LIGA 04: Carla Juaçaba (Bra). Isostasy
Photography: Ramiro Chaves
What are these things doing here? They are not projects of other things, but projects in and of themselves. They are not models, but rather what is projected in what is done. These things search, through their contrasts and affinities, a situation in which they can autonomously sustain themselves. From this point of view, magnets are metonymic objects: the part that shows the procedure that organizes everything —the attractions and repulsions, the distances and proximities. In the composition of that rhythm (in the musical sense of the term) each element acquires its particular position in space. To the delight of our eyes, things mix, reach a delicate balance, that allows them to remain as they are.
A minimal slippage can cause everything to come down in art, in architecture, in thought, even in life. It is always about finding that point where diversity holds and produces itself: the golden thread, the magnets, the bar, the marble. The fine, the coarse, the hard, the small. The interactions among the differences, rather than cancelling themselves out, produce a new world about things rather than about signs. Hence, the discrete colors—if they even exist. Hence, the absence of objects with cultural meaning. There are no doors or windows, chairs or tables, floors or pillars. There is barely anything; with an almost crude materiality, in an existence that, if it weren’t for order, could be termed non-human.
Who supports whom in this whirlwind of innocuous materials? It’s not a physical but rather a poetic question. Substance is never simply a matter of science, but of our whole existence, which takes place between earth and sky, searching for a home in the constructions we make and which, at the same time, make us. Poetic constructions. That is why one researches the intrinsic material properties, in order to discover their real potential, indicating what can and should (and what can’t and shouldn’t) be built. What gives, gives. What doesn’t give, doesn’t, and shouldn’t be forced given that it’s better to listen to what the things ask.
At the risk of frustrating positivist thinkers, things have their own will. They are “full of wills,” just like children whose parents complain because they don’t behave well. But every being is what it is, and wants what it wants. Person or thing. The father and poet, instead of imposing what children and things should be, has to discover what they want, so setting free this desire and allowing for expression in the real. The matter has to be addressed with docility, so that it can show us the form it takes. That is, creating is listening and not just talking, it is receiving and not just projecting–or, rather, it is talking after listening, projecting based on receiving and, finally, knowing how to make as the result of understanding.
According to its Greek origin, the word “technique” relates to knowing, to a knowing how to do, rather than to doing. That is why both craftsmen and artists were called “technicians.” Both know how something can pass from nothing into being. This passage is anything but arbitrary; it is not hostage to the human will or planning. When an object of use or a piece of art is produced, something happens from the absence of nothingness to the presence of being. Nevertheless, this man-made operation, takes nature as its guide, since it is doing it constantly, causing the continuous emergence of the world around and in us.
This same world, in its variegated forms mentioned here, with its balance, its voids and its proportions of extreme accuracy that establish a space that is a place, not as an a priori, but built for this presence, known in architectural jargon as “tectonics.” This spatial composition of geometric elegance emphasizes the interplay between weight and lightness, and is still dictated by the acting magnetic and gravitational forces, that explore, in addition to the readily visible relationships between things, the invisible relationships that also determine them.
This is a possible and beautiful world because it attends to the will of things. It is a poetics of the artist-craftsman, or, as mentioned, where the architect also turns into an engineer. One can’t exist without the other; creation is never just the work of humans. It is half human, half nature. It is up to humans, through “technique,” to discover and release what matter has to offer. It is up to humans to dream, and dream a dream conjured by nature in them.
