CuratorWork

Alfredo Cramerotti

Contribution to Caterina Silva's "Unpowered"

Artist:

Caterina Silva

Aural contribution to a solo exhibition titled Unpowered of new works by Caterina Silva, as part of London Collective on Vortic Collect. The virtual exhibition consists of eight paintings visualised on a computer desktop wallpaper that depicts a mountain view. The paintings belong to the body of work titled Forms of non-power, made in 2019. Bosse & Baum | London Collective on Vortic Collect 29 July - 31 August 2020 Available here: https://vimeo.com/441233922

The virtual exhibition can be seen on Vortic Collect, while another aspect of the project will be translated into an audio-visual format, viewable here, via Vimeo and Instagram. For this, Caterina Silva asked some curators, artists and friends to submit a short description of the paintings in the exhibition and translated the paintings into bodily movements. The texts have been further re-processed through a vocal assistant while the movements have been translated into a 3D animation and edited into a short film to accompany the online exhibition. Silva intends this translating-operation-piece both as an ode to the algorithm (or a spell to get rid of it) and as part of her ongoing research about openness and powerlessness. While the paintings on show attempt to escape language and definitions, longing for a more ineffable and intuitive dimension of existence and perception, the voices act as paradoxical forces that try to re-establish the lost connection that links words and meanings, language and reality. At the same time the words come from different people and perspectives, opening up the paintings towards multiple interpretations and alluding to the old magic power of language to transform and give shape to reality, in this case through action in the virtual realm.

alfredoc@mostyn.org