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R!™0: Pedro Tudela at Museu Internacional de Escultura Contemporânea de Santo Tirso

The hectic, cycle-like daily routine in which we find ourselves enmeshed, often without any time for reflection and contemplation, is wrapped up in repetitive patterns defining our life’s pace. As an artistic manifesto, R!™0 by Pedro Tudela at MIECST is a statement that repetition is a central concept of contemporaneity. Deconstructing and suspending this rhythm, the exhibition materialises a kind of musical score in space. It emphasises repetition, attracting our attention to this metric, while leaving time and space for contemplation, necessary for critical thinking about our surroundings. The exhibition project also addresses the urgent climate crisis as a serious tone in the score presented, as a warning that thinking about ecology also involves questioning our perception of time.

The South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han (b. 1959), in The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering (2009), argues that, in contemporaneity, the time crisis we feel is related to a symptom of temporal dispersion rather than acceleration. That the sensation we have of life speeding up is the outcome of the way we perceive time as something jumbled, aimless and endless, with no way of controlling it. He reinforces that this crisis is tied to an absolutisation of active life, which drives us towards an imperative to work, i.e., a daily routine with no time for contemplation or lingering. The author states: «The time crisis will only be resolved when the active life, in full crisis, welcomes the contemplative life back into its midst»[1].

The cyclical nature of our daily lives, dominated by a work routine, is perceived in a fast-paced way, in which contemplation is impossible, because, even when we pause, wait or linger, we are always finding excuses to take action. When we wait for public transport, for an appointment or a meeting, we are often listening to music and on our mobile phones, often without realising what is going on around us. We work and, in our free time, we carry on the same routine habits, but driven by leisure, without stopping to listen and feel. We spend our time in a ceaseless cycle, or, as Tudela suggests, in constant repetition. The current ecological crisis also arises from this scenario, as we repeat lifestyle and consumer habits without realising how much our time and the planet are being wasted. The resources we spend trying to turn the clock back deplete and violate all the beings that live with us, including our habitat.

Through R!™0, we are engrossed in this idea of repetition. Starting with R:0-8 (2023), a set of eight ceramic pieces and iron balls, the beginning of the score, hinting at depth through the shiny, reflective material, extending the piece and our reflection into infinity. Likewise, R:al (2023), a sculpture resembling an hourglass, where the sand is glass, in a kind of crystallisation of time, emphasises the exhibition’s premise, challenging the notion of time standing still. Nevertheless, the exhibition venue’s hallway, where we can still see traces of the old monastery, is home to R:C-E_Loop (2023), comprising a wooden house, an iron staircase, a wooden pole, speakers, a horn and three-channel sound, unfolding throughout the venue, surrounded by the video Rastos (1997). The installation challenges the idea of repetition through the constant noise we hear emanating from the pieces, the moving images featuring an eye with a looping speaker in the middle, and the embodiment of time through sculptural forms and materials.

The lower floor also includes the installation GT_S – orechio del suono (2019), where eight ceramic heads are placed on eight tables with mirror tops, arranged throughout the space, together with electrical cables, in a setting with sporadic lighting and bird sounds. This spatiality leads to contemplation, but also to questions over those white-painted sculptures with disfigured faces. We perceive time differently when we roam among those beings, among natural and cryptic sounds. The video Chaves e Sombras (2020) also stands out, on a plane where time is perceived very faintly. A moment to pause and once again contemplate, faced with the relentless cycle of our daily lives, in which we need to stop, watch, but above all listen. Let’s not forget R:memória (2023), an installation where an iron eagle’s head stands out from a wooden bench with a mirror, disturbing us with the imposing nature of the animal, but also a wall mounted speaker with sound coming out of a glass bell blown on the floor, causing estrangement with its shapes and materials, a sort of metaphor for the repetitive imperative of time in everyday life.

Pedro Tudela’s exhibition at MIECST provides a sensitive experience in which not only the sounds, but also the sculptural elements, echo rhythms and metrics, but also eeriness, making it possible to question the way we perceive time, the importance of contemplation and our daily habits given the current ecological crisis.

R!™0 by Pedro Tudela is on show at MIECST until February 18, 2024.

 

[1] Han, B.-C. (2016). O Aroma do Tempo: Um Ensaio Filosófico sobre a Arte da Demora. Lisbon: Relógio D’Água. p.11.

Ana Martins (Porto, 1990) currently working as a researcher at i2ADS – Instituto de Investigação em Arte, Design e Sociedade, with a fellowship granted by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (2022.12105.BD) to atende the PhD in Fine Arts at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto. Already holding a MA in Art Studies – Museological and Curatorial Studies from the same institution. With a BA in Cinema from ESTC-IPL and in Heritage Management by ESE-IPP. Also collaborated as a researcher at CHIC Project – Cooperative Holistic view on Internet Content, supporting the incorporation of artist films into the portuguese National Cinema Plan and the creation of content for the Online Catalog of Films and Videos by Portuguese Artists from FBAUP. Currently developing her research project: Cinematic Art: Installation and Moving Images in Portugal (1990-2010), following the work she started with Exhibiting Cinema – Between the Gallery and the Museum: Exhibitions by Portuguese Filmmakers (2001-2020), with the aim to contribute to the study of installations with moving images in Portugal, envisioning the transfer and specific incorporation of structural elements of cinema in the visual arts.

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