Rules of Engagement
Francisco Varela Exposição de Fotografia
Adorna
Rua do Rosário 147, Porto
Adorna
Rua do Rosário 147, Porto
The Expanded Book-Object
This is an object that has undergone several incarnations. It began as a mockup produced in InDesign, resembling Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book, configured as a book of rules. Today, it stands as a unique book-object, representing its most felicitous materialization. In the construction of this reading/exhibition device, efforts were made to amplify the performative content of the original series. This object thus becomes a symbiosis between the envelope and the content, indistinguishable from one another. As a construction methodology of the artifact, a new photographic series was created with images that included the text, serving to unite the initial project with the containing object (the book-object). Both (the new series and the book) reflect on the meaning of the initial work.
This is a performative act practiced in two movements with self-imposed rules that reflect the laws of the landscape or, if you will, the marks and impositions of its occupation. The photographic act, by countering these parameters, also photographic, brings us to the reinterpretative characteristics that photography always possesses. This exhibition spatializes the object not only by expanding its condition as a codex but also through the projection of its materials in the gallery. The narrative of the book is now the narrative of the space. As was the case with the book, this exhibition places us at the center of the work, or in this case, within its internal space, which is the center of this white cube. In this self-reflective, existentially inclined work, the viewer plays the committed role of constructing meanings through the active viewing of the exhibition device.
Estefânia r.