espaço T.A.J. - a pop-up space

Here, There, Everywhere...
Here, There, Elsewhere (HTE) challenges our preconceived notions about time and space, as it relates to the exhibit space itself. The artist employs audio and visual tools to map the exhibit experience itself, a poetic nod to the influence of the concept of ‘hyperobjects’.

Hyperobjects is an idea conceptualized by philosopher Timothy Mortan to describe objects that are so vast in their temporal and spatial dimensions that they challenge/break our traditional ideas about what that thing is in the first place. Morton describes hyperobjects and their impact on how we think, how we relate and coexist, and how we experience life through politics, ethics, and art.

HTE is an attempt to explore relationships about what is here, there, and everywhere, as executed on a 2-month time scale on a corner of Travessa do Arco de Jesus. It suggests that a gesture made here, today, has the capacity to reverberate there, tomorrow, and is inextricably linked to a chain of events else/everywhere that echoes into the future. (SC)

HTE explora relações acústicas improváveis entre a evolvente exterior do espaço expositivo, o limite o mesmo (vidro) e o seu interior o qual está inacessível ao público. HTE é uma peça audio de artes visuais em que a materialidade do som é explorada como uma cartografia e historiografia com início na inauguração da peça. Apela a uma experimentação sensível das relações espacio-temporais do espaço expositivo num momento em que é impossível estar dentro dele. Estabelece uma relação poética com o conceito de hyperobjetos do filosofo Timothy Morton.

O aquecimento global é talvez o exemplo mais dramático do que Timothy Morton chama de “hiperobjetos” – entidades de dimensões temporais e espaciais tão vastas que desafiam as ideias tradicionais sobre o que é uma coisa em primeiro lugar. Morton explica o que são hiperobjetos e seu impacto em como pensamos, como coexistimos e como vivenciamos nossa política, ética e arte.

HTE é uma tentativa microscópica de estabelecer relações improváveis sobre o que está aqui, ali e acolá executada numa escala de 2 meses, na Travessa do Arco de Jesus que pode e deve de forma inconsistente e imaginada ser escalada ao tamanho e duração mais abrangente possível. Procura assim sugerir como hipótese que aquilo que um gesto hoje, aqui, reverbera ali e acolá, para sempre na sequência do impacto historiográfico do mesmo resultando num darwinismo onírico e especulativo aplicado a qualquer gesto / evento que sobrevive cumulativamente por fazer parte de uma cadeia historiográfica de eventos. (SC)
SIMÃO COSTA

Simão Costa (1979) is a Portuguese pianist, composer and transdisciplinary artist, who lives and works in Lisbon. He completed his piano training at the Lisbon Conservatory at 18 with flying colours. He furthered his music studies at ESMLisboa and Codarts Rotterdam. He views sound as a plastic, tangible, and physical material, exploring it in its musical, phenomenological, visual, and cultural dimensions. His work spans composition, improvisation, coding, circuit bending, data sonification, and visual arts.

He is a founding member and artistic director of MãoSimMão, with regular creative collaboration with Marta Cerqueira (Dança de Materiais Inertes), João Calixto (ISAsoundbox), Yola Pinto (YPSC_Transduction), Ana Trincão, Sónia Moreira (SAS Orkestra de Rádios). He has been featured in individual and collective exhibitions since 2007 in the visual art scene, creating original soundtracks for dance, theatre and cinema since 2005, and creating and directing concerts & shows. His work is published by Miso Records, SHHpuma, Cipsela records, 9 musas-codax. His works have been presented in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Estonia, Romania, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay.

Simão Costa (n.1979, Lisboa), músico, compositor e artista transdisciplinar. Pianista de formação, acabou o curso do conservatório nacional em 1998 com 20 valores, prosseguindo para a Escola Superior de Música e Codarts Rotterdam.

O seu trabalho encara o SOM como material plástico, tangível e físico explorando-o na sua dimensão musical, fenomenológica, percetiva, visual e cultural. Trabalha composição, improvisação, código, exposições/ instalações, circuit bending, sonorização de dados a solo e em colaboração com outros músicos, artistas visuais, performers, atores, encenadores, bailarinos e coreógrafos.

É membro fundador e diretor artístico da MãoSimMão - associação cultural tendo desenvolvido projetos de criação assinando a solo ou em co- criação com outros artistas. Mantém colaborações regulares [coletivos] com: Marta Cerqueira (Dança de Materiais Inertes - coleção), João Calixto (ISAsoundbox), Yola Pinto (YPSC_Transduction), Ana Trincão, Sónia Moreira. (SAS Orkestra de Rádios).

Climbing down from the Death Zone

Or the epiphany walk: Where do we go from here?

Part II

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein

Our cognitive system is not prepared to process large numbers. We can make sense of units, tens, hundreds maybe thousands. But the way we process and represent large numbers is significantly different from the way we deal with small numbers. For example, it’s much easier to picture the difference between 2 and 5 than between 112 and 115. We can probably visualize a stadium with 60 000 people, but that doesn’t mean we can make sense of it. What about a million, a billion, or a trillion? Research has shown that in estimating large numbers people are quite accurate determining the relative sizes of numbers like 2 and 800 millions, while estimating 980 million and 2 billion as almost identical. But if 1 million seconds is nearly 12 days, 1 billion seconds is almost 32 years.

Studies on numerical cognition show that we are in fact pretty bad processing large numbers. Recently, neuroscience research has started to pave the way to understand the limitations the brain dealing with large numbers. People can intuitively grasp quantities up to three or four, more than that they need to count. Intuitive understanding is replaced by abstract concepts the higher the numbers get. Quantities like millions or billions are processed more as categories, rather than actual numbers. Our brain is wired to compare, not to count.

Epiphany: For a new paradigm beyond the paradox of tangibility

The bigger, the more complex a problem is, the less tangible it gets. Loosing tangibility makes us less prepared to address a problem. We lose intuitive tools as a problem gains abstractness, complexity and layers.

Can we look at the Anthropocene and the consequences of humans in the global systems of our planet as one of these problems? An hyperobject beyond the abilities of our intuitive tools? Beyond our ability to understand? Is this why we keep running away, shying away from looking it in the eye?

From the limbo of liminality comes the need for a new paradigm. The epiphany of a newer way to put us in touch with the complexity of the greatest problem of contemporaneity. It’s the epiphany of a paradigm shift that needs to drive out action, thought, behaviour, knowledge and most importantly, creativity.

With HTE Simão Costa walks us through the record on sheets of paper of the interconnectedness of our actions. What we do matters. Here and now. Here, there, everywhere, what we do matters and, despite the complexity, the intangibility of it all, it’s the only way out. There won't be a magical solution. It's on us. We can no longer shy away behind the notion that it’s all far beyond us, that as an hyperobject our current problems are not addressable by us, mere mortals. Quite the contrary, what we do is the only thing that matters. In fact, it's all that matters. Here, there, everywhere.

Again, where's your bike? I know where David Byrne keeps his.

Rui Soares Costa
Lisbon, January 2023

Here, There, Everywhere...