The Box
Birch plywood, steel and sisal rope
The object (closed): 43 x 42 x 25 cm
When exposed (closed): 316 x 372 x 111 cm
When open, the height is variable
2017
The object (closed): 43 x 42 x 25 cm
When exposed (closed): 316 x 372 x 111 cm
When open, the height is variable
2017
There is a box for each concept. What is in the concept? What is in the box? There is nothing in the box. In the concept? Just more than it and less than it, not it.
“The concepts are drawers that serves to classify the knowledge. The concepts are clothes that desindividualize experienced knowledge. There is a drawer for each concept in the categories fitment. The concept is a dead thought, since it is, by definition, classified thought.” 1
There is a girl who leaves the closet, moreover, who assumes that she has never been there! They ask her what is her drawer, were she fits, where she lives. She doesn’t find a place to live. Each box that she thinks it suits for her, she opens and examines. There’s never anything there, anything she designates, and she doesn’t fit. Every time she opens a box, everything jumps out of it, everything looks for another. Everything constantly “connecting and then disconnecting gives the illusion of movement, of freedom, of a diverse, rich and multiple desire. It gives the illusion of a continuity of movement that brings with it the inscription of all punctual presents in a unique time (out of time) as «time» of the meaning of life. It’s a truly illusory movement, because the jumping from one small thing to another does nothing more than conceal the meaning of an inscription which prolongs another inscription.”2
She has a wish. She wants to jump. Not from box to box, but from nothing to nothing, that it’s everything and where everything belongs. She wants to be what she is and not be her. A girl who doesn’t want to be her, but who doesn’t want to stop being her.
No, she is not lost, she simply realized that there is no reason for finding herself.
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1 BACHELARD, Gaston. A poética do espaço. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1988.
2 GIL,José. Portugal, hoje: o medo de existir. 9ª reimp. Lisboa: Relógio D'Água, 2005.