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elii [oficina de arquitectura]

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142 · STILL REMAINS

Arquitecturas para microorganismos, MNCARS, Madrid

 

ABSTRACT

Project and research for "Notes for a Time Apart", MNCARS, Madrid.

The microbiome of our guts, mouths, armpits, or genitals are among the most private landscapes. There lie our interspecies identities made of bacteria, fungi, viruses who live parallel lives adapting, resisting, and labouring our 24/7 lives. They endure the hormones and chemicals secreted by our anxious selves who sweat before deadlines. They cope with the stimulants, amphetamines, and cognitive enhancers consumed to deal with the stress of non-stop tasks and to-do lists. They strive to adapt to our pharmacologic bodies cast by our professions that are tuned to work more and more efficiently, all the time. 

This installation conceived by elii [architecture office] and Orkan Telhan for the program Notes for a Time Apart intends to provide a glimpse of this invisible community through a series of leftovers. We invite a series of professionals to the museum to share food during their work breaks. The participants eat, chat, and ask each other: “What do you usually do at this time?”, “How do you deal with your stress?”, “How much coffee do you drink?”, “What do you do when you need to focus?”, “What is your favourite energy drink?” 

We ask our participants to leave the last pieces of their meals just before they finish their conversation. What is left behind are remains of those conversations and the leftovers of the shared food that span across different contexts, professions, social classes and different micro and macro worldviews, which are placed inside a network of freezers timed to preserve this fluidic mix in a sort of time capsules frozen in time.

On these refrigerated surfaces, the microbes that originate from the anonymous participants become part of these food landscapes, slowed down in time. They degrade and mutate. Their animation is suspended, intervening in their preservation cycles. They turn into prolonged “conversations” between microorganisms and their people, unfolding a plural temporality that belongs to no one. At least, until the cold lasts. 

Notes is a new Museo Reina Sofía project which aims to explore other formats and methodologies to accommodate devices and projects which transversally make disciplines hybrid. 

Its first edition, Notes for a Time Apart, sets forth a reflection on the customary conceptions of time and its registers, scales and rhythms. From different perspectives—philosophy, decolonial thought, queer theory, physics and biology—other modes of conceiving time are approached, beyond its normative and purely metric side.

*An unexpected ending for the piece:

After being open for some time, public access to Still Remains was cancelled for reasons beyond the piece’s control. From then on, the oeuvre continued working at the museum, but with no outside visitors; it became an installation only “for” the microorganisms. This piece was meant to shed light on how our daily realities are challenged when we take the microorganisms’ viewpoint and revisit some human controversies from the microbial scale. However, ironically, it was suspended precisely on account of one of those human issues. As a result, a piece of art on suspending the remains of food suspended in time was itself suspended... And thus this work of art went on to having an exclusively microbial “audience.”

PROJECT

Architectures for microorganisms

1. Bodies of bodies. Our bodies are made up of millions of microorganisms that spread well beyond the surface of our skin, in a kind of microbial envelope that interacts with the environment.

Floating, multiple and inter-species identities.

2. Pharmacological bodies. Our bodies are a sort of “neighbourhood” of bacteria, fungi and viruses that work 24/7, supporting our intake of stimulants, amphetamines and cognitive enhancers to withstand our pace of work.

Parallel lives that support productive times.

3. Microbial battlefields. Sharing food with someone also involves exchanging microorganisms. 

Places of negotiation on multiple scales.

4. Agonistic landscapes. The remains of shared foods are (frozen) time capsules that contain traces of different contexts, social classes and world views.

Landscapes of food, preserved conversations.

5. Suspension of production time. Rest time is but a parenthesis to regain strength to keep on working. But microbial times unfold other temporal logics.

Plural temporalities that belong to no one.

6. Architectures for microorganisms. Designing spaces outfitted for intervening and slowing down microbial cycles.

Constructing how to manage microbial times.

7. Museum infrastructure. A museum is a space designed to stabilise artwork, materials, times, and discourses.

States of suspended animation.

CREDITS
  • Architectures for microorganisms
  • Still Remains / Restos en suspenso, todavía 
  • elii [oficina de arquitectura] + Orkan Telhan
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  • elii [oficina de arquitectura]:
  • Uriel Fogué + Eva Gil + Carlos Palacios
  •  
  • Coordinators of the project:
  • elii – Teresa Martínez, Gemma Barricarte
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  • Developer:
  • Museo Nacional y Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) 
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  • Organization and curationship:
  • Museo Nacional y Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) 
  • Notes for a Time Apart Program
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  • Coordination MNCARS:
  • Soledad Liaño Gibert
  • Rafael García Horrillo
  • Beatriz Martínez Hijazo
  •  
  • Acknowledgments:
  • Fernando Guillermo Urquiaga Florenttini
  • Valentina Sanciu
  • Youssef Badry Eddarraz
  • María José Pino García
  • Delia López Iglesias
  • Luis Francisco Pérez Gómez
  • Belén Benito Moreno
  • Nestor Navarro Perez
  • J. Emilio Fernández Fernández
  • Miguel Antonio Filloy Cruz
  • Lorena Tover Pascual
  • Ingrid Bravo Valerín
  • José Luis García Infante
  • Lorena Martínez del Brío
  •  
  • Photography:
  • ImagenSubliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero) www.imagensubliminal.com
  • Size:
  • 40,40m2.
  • Date:
  • October 24 – December 4 2023
  • Location:
  • Museo Nacional y Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) 
  •  
  • More info:
  • https://www.museoreinasofia.es/actividades/apuntes-tiempo-aparte