MieuxVautTard- QueJamais

Residency period: February 2020
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Still Life in Process – Blanca

(Procesando la Naturaleza Muerta – Blanca)

the soil produces

the border slices

the market fluctuates

the table mediates

the body absorbs

Still Life in Process attempts to map the back-and-forth movements of agricultural objects between soil, borders, markets, tables and bodies. Still life depicts objects of consumption and is connected to narratives of cultivation, commerce and conquest. We arrived in Spain on the first day of Brexit to a ·campo en guerra” over the falling value of the fruits of agricultural labour. By focusing on lemons, a fruit exported from Blanca to our hometown of Glasgow, we ask the question: how can these narratives be an explicit part of our still life? Still life was a way for artists to show their technical ingenico in mimicking the natural world. We are interested in 3D photogrammetry, creating multidimensional images from clouds of data, as it shares this lineage of simulating reality. We are also interested in how we can contaminate the ‘technology’ of photogrammetry with ‘handmade/organic’ collages to create darkness, dirt and depth.

Still life played a role in the secularisation of art, occurring against the backdrop of ‘enlightenment’ thinking and its mind/matter dualisms. We want Still Life in Process to play a role in disturbing the ecological binaries – nature/culture, human/animal – descending from these dualisms. 

In generating a website, we are interested in presenting information in non-hierarchical ways, seeding and sharing ideas, and forming a template that can multiply and mutate in future. Still life is also a reminder of decay and death – a memento mori hidden amongst the fruit and vegetables. In the midst of the floods, fires, extinctions and dead zones of the Anthropocene, we also hope our Still Life in Process can chime some bells of grief.