Installation 2024

12 sound devices and a fern

 

“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot

 

The phenomenon of semantic satiation occurs when the repetition of a word causes it to temporarily lose its meaning for the speaker, who then perceives it only as meaningless sounds. For this work, the word nostalgia was repeated continuously until reaching the point of semantic satiation, and the record of this action was stored in multiple devices placed throughout the exhibition space. Emptying the word of its meaning, even if only momentarily, becomes a way of rebelling against the utilitarian idea of the past as a point in time from which we can extract certain objects to load them with our attachments. In this sense, nostalgia says more about our present than about the past. By focusing on the idealization of elements from a certain era, we become incapable of venturing into much more distant places in our history.

Following this idea, the installation is accompanied by a fern, which  belongs to a group of plants that have inhabited the Earth since prehistoric times, with minimal changes in their adaptation to the present environment. They are a manifestation of that past with which we have no relationship, and which we fear to explore because we know that within it lie our origins.