EME was invited to be exhibited at the A Gentil Carioca Gallery throughout February until Saturday March 6th 2010. This gallery is one of the most exciting contemporary art spaces in Rio de Janeiro and acts as an epicentre for artists, curators, designers, movers and shakers from these shores and far beyond. The invitation by the curators of this Abre Alas; Beatriz Lemos, Felipe Scovino and Guga Ferraz, to participate in this pre-carnival annual collective, was a unique opportunity to promote awareness of this ongoing project and allows for a space of reflection and discussions around the ambition of the project to a specialized and significant audience.
The public is invited to participate. Future editions of EME will undoubtedly involve the collaboration of a number of local and international arts professionals who have responded with interest to the installation, and wish to collaborate in the development of this mobile studio, the vehicle as a concept, its social and environmental impact, currently is focused in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition shows the fertile results from site-specific public/ live arts and interventions aimed at developing awareness and involvement between communities and institutions in the preservation of our shared environment, both urban and natural.
The project EME was presented in the gallery as an installation entitled: Experimento No. 7.
" A geographic space returns to the drawing board. A Map is drawn from a circumference where the city of Rio de Janeiro is the central axle. Significant points are marked and interconnected. Reflections between time, space, experience and situation. A composition is created over the results obtained from within a mobile unit of research and site-specific action. This work takes a virtual object into the gallery and negotiates an immateriality in material. The public is invited to mobilize within a landscape, and throw a dice. There are six directions which are starting points, by throwing the cube, destiny is revealed. Your position and function questioned."
" Experiência no. 7
Um espaço geográfico retorna a um espaço plano sobre um cavalete. Um mapa é apresentado. Partindo de uma circunferência formado por um eixo central, a cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Pontos marcados, são interligados. Reflexões entre linhas de tempo, espaço, experiência e situação. Uma composição é criada sob resultados obtidos dentro de uma unidade móvel de pesquisa e ação site-specific. Este trabalho leva um objeto virtual para dentro da galeria,negociando uma imaterialidade em material. O público é convidado para mobilizar-se dentro de uma paisagem, e jogar um dado. Existem seis direções como ponto de partida, e ao lançar o cubo, um destino é revelado. Sua posição e função questionados."
EME arrives into the gallery space and intervenes directly with the architecture it is presented with. An air conditioner cools this part of the gallery which we choose to display. Representative of many, if not most indoor spaces in Rio, this space relies on this somewhat archaic cooling machine to make for a 'livable' environment, especially in the summer months where temperatures outside reach 40 degrees Celsius, and keep on rising. The proposal to bring into the gallery the four-leaf clover is two-fold. In its conception, EME used the four-leaf clover within its logo, for luck, as many would immediately relate, and this luck is aimed at the cause of our project, our endangered environment in Rio de Janeiro, the Guanabara Bay and the surrounding Mata Atlântica biosphere. The interference with the air-conditioner also proposes to re-think its use. To re-think the technologies around us. Highlighting a paradox, that without it, these specimens would die in the gallery. The air conditioner's energy is shared with a HQI lamp, of blue light installed immediately above it. The light has the property pertinent for the plants' production of photosynthesis. This machine's engineering efficacy is directed at sustaining the life of these plants for the duration of the exhibition and questions our dependence on such instruments. It is undoubtedly ironic that just outside these gallery walls we would find the most perfect conditions for life and growth. How would the environment react if everyone switched off? Unlikely this will ever happen, so in the very least we should all be looking for the numerous alternative cooling solutions that exist ( and which we can create) that do not equally heat the air outside. The EME project instigates this kind of thinking from the artist, institutions and investors and propose to investigate sustainable solutions in a practical way, through experimentation and play. The contructive impact within the communities EME proposes to reach with each residency is achieved by the artist´s own sense of function and position. Autonomous and uninhibitted, armed with their aesthetic and poetic skill.
Experimento No. 7 is a translation of my experience of the first edition of the project with the task of constructing an approachable installation which would invite the public to think about the spaces and themes around Rio de Janeiro the project sets out to approach.
