The Weight of the Work, Talk by Johannes Pfeiffer

THE WEIGHT OF THE WORK, TALK BY JOHANNES PFEIFFER

On September 28 at 6 p.m, German artist Johannes Pfeiffer offered the talk The Weight of the Work at the Licancabur Hall of Minera Escondida Foundation. About 30 people attended the presentation. Pfeiffer’s provocative title had a dual purpose: on the one hand, to reflect on the physical weight of bodies in space and, on the other, to reflect on the symbolic value by which artworks fluctuate and are resignified, from the perspective of his artistic practice, primarily linked to sculpture, volumetric exploration, installation, land art and site-specific work. Thus, elements such as strength and tension were essential to understand, in general terms, his work and, in particular, the piece he produced in the context of the biennial, called The Memory of Rocks.

As Pedro Donoso anticipated in the section school without school, the work consists of an intervention of different stone molds situated at Sitio Cero in the Port of Antofagasta, with their matrices anchored miles away, in the middle of the ancestral solitude of the Atacama Desert. The main materials used for the making of this work were metallic mesh and red fabrics, promoting the significant contrast between volume and weight, anchorage and displacement, mooring and suture, mimicry and radiance, desert and accumulation, presence and absence, fullness and emptiness, amongst various other issues. The physical weight of bodies in space and the symbolic value by which artworks fluctuate and are resignified.

Another issue addressed in the talk was the possibility of understanding the strategies of intervention in public space so as to value local territories with their particularities, opportunities, needs and difficulties. In a territory such as Antofagasta, devoid of gallery and museum infrastructure, but with an exuberant territorial platform where experimental artistic works of diverse natures can be investigated and exhibited, this becomes especially relevant.