Time-Lapsed-Persons

[DISENROLL LANDSCAPE project series, version.moskow]
Complexul Muzeal Național «Moldova» Iași.
Muzeul Unirii, str. Alexandru Lăpușneanu nr. 14 (Iași, Romania)
11-31 august 2022.
Presentation and dialogue with the artist 14 and 17 august 2022, 12.00 h.

Curator: Dr. Brîndușa Munteanu. Unirii Museum.
Academic coordinator: Prof. univ. Dr. Florin Grigoraș.
National University of Arts «George Enescu» Iași.

Disenroll Landscape

An important source of scientific material is JM ALONSO-CALERO’s impressive series of documentary trips to Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia (Paris, Venice, Florence, Helsinki, Iași, Moscow, St Petersburg, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Tegucigalpa, Tulum, Luxor, Tunis, Haifa). The images taken on this occasion form a solid basis for further elaboration, resulting in projects, exhibitions and contemporary artworks that make use of this material. As a central axis of his creation, the theme of territory and the link between communities and territories led to the development of the framework project «Disenroll landscape», based on the exploitation of the panoramic image format. In this context, JM ALONSO-CALERO has carried out various projects dealing with themes related to transit spaces, exploring the relationship between these spaces and the human flows involved, an approach close to his projects El Palo and Linking space, linking people. In this sense, he has created projects such as Disenroll Boca (Buenos Aires, 2013), Time-Lapsed-Persons (Moscow, 2017) – which is the subject of the current exhibition, as well as Durch-Gangs-Gebiete (Berlin, 2021) – in an advanced stage of preparation for public exhibition. (Summary by Florin Grigoras)

The Time-Lapsed-Persons project [DISENROLL LANDSCAPE project series, version.moskow] is one of the projects subsumed within the broader framework called Disenroll landscapes, a theoretical and imagistic context in which I approach, with the means of static and dynamic imagery, unconventional formats of artistic research on the relationship that is established between urban public transit spaces and the daily human flow that animates them. In my approach aimed at highlighting the profound aspects that characterize the status of the anonymous individuals that make up these flows, trying to challenge the scientific approach carried out by the sociologist, anthropologist, geographer, philosopher or psychoanalyst, I use an artistic technique of image sampling based on random recording through panoramic capture in orthographic displacement. I carry out this study by referring to the concept of «non-places, spaces of anonymity» belonging to the French anthropologist Marc Augé, who argues that these spaces are not invested with sufficient personality so that the human being falls into anonymity, is depersonalized and suffers from a forced homogenization. I interpret these ideas in the sense that people who traverse these spaces impoverished of meaning are in turn involuntarily impoverished of their own status, of their own ideas, they are subject to an annulment, a disaffiliation. In terms of identity, they are disassociated from their territory, stripped of their own identity and suffer a phenomenon of exclusion (disenrollment) that originates in the impossibility of sharing a unitary system of ideas. There is a constant flow of people in search of their identity, which is defined in relation to their territory of being. Through the images I make in spaces of transition (metro stations, train stations, airports) I problematize the status of people who are likely to be brutally «cancelled», who have to rethink their identity and reconnect with their destiny. We are witnessing a truncated reality through involuntary cancellation, which gives transitional spaces the characteristics of a hiatus (limbo) imposed by ignorance, oblivion, emptiness, and denial of existence. As a result of the artistic investigation, I propose these ‘landscapes of exclusion, cancellation’ (disenroll landscape). The Time-Lapsed-Persons project [DISENROLL LANDSCAPE project series, version.moskow] is based on images taken in the Moscow metro on July 13, 2017, between 13:01:36 and 16:51:31 hours/minute/second. The works presented are a direct result of the personal method used and involve either just selecting an image area or joining initial images without post-processing via image filters. They are offered to the public for viewing for the first time in an exhibition space, as part of the larger DISENROLL LANDSCAPE project series.