BEING DIGITAL is an exhibition that gathers processes given under the FlussLab residency program in its 2021 online edition. 

This show includes recent work by:

Franco Martín Contreras (ARG)

María Daud Álvarez (ARG)

Alejandro López (ARG)

Anamarie Sierra Pagán (PR)

Claudio Andrés Alessio (ARG)

Mariana Frandsen (CAN)

Eugenia Hernández (ARG)

Luciana Guerra (ARG)

Lucio Gorzalczany (ARG)

Virtuality is a contemporary technology phenomenon that provides new space and time interaction forms, and envisages experiences that may only be achieved in the digital dimension. Thus, it becomes a strategic tool for the development of artistic practices both domestically and internationally. 

With the general idea of considering digital platforms as spaces for the production and viewing of projects, nine artists from different disciplines spent one month of online artist residency exploring the possibilities offered by virtuality as reflection and production dynamics. They created individual and collaborative pieces that approached different contemporary issues regarding communication, languages, materialities, bodies and the relation with the physical and emotional environment. 

Franco Martín Contreras (Mendoza, ARG), María Daud Álvarez (Santiago del Estero, ARG) and Alejandro López (ARG) explore the relation with other bodies and materialities in three performance projects. 

Franco Contreras delves into the mechanics of everyday life and work using the materials, techniques, tools and actions found in his own home. In 'My House Is Not Your House', Franco is the protagonist of a ritual act consisting of three moments, which highlights the artist doings and the presence of his surroundings as action triggers. He narrates his own funeral by resorting to elements found in the family house yard, and divides the scenario in three moments, thus turning the vital cycle of creation into an act of resurrection.

In 'Autumn Crop', María Daud Álvarez chats with her emotional environment. Her home and its surrounding landscape become the scenario of a series of in- process actions throughout this video performance. Pots materialize the body’s action of merging with nature, and represent the process of relocating their materiality in the landscape. The bowl is a portal, multiplying the actions and emotions that give birth to new ways of representing their universe.

In 'Hey Go', Alejandro López explores interpersonal relations and digs into the progresses made in artificial intelligence to mimic human emotions. The artist participates in conversations with Google’s Assistant, showing the need to interact with other people. These conversations with a virtual counterpart turn personal assistance devices into the new dogma that promises to solve the conflicts most inherent to ourselves, while showing the underlying difficulties that may arise on our daily lives due to loneliness, confinement and uncertainty.

Anamarie Sierra Pagán (Bayamón, Puerto Rico), Claudio Andrés Alessio (San Juan, ARG) and Mariana Frandsen (Montreal, Canada) have developed three pieces using different techniques, where they study the potential of virtuality and its materiality. 

'New Data' is a live monitoring piece devised for the Internet. Anamarie Sierra Pagán (Bayamón, Puerto Rico) makes use of a scientific language resource used to identify useful data and applies it to everyday factors and actions that, although irrelevant, depict her singularity as a human being. These useless and unrepeatable contents both make her existence unique and are the raw material of her work. The artist identifies minimum units of sense to build poetics based on the search for complex solutions to non-existent problems.

'You Are Invited' is a digital interactive work collaboratively developed with Claudio Alessio and  Mariana Frandsen. This proposal analyzed the link with the digital universe as an aesthetic experience. Going beyond what is predictable within the application possibilities, the proposal invites us to explore, and motivates spontaneity as the engine to create a work that changes according to the use each individual makes of it.

In the video 'Mourning chair', Mariana Frandsen delves into the topic of mourning and what is left after destruction. She turns the documentation of images of the same place on different days and at different times into a metaphor of how memories are split. The artist uses analog and digital media to make the audiovisual recording and composition, and disrupts the visual sense of calm with the intrusion of sound, which reminds us of the complex process of adjusting both emotionally and physically to an irreversible loss.

The collaborative work performed by Eugenia Hernández (Buenos Aires, ARG), Luciana Guerra (Santa Fe, ARG) and Lucio Gorzalczany (Buenos Aires, ARG) is structured in two audiovisual pieces that analyze the convergence of formal and concept searches. 

'Three-Voice Fugue' was designed as a joint work: Luciana created the black and white paintings, Eugenia intervened them with colors and geometry and Lucio cut them and recorded them in photos and video. Starting their journey in Rosario, the pieces were worked by three individuals and inhabited different instances of time and space before reaching their final materialization. The work consists of a video that documents the whole experience, beginning to end. 

Luciana, in turn, presents a second audiovisual work which depicts her paintings in digital format inside a virtual universe set to music by herself.

The definition of the proper and valid forms of art has been a constant subject of discussion since modern times. The acceptance of what is tangible as the absolute truth, and the recognized resources for the creation of works still impact the way in which we validate artistic productions, even the contemporary ones. There have recently been new discussions about how virtuality may be applied to the artistic universe, all of which poses new questions. 

Nine artists who live in different cities and countries are working to unravel the potentials of this universe, starting from a transgressive idea of understanding the virtual space as a platform for action and innovation.

Paula Carrella

curator

FlussLab is an interdisciplinary Residency created with the intention to build bridges between Argentina and Germany. The target groups are artists, researchers and any public interested in STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) who seek to share a personal creative process and is open to receive what the other participants offer in a collaborative and transformative way. The online 2021 FlussLab team had many hands and heads. We are forever grateful to all the pieces of this machine.