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A constellation of conduits
was channelled between us, and our distance became water
25 March to 29 April 2023 |
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Robert Cervera and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos A Constellation of Conduits 2022 |
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Purchase the book and vinyl LP View the performance
A constellation of conduits This is what’s left of our city. A manic precarity jutting out of a liquid smoothness, desperately trying to stay up, erect, glimmering. But the glow of glass and metal has been overshadowed by the flatness of the waters, already invading the second floors of most large buildings. The old imperial dream, that concentration of colonial sighs and capitalist saliva, is slowly sinking. Its foundations have now been replaced by aquatic life, unexplained sudden gurgles, steady corrosion, liquidity. An aquatic installation is spreading through the gallery space. It makes you move sidelong, curve along its corridors of affect, turn sharp at the next dystopian swelling. It asks you to swim gently across the expanse of water that has taken over the planet. It invites you to eavesdrop on the goings of a flooded city, and the genderless lovers in the centre of it all. Based on the recent novel Our Distance Became Water by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (published especially for the exhibition by ERIS press), the installation becomes a body of water, air, sound, text, painting and tubular transparency. The textuality in the core of the work becomes gurglings, air bubbles, primordial sounds and spiced breath, an underwater forest of tubes, floating sheets of carton where our bodies might find solace in this drowning world. In drawing their interdisciplinary practices together, the artists Robert Cervera and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos reached a moment of confluence. The work consists of sound pieces performed by Cervera on his tubular organs, composed around the recitations by Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos of extracts of the novel. These pieces accompany the installation of tubes filled with green canal-like water (a performance machine that the artists will explore at various live events) and the layered cardboard paintings by Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos. The spaces of the gallery are cast as an iteration of the theoretical research on Spatial Justice (A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Spatial Justice, Routledge 2015) which understands law and space as tautologous, animated by human and nonhuman bodies perennially in conflict, vying for the same space at the same time in atmospheres of intense sensorial engineering. Robert Cervera’s work looks at the leaky ways of formless
materials such as air, water and data. He’s interested in our
efforts to contain them, herd them and turn them into reservoirs,
music, breath or code. His output includes installation, sound,
sculpture, musical performance and videos that talk to each other
about flow, bodiliness and material interdependence. Born in
Barcelona and based in London, Cervera graduated from the Royal
College of Art with an MA in Sculpture. His degree show won the 2014
Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize. Recent solo exhibitions
include ‘To Vent’ Invites Robert Cervera, Zabludowicz Collection,
London (2021); Ye_soft_pipes/play_on, Tangent Projects, Barcelona
(2020); Yes And, Kelder Projects, London (with Peter Lamb) (2019);
Tomorrow Starts Here, La Escocesa, Barcelona (2017).
View commissioned essay by Mhamad Safa Noisy Waters HERE Purchase LP Vinyl and Our Distance Became Water HERE
Installation view by Francesco Ragazzi
Installation view by Francesco Ragazzi
Installation view by Francesco Ragazzi
Installation view by Francesco Ragazzi
Installation view by Francesco Ragazzi
Installation view by Francesco Ragazzi
Installation view by Francesco Ragazzi
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 'Our Distance Became Water', ERIS 2023, Limited Customised Copies
Our Distance Became Water LP, Composed by Robert Cervera, 2023, Limited Customised Copies by Andreas Philippopulos-Mihalopoulos, 2023
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