SACO9 Now or never

A TRAP FOR TIME | Elia Gasparolo and Santiago Rey We traveled to the Atacama Desert to install our work, a work that speaks of the past and our relationship with time.

There is a complex plot of causation, which doesn’t limit itself to uni-directional development. It is not just that facts that happen in one moment modify or condition those that come later. The perspective on the present, on what we have in between hands and below our feet, changes our perception of the past, and with it, the perception of the future. The image that we are able to construct of the future works to give shape to our actions. There is also a future of the future, and a past of the past.

The desert welcomes us with its open horizon and burning breath, its mineral rhythm. As we delve into its reality –rough, tangible, brutal and yet subtle– we start to perceive something unexpected, which resonates in a forceful and dramatic way in our work.

When someone like us, who is ignorant of the logic of these kinds of places, imagines the desert, one imagines an environment where physical realities don’t stay the same. Where the world consumes and erases every trace. We have the idea that dunes move, like the waves in the sea. Constant movement.

But it’s just the opposite. We find ourselves in a place where everything lingers and the marks left by human action overlap. The two thousand years old geoglyphs have the same depth, the same presence as the tracks of the red pickups. Many signs and roads lead to places that we cannot even imagine. A labyrinth of mirrors where time gets trapped, reflecting itself and traveling once and again. A trap for time. A house for time.

Now our work is also there. We are a part of it.

We travelled many kilometers in hopes of assimilating ourselves to this place while looking for locations. The different scenes will remain there, separated by a hundred kilometers, exposed to that time that we are discovering. We also learned what an oasis is. It’s arriving in Chiu Chiu, Romina and Jaime waiting for us in their house smelling of perfume and spice. It is also Quillagua, the driest place on Earth, where Manuel welcomes us and the fruit is sweeter than anywhere else.

In Antofagasta, ISLA is an oasis of generosity and joy.

Now we are part of this texture, all these overlapping transparencies in silent dialog.

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