Un Libro escrito por dentro y por fuera: Where is Luis Gómez? 2004
Reality becomes a strategy for living, and the observation point becomes a destination.
Description
Luis Gómez’s Un libro escrito por dentro y por fuera: Where is Luis Gómez? (A book written inside and out) explores possible meeting points between different sociopolitical and cultural realities. Luis is not physically present in the Mattress Factory, and in Cuba he has no free access to the internet, so this work relies upon a sense of luck or chance, where chaos may be the result.
By making use of the connecting potential of new digital elements, Gómez emphasizes the concept of the elimination of space and time. Adopting an ironic stance, he also questions the importance of this undefined accessibility that takes place simultaneously in public and in private.
Installing a server in the exhibit hall situates the viewers in the position of receivers of information. They will never have access to connect up and broadcast their own reality and will only be passive receptors who interact on a sensory level with the bombardment of images broadcast by the artists/curators who transmit simultaneously via webcams installed in several places around the world.
By flipping “his” switch and connecting up to different realities at once, Gómez makes us participants in chaos and lack of communication, intensifying the nexus between what is symbolic and what is documentary, questioning the materiality of art and its sense of dislocation. Reality becomes a strategy for living, and the observation point becomes a destination. – Magda Ileana González-Mora, Curator
In a darkened gallery, images from four computers are projected onto the four walls. One is a projection of a series of computer screens showing the translation of a text that describes the symbolism of the whale in art and literature. The text is translated from Spanish to English and through twenty-two more languages until the “Babel Fish” Internet translator breaks down. Images transmitted live from webcams in the homes and studios of Luis Gómez’s friends throughout the world are projected on the other three walls. The individuals participating in this project will change over the course of the exhibition, but will never include the artist.