WHITE ANGUISH
In 2009-2010 I received CAM Scholarship whith the project From cold to heat, from heat to cold, passing through the temperate. Throughout two years I traveled from cold places to hot places to generate emotional discomfort: Oslo – Sao Paulo – Patagonia Argentina – Sahara – Oslo – NordKapp – Sahara. Anguish kicked in and I worked on the large Cold Angustia – Hot Angustia installation.
Anxiety is a state of psychological restlessness that we experience when, for no reason, we worry excessively about the possibility that something feared will happen to us, over which we have no control. And that, in the event that it happens, we will consider it terrible. White Anguish opens all the possibilities of what is feared, its recognition, its location, its imagination and by extension its possible control. The color white is present in the cold and the heat. The cold snow, the heat in the salty lake of Chott el Jerid in the south of Tunisia (for me a non-place).
White Anguish was born from the expression To have carte blanche, the power granted to an individual to act with total freedom. The possibility of building your anguish with total freedom and risk. White Anguish opens all the possibilities of what is feared, its recognition, its location, its imagination and by extension its possible control.
The installation White Anguish 2011 gives architectural form to the Anguished, convulsed White Meat. Two boxes-cabins-coffins tremble at the impossibility of containing and immobile body. The body can experience the scene of scene of anguish life, and imagine a state of anguish in death, and if it is lucky, resurrect.
What can happen if anxiety reaches very high levels? Lets our hearts explode The anguish is in the heart. If this happens there is no turning back, we will enter the realm of madness. The pieces White anguish heart explosion 1 and 2, 2011 present the explosion of the heart. But they are controlled detonations in search of a limit state to be experienced. In White Anguish Heart Explosion there is a way back.
The sick girl is a crandle-coffin. It represents people who are born marked by a mental illness and accompanies them throughout their lives. The idea of a chilhood filled with happiness and innocence can be terrible if its is marked by fear, anguish and nightmares.
DISTRESS
Anxiety is a state of psychic restlessness, which we experience when, for no reason, we worry excessively about the possibility that something feared will happen to us, over which we have no control. And that, in case it happens, we will consider it terrible.
Anxiety crises cause great discomfort, strongly modifying the sensory perception and that of our body in the environment. The intense fear we feel is accompanied by many of the somatic and cognitive symptoms of anxiety:
Heart palpitations, choking or shortness of breath, tightness, chest discomfort, nause, unsteadiness, dizzines or fainting, feeling derealizing – unreality – or depersonalization – fear of losing control or going crazy, fear of dying, accompanied by chills and suffocation.
Living in la anguish I have identified two types: Cold and Hot. I wanted to shape them to share them with you:
COLD DISTRESS I identify with fear of the future, the enormous, the unknown, the infinite. It invades the entire body and leaves it unprotected before the immensity. It´s gray, the color of cold anguished flesh.
It is inpired by experiences of the cold: Life in Oslo, the Ex-Prison of Ushuaia, navigation throught the Calafate Glacier National Park, NordKapp in Norway.
HOT DISTRESS I identify it with the fear of the know, of the concrete, of what is experienced as terrible. Its points of concentration are in the intestines. It is orange, the color of hot distressed meat.
It is inspired by de experiences of the heat: Life in Soa Paulo and Río de Janeiro, the Sahara deseert in southern Tunisia, the red sand of the desert, the sun.
Today you can enter into anguish.
Go to the corners, where the hot and cold pieces are. Stay inside for at least 3 minutes, until hot and cold become noticeable on your face, neck and hands. Touch its surface.
The temperature is, together with food, drink, sex, play and sleep, one of the primitive pleasures of the human being that guarantees its survival. Altering them we focus on our most primary balance.
You have the opportunity to enter a cold place.
Access the space and place your body inside the casings. Feel the cold hit your neck and back, causing chills.
FLESH COLOR MACHINE ON A DAY WITH INTENSE SUN.
The performance in space is more architectural than sculptural. The decisions to be made in relation to the project are, for me, closer to an adaptation of function than of form. When they offer me a space to intervene, I know that the work from the beginning depends on variables to take into account, but it doesn’t bother me, quite the contrary, it forces me to follow and manage all these existing values.
The offer for the Urbanitas exhibition is the panopticon room of the museum. A circular space crowned by a dome, which marks a central point and expansion of the rest of the building.
Energies and coincidences are always in motion, from time to time they stop to materialize something that has been spinning for more or less time. I was returning from spending 6 months in Rome, and I can say that what I most wanted at that moment was a space with a dome. Of all that I have seen in Rome, what impressed me the most was the Pantheon on the day of the summer solstice. I heard the excellence of this day with the perpendicularity of the sun entering through the opening of the dome, but to no degree could I imagine what I felt at that moment. A tube of sunlight fell like a plumb line over the center of the building, I stood at the point and felt how all that energy covered me. I wished that moment would freeze, that time would not pass, but the minutes advanced and the point varied until the intensity of the effect disappeared. I asked that the energy I received last a long time, that it accompany me and protect me.
