El Crítico
The work presents a three-dimensional monitor where images created by me appear. Each one emerges with a warm light that gives it a moment of direct presence. That initial instant functions as the point at which the image exists without explanations or mediations. Afterwards, the scene changes with the arrival of the Critic, a figure who alters the climate and causes the image to lose intensity until it disappears. I am interested in working on this sequence because it allows us to think about how a work can weaken when an external gaze tries to fix it or reduce it to what can be said about it. The piece takes up Aira’s ideas about the Enemy of contemporary art, that figure who questions the autonomy of the work and turns it into the object of a discourse that flattens it.
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
The idea of this piece arises from my reading of Aira and the figure of the Enemy of contemporary art that he presents in On contemporary art: ”[…] the central argument that the Enemy of Contemporary Art exhibits is that today the work of art cannot be sustained without the discourse that surrounds and justifies it. It does not “speak for itself” but rather needs seasoned ventriloquists, usually critics or curators.” I was interested in the way he describes this enemy that questions the legitimacy of the work and reduces it to what can be said about it. A look that simplifies, that encloses the work in a discourse, flattens it. Aira suggests that this Enemy transforms any contemporary work into an occasion for irony, a place where sardonic description replaces direct experience since “almost any work of Contemporary Art, taken out of its context, its history, the explanation that surrounds it, lends itself to a sardonic description.” And how paradoxically the existence of this Enemy is what at some point drives contemporary art and its functioning. His rejection and aggressiveness do not place him outside the system, but rather incorporate him into it. What interested me was not the judgment of the Enemy, but the reduction mechanism that it produces. From there I built the Critic: a figure that alters the presence of the image. In the piece, this mechanism is represented in the proposed scene. The images emerge inside the monitor with a warm light and some initial stability. That moment lasts only a few seconds, until the Critic enters. Their presence modifies the climate and the image begins to weaken until it disappears completely. I was interested in working on this progressive degradation because it allows us to think about how a work can lose thickness when an external view begins to cut it down and demand greater clarity or justification. At the same time, I worked on the piece from a perspective I took from Inke Arns. I’m interested in your idea that software is not a neutral medium, but rather a material that produces effects and shapes the way a work exists. The digital as an environment with its own logic, where internal processes determine how what we see appears and how it disappears. I incorporated this thinking that the system itself could become part of the scene. The Critic not only functions as a concept but is also an action in the scene that advances, alters and modifies the image. Her arrival operates as an event that affects her from within. The three-dimensional monitor functions as a container for these two planes: the pure appearance of the image and the intervention that modifies it. A cyclical system where each image that appears is invaded until it is reduced. The work shows that point where the sensitive coexists with the risk of being reduced.
Literature
-AIRA, César. (2013, 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo” en Sobre el arte contemporáneo. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, pp. 11-56. -ARNS, Inke. (2005). “El código como acto de habla performativo”. En Revista Artnodes, Julio de 2005, ISSN 1695-5951.