ALLORA & CALZADILLA'S FABLE ON LISTENING
La Casa Encendida is planning a large part of its artistic, exhibition program this season around the concept of Verbos encendidos, a framework line of argument that frames the theme and the perspective from which certain public, political and social issues are approached from the institution. Escuchar (Listen) is the first verb, chosen to start with it a call for attention towards the construction of spaces and tools that allow to overcome differences and find common spaces of understanding.
Within that first wave of initiatives, the center welcomes in its halls the always interesting El gran silencio (2014), the video installation by Allora & Calzadilla that becomes a fable and an exquisite narration that digresses on the human desire to search and look beyond what surrounds him, increasing the progressive disinterest in what is closest to him and forgetting the basics of listening and dialogue.
Consisting of three panels, the proposal, known in Spain after its passage through other iconic spaces in the last decade, is built as an invitation to the viewer to join a dialogue between apparently surrounding worlds and whose concept is narrated from the work of writer Ted Chiang.
While simultaneously entering the artificial environments of the Arecibo Observatory's technology -which transmits and receives waves focusing on the universe-, and the natural environments of the complex's site -a jungle that serves as home to the last wild population of Puerto Rican parrots-, the script unfolds on the viewer spinning on the concept of listening, but also on the disengagement and distancing from what unites us.
The story presents the parrots' observations of their environment, of how human beings strive for an eventual, and unsafe, contact with the universe when they abandon their own. Entwined in this paradox, the fable transcends and encourages, precisely, that listening that underlies the analysis of speech, sound and a common physiognomy, close in its environment, but distant in its possibilities.
Allora & Calzadilla. El Gran Silencio can be seen until June 16 at Sala A of La Casa Encendida, Ronda de Valencia, 2, Madrid (Spain).
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