Flavia Regaldo
Roof, Actions Toward Nothing
Flavia Regaldo / Aruan Mattos
2010
Between April and December 2010, we participated in an artistic residency at JA.CA – Jardim Canadá Center for Art and Technology, Minas Gerais- Brazil. Our initial proposal was to build a structure for projecting photographic slides that would be attached to the heat exhaust vents of various warehouses typical of the Jardim Canadá neighborhood. We did not realize at that initial stage that, come nightfall, the neighborhood would almost completely fall asleep, leaving only stray dogs as passersby. Our initial project, which aimed to intervene in the local everyday life, began to resemble a speech addressed to the deaf. From then on, our paths seemed to search for the voids within the neighborhood. In this desert-like environment, we began to carry out daytime actions in vacant lots. We prefer to say that all these actions compose a single work: Roof, Actions for Nothing.
Project carried out during the Artist-in-Residence programme at JA.CA – Jardim Canadá Centre for Art and Technology | Belo Horizonte/Nova Lima – MG
Project selected for the 2011 Exhibition Programme at CCSP, São Paulo Cultural Centre | São Paulo – SP
Roof is an optical-kinetic structure built from bicycle wheels, metal tubing legs, magnets, a projector, and slide photographs. The object is installed on the roofs of warehouses in Jardim Canadá and attached by chains to a heat exhaust vent. The rotation of the exhaust in turn drive the improvised bicycle wheel–slide system, triggering the change of photographs. The images are projected onto the roofs and walls of other neighboring warehouses.
No one sees it. At 8 p.m., there is no one left on the streets of Jardim Canadá.
The projected photographs: the backs of various warehouses in the neighborhood; dogs; clouds.
Video installation, 3 hours, 14 minutes and 26 seconds. Time marches on relentlessly to the sound of industrial workers.
Between warehouses and residential houses, vacant lots. Spaces filled with waiting.
To fill the air with body. The delimiters of space are the lampposts, their overhead cables, and some asphalt.
Stretch ropes between two public lampposts surrounding the lot and hang a hammock. Remain suspended. Enter a state of suspension.
On a vacant lot, a rope stretched between two public lampposts. Magnets tied to thin wires. An iron ground.
Lower the lines onto the soil of Jardim and then suspend it again.
Floor. Ore. Glass. Reflection.
Layers.
Our heads beneath the clouds.
Video: 11m 57s
"Between Points", JACA Jardim Canadá Centre for Art and Technology 2010 _ Jardim Canadá / Brazil
"Exhibition programme" CCSP São Paulo Cultural Centre _ São Paulo / Brazil
Roof, Actions Toward Nothing
64 pages
Offset-printed cover on Kraft paper
Offset-printed interior