In each built dome there is a connection with the sky, an antenna that collects energy to manifest itself in a magnificent interior, great in beauty and great in size. What the domes suggest to me, especially that of the Pantheon, is an intention to dialogue with outer space. There is a very interesting propulsion of power: both from the outside in and from the inside out.
One of my creative interests is in giving real architectural form to sensations. Giving shape to abstract based concepts, Transplants of Love, Fantasy, Beauty; Love in the Clouds. In 2003 I created the PEP program –Spatial Enhancement of Perception- with the idea that any place can be transformed to experience an intense sensation. Each place has special characteristics that we must look for carefully in order to enhance them, PEP from Comfortworld offers this possibility. ComfortWorld’s psychospace specialists make an exhaustive assessment of the place on offer, pay full attention to the possibilities it presents in order to build a sensation for you. This is the philosophy of the program that I apply for the first time in the construction of the Perception Clinic, and the one that I follow for the intervention that I proposed in MARCO.
The first thing that has to happen is that someone proposes a project to me. When I travel to see the offered place I do it with a lot of nervousness, over stimulated. I know from experience that the first impression will be decisive, I approach so excited that in this first contact the idea arises. I analyze the space, I feel the scale, I feel the energies that flow and I observe each of the elements that make that place have something to enhance. It is the place itself that speaks clearly, you just have to know how to listen. This first impression is not at all the resolution of the project, what I feel is a sensation, a vibration that I have to give shape to channel an artistic piece towards the viewer. The second step is to ask for the plans, in that material is the solution that I have to give. When I analyze the plans the idea is already clearly presented, it is a matter of fluids to control.
The panopticon room of the museum is a space marked by a strong verticality that goes down to expand with propulsion towards all the radial rooms of the building. The first idea was to take advantage of that concentration of force, take the potential that enters from the outside through the dome and make it perceptive. Another question that was fascinating to me was taking the true measure of space, how big does a space need to be to be great? The tube that would channel the energy measured 12 meters high x 2.50 meters in diameter. Quite a construction challenge that provided two answers: the reality of measuring a special place with a dome, and the construction of an energy channeling tube that occupies that space.
Flesh-colored machine on a day of intense sun is the title of the perceptive sensation that I want to build. Thus, the project is divided into two parts: the energy channeling tube and the machine that receives it to make it effective. The tube, starting from the dome and leaning on the machine, already has a measure and an objective; It would be in two blue colors –artificial sky blue for the exterior and natural sky blue for the interior. To achieve the effect of an intensely sunny day we needed a considerable increase in light; that in its artificial nature would freeze a moment that is ephemeral in itself.
Another quality that defines my work is the use of color, most of the load in the spatial intervention goes into the use of color, what’s more, I carried out projects based almost or exclusively on color. Meat Color Machine is the result of the research I was working on at the time; Through flesh color I intended to move away from the symbology of the purest colors to enter psychologically based colors, laboratory colors. Research that is summarized in the piece: The colors of the flesh, from congestive red to Martian green and from which I take the colors of the machine. Outside the center is raw flesh color 2, and the aisles of blushing flesh; inside the machine goes in pink meat 2, and the corridors in pink meat 1 and natural meat 2.
The energy goes down the tube that it channels and directly affects our meats. The intention of this project does not go beyond what the title tells, although it is the result of the work done by me in recent years through the Centrifuges of Love and Fantasies. The Meat Color Machine has a circular shape, closed by 6 anatomically shaped cylinders, and two access corridors. When I design an intense perceptual sensation, I always include a preparatory access that the spectator has to go through, a purifying path that prepares him for what he is going to feel.
One last detail, the piece has sound, a machine noise. Some time ago I read an article on how to calm a crying baby, and I proposed to do it with sounds. In the maternal womb there is a background noise caused by the mother’s blood flow, playing this sound could help relax it. At this moment I thought of locating that sound, the closest I found was Spaceship Interior Atmosphere 1, which is already a coincidence!!
Mónica Alonso
The Sun is the center of the planetary system to which we belong. A symbol represented since the beginning of time, which has aroused the interest of all cultures. Although there is no possibility of verbal communication, the drawing of a Sun is a message of cordiality.
The Sun is a desired point, revered, felt as something distant, impossible to reach. We feel the desire to bring it to us, to possess all its strength and energy.
Sun Nostalgia wants to materialize this universal desire, the possibility of feeling the unattainable, of getting closer to the Sun, of feeling its light and its warmth. I build for you a sun that radiates yellow
Sun Nostalgia is a machine made up of a heat circuit and a light circuit, which allows the user who is placed in the central point to feel the heat and light on his face.
INDICATION: Sun Nostalgia is indicated for places where sunlight is scarce and people may need extra solar energy.
Enter the environment of the SUN, surrender to the energy of yellow, get closer to the central point and let yourself be caressed by the light and heat of the SUN.