To exhibit “Space of possibles- Istanbul” involves, in effect, transfering to an exhibition space a project designed for a public space. Therefore, “Space of possibles O.D.V” (Original Documented Version) includes a reflection about the said transferral.
The exhibition consisted in picking up again the intervention I did in Istambul’s public space in 2011, consisting of a sound installation in Besiktas square (see “Space of possibles- Istanbul”).
The project consisted in the following:
1. Before the opening of the exhibition, a meeting with women from El Prat de Llobregat was organized at the same exhibition room. The meeting was divided into two parts:
- The presentation of the project that took place in Istanbul in October 2011, in which the video documenting the action was shown.
- A roundtable in which, based on the video, there is a debate about women and public life in the context of El Prat de Llobregat.
2. Afterwards, at the exhibition, in the same room and in the exact same way the room was set up in the previous meeting with the women from El Prat (chairs, table, speakers, and screen, everything in the same place), I screened all my recorded material.
The material shown was the following: on the same screen where we projected the video-documentary of the original intervention at the public space of Istanbul, we now projected the recording of the first part of the meeting.
Mise en abyme
A “mise en abyme” is thus laid out, a process of progressive distancing of at least 4 layers: the original intervention in Istanbul that can’t be experienced any longer, the video documenting the intervention in Istanbul, the artist’s talk at the exhibition room with the women from El Prat during which the video of the intervention is projected on the screen and, finally, the reproduction of the talk by means of a video projected on that same screen.
The formal layout thus consists in a visualization of the successive over-distancing between: a first action that already took place in the public space of Istanbul and the talk made in the exhibition spaces of El Prat with the video documenting the intervention in the originary public space.
We thus try to start a reflection about the nature of documents and what they actually document.
The context
Frente a todo este dispositivo de “mise en abyme”, y dialogando con el proyecto de Estambul, se coloca a su vez una pantalla de plasma más pequeña donde se pasa la segunda parte del encuentro, es decir, la mesa redonda en el que mujeres del Prat debatieron sobre la mujer y la esfera pública en Estambul y en el Prat de Llobregat.
