains on the level of the minute—either because of the objective dimensions of the components or the scale they allude to—all the while being progressively immersed in a full and animated space. Jane Tingely’s slender creatures, clinging on the floor or the walls, create a living milieu, an ecology in which each of the beings is linked to the others. It is hard to determine whether Ingrid Bachmann’s sculptures, of various forms and dimensions, are the figure of one organism in various stages of development or assuming various postures, or rather of several, yet similar creatures. They make up their own organic world taking on different shapes according to time or space, and which invite one to reflect about the kinship that links living things.

It is through micro-movements in the entrails of his sculptures—expressed via sound in the surrounding space by way of small microphones and speakers—that Jean-Pierre Gauthier’s sculptures come to life. The sound ambiance, in which the viewer and listener is immersed, recalls an unstable and constantly transforming natural milieu. For its part, Anima by Paula Gaetano Adi, with its unique shape in the middle of the room where it is displayed, embraces its surrounding space and forcefully draws visitors in through the attraction and fascination it exerts upon them. This membrane, which expands and contracts to the rhythm of its breathing, in and of itself represents a living organism in its simplest expression; elementary in both shape and movement, its has an expansion capacity that goes beyond its physical limits.

Among the biomimetic movements these works make use of, the vital action of breathing is present in the works of Gauthier, Gaetano Adi, Bachmann and MacMurtrie by way of pneumatic or motorized mechanisms. The eminently fundamental respiration movement affirms aliveness in a repetitive and insistent manner. The skins which rise and descend, the pouches which inflate and deflate, the tubes which stretch and collapse, the cavities which are filled and emptied according to a slow and sustained rhythm, each take up this means which Nature has chosen to keep itself alive. 

Equally subtle and restrained biomechanical movements characterize other projects. Simple gestures of a limited range, take inspiration in biological systems and living processes. The rising and opening actions (Daniels, Tingley) and those of sliding, pushing and vibrating (Bachmann, Gauthier), for example, demonstrate a will to participate in an environment, to connect with one’s surroundings and exchange with one’s fellow creatures. These social behaviours, in combination with multiplication and propagations, symbolize growth and regeneration, which are fundamental natural phenomena aimed at maintaining life and ensuring survival. 

The works of the exhibition are also characterized by their sensibility. Equipped with sensors and feedback devices, they perceive and respond to their environment, sometimes is an instantaneous and decipherable way, and at others according to a choreography that escapes us. Many are interactive, others function according to their internal logic and several seem to ignore us, preferring to rest instead. The unpredictable character and diversity of these actions and reactions approach the behavioral complexity of living organisms. 

Each of these works lays bare all that is it is: interiors are exposed, components are fully visible, and the inside is turned outwards. The surfaces (Gaetano Adi, Bachmann, MacMurtrie) are actually interfaces, because what they cover is not hidden. First of all, there is the very real air, even if invisible and intangible, which circulates through the membranes from the outside to the inside, and vice versa. Then there are the mechanisms, which when they are not visible, remain secondary, for in this case the technology is not an end in and of itself. In the other cases, it is hard to distinguish if the envelopes which we are shown represent the external surface of organs or internal organisms. What’s certain, is that we are undoubtedly on the inside (of the outside, or on the outside of the inside). Also what is one to make of the fine metallic structures (endoskeleton or exoskeleton?) and the visible wires in the works by Daniels, Gauthier and Tingley? Stripped of their skins, these creatures appear to exhibit their entrails. Through various means, these projects give one the impression of being at the heart of the living and invite us to make a connection with our own vital functions.

This laying bare also involves the materials and technologies. The industrially made components never hide their manufactured origin. These projects do not try to outdo the natural world and they never claim to be in competition with living beings. Their obvious artificiality creates a distance that places them clearly within the field of fiction, a fiction whose plot unfolds at the threshold of life.

The works propose a very physical, immediate and enveloping relation, a relation that is renewed from one project to the next. There is not a single image in these installations that immediately leads one into a representational realm. It as though we were fully a part of these environments in which thought is suspended in its grasp over things. This vagueness and multi-referential character of the works also prevents representation from intervening in one’s perception of the projects and fixing one’s mind. This primarily physical and sensory aspect allows the viewer to identify with the works and to experience an organic continuity.

All living beings have a shared organic origin. But we can go even further and conceive that we are also this matter that one day decided to come alive. The living is also in the non-living, from the beginning of history to present time, through the objects we make and works of art we create in the sedimented remains of those who—regardless of their species—preceded us, in the air that we breathe.

[Sylvie Parent, curator]