ON LANGUAGE AS DISTANCE, KHM1 Gallery, Malmö
March 2018
Text following the exhibition:
On Language as Distance – Martine Flor
MFA thesis, published in Malmö Art Academy’s Yearbook 2018
On Language as Distance I-III, 2018
Series of site-specific sculptures
Epoxy
Dimensions variable
PROCESS:
I chose a shape, in this case the shape of a standardized pool form named “Liberty”. Further, I made aluminum frames of the given form in the gallery space, and poured liquid epoxy directly on the floor into the frames. After 6-8 hours, when the epoxy was semi-dry, I took the sculptures out of their frames and formed them intuitively. After 15 hours the epoxy had hardened. The forms were separated from the sculptures and thrown away.
Index of Desire, 2018
Video installation shown together with On Language as Distance I-III
14:29min loop
The video shows all the links that appear when googling “Desire”.
“
Pouring, folding, ripping -
The material lives, breathes and vibrates, it flows and has an inherent time, a lifespan and a pulse. It emanates something, beyond whatever the shape or form it takes at the moment, the arbitrariness of its symbol; it is a vast sign in itself, a vast presence, and with its whole body it demands this presence, it demands to be heard, to be seen. In this series, they, the sculptures, or pourings or dischargings, are simultaneously same and differentiated, One and many (the generic, standardized form made for mass production, the material just simply poured, made for mass production), but what is left open, dis-charged, left to speak, are the indexes of the process itself, of the mixing, pouring, folding and ripping, and of the material itself, with its bubbles, traces and marks, stretch marks, birth marks – simultaneously graspable and viscous, uphold and fluid. Both hidden, and in the open, it emanates itself, and I am forced to step aside, in doing it, in melting with it. There it lies, and is both familiar and unfamiliar, understandable and ineffable, attractive and repulsive, pulsating and withdrawn – the unsymbolizable Mother.
The material spoke to me, the shape spoke to me, I can’t fully describe why I chose this particular material and form, or this particular material and process, they just spoke to me, they were a part of the yell, and this is how they meet, this is how they collide; they are the yell and the answer to it – the vibrating world of materials and words speak, they speak and answer to an inner yell of deep language, deep underlying language, placental residuals, Her tongue. This is how they collide, this is how we melt together, become One, become many, become visible.
Shortly after this process took place, I described it like this:
(...) In the act of making, I get ready to jump from the edge. The obscure, though glimmering surface approaches frighteningly fast and I can barely glimpse a ‘me’, first as a tiny reflection, then suddenly as something far too close, before it eventually becomes inseparably all-embracing, before one thus is unable to discern it from oneself, the surface, the reflection and each other; one then dives downwards and it and oneself end up deep, deep down beneath something. A complete darkness, a complete all-embracing darkness reigns, and one keeps sinking. One sinks so far down that this something is diluted into a vague idea, a lost memory, or maybe a lost fragment of a memory, one no longer remembers. It sticks to one’s entire being as a viscous and undryable moisture, and one no longer knows where this moisture begins or ends, it only seems ponderous, penetrating, pulsating, and it won’t respect any boundaries, any inside or outside any longer.
And there in the fall, in the fall together with the all-embracing pulsating moisture, where one is falling, flowing and streaming together; there is where practice is found, there is where one finally can open the grasp – but only for a fraction of a second, and don’t you think it, articulate it, say it, or try to comprehend it – it escapes and is always already lost. What remains is its bare residuals, its witnesses, and anew I am again I, and it is it, and everything seems familiar once again, and I am suddenly standing there dry, looking at my feet that are planted firmly, that are apparently planted firmly, on the edge expecting something – awaiting repetition.
“
Excerpt from the text On Becoming The Origo – Martine Flor