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Dança do Labirinto: A sensory immersion

The exhibition Dança do Labirinto by the artist Ricardo Jacinto (b. 1975), at Escola das Artes da Universidade Católica Portuguesa, offers a chance to reflect on installation as an art form. Curated by Nuno Crespo, this exhibition encourages the visitor to embark on a sensory journey that defies perception through what could be said to be a single installation[1] that blends sound and the body in time and space, daring the visitors to plunge into a unrivalled aesthetic experience.

Jacinto has built an artistic narrative throughout his career that takes the audience through immersive soundscapes, exploring the fluid relationship of matter and devising sensory experiences that expand human perception beyond the visual sign. In Dança do Labirinto, the artist offers an enquiry into how sound can be a structuring element in appreciation, hinting at a physical and mental labyrinth.

Jacinto’s practice expresses a concern for the audience’s active listening, challenging them to notice subtleties that often go unnoticed or are understood as ‘coincidences’ or ‘singularities’. This can be – and certainly will – a new form of interaction, where the audience becomes an integral part of the aesthetic experience, activating it as they enjoy it and having the ability to fragment and recombine concepts[2].

From this perspective, it is possible to ascribe to the spectator the integral faculty without which the work would not be whole – if it ever is. David Hume (1711-1776) said that ‘the principal faculty of the mind is the imagination’[3],, which is why this insight is useful for interpreting Jacinto’s work and his Association of Ideas theory for this exhibition. Just as in the show, this cross-temporal analysis allows seemingly disjointed ideas to suspend time, representing in itself the sign on which it is possible to develop a contemporary theoretical analysis. It is through language that Dança no Labirinto can be understood, illustrating the unconscious cognitive process closely tied to language and creativity. In other words, language allows an infinity of unique ideas to be built, where each association is a small creative act that allows these acts to accumulate, fostering a more complex construction. Hume’s analysis is appropriate because it establishes the foreground of imagination as the mind’s primary mechanism.

For example: on entering the exhibition area, we are immediately challenged by the work In a rear room (2011-2024), where a piano, fitted with a disklavier, draws and lays the groundwork for a plot of sound, acting as a map of what is being presented. The unique aspect of this interaction can be found in the composition between In a rear room and Cabeças de vento (1998-2024), a work made of glass, mirrors, fans and a sound amplification system that overwhelms the audience’s sensory perception. The system provides new and different, unforeseen sounds, randomly proposed for the interaction of matter with its various elements. In this case, the glass and mirrors are equipped with sound pickups which, by amplifying the fans impinging on a microphone, shake these elements, creating new and different sounds that are perpetuated like an echo. The first of these is impossible to reach, except through memory or imagination.

Hume is meaningful to this discussion because of the way he stresses the role of imagination when forming ideas from sensations. The philosopher says that there are two methods of forming ideas: from memory or imagination. The difference between the two consists in the fact that ‘the language process is found in the domain of the imagination’, which is ‘the motor of thought and not of language’[4]. We can understand that such a creative process extends beyond the exhibition itself. We can see the work 33 partes (2016), containing 333 photographs depicting a cello that has been completely destroyed – or deconstructed. The cello ocê apart from its shapelessness, is cemented as a perpetuating sign of his work, but also a parade of what is to come. A sign that, through the exhibition, creates a time suspension. This instrument is also featured in 37 segundos, a video work that tells us about the fate to which this instrument was brought through the accidental encounter between the earth-moving lorry and the cello, bringing the work to the fate that we see in 33 partes and whose action does not end at this moment.

During the opening, Ricardo Jacinto presented the audience with a performance that, using a cello, triggered the works to create a soundscape, involving the visitor in the experience of a powerful and unbridled sublime that allowed them to transcend their own ability to understand or control. An example of this is the glass and mirrors which, at any given moment, do not appear to have the required structural load and are suspended in the chasm of collapse, a bit like 37 segundos, suspending time and freezing every moment and vibration. The dichotomy between creation and destruction is something found in the exhibition and carried on in other shows – not through photographs, but through the fragments themselves[5]. However, Jacinto appears to boast, through the destroyed or deconstructed element, the perpetuation of his creative and questioning purpose, raising doubts in the spectator’s mind as to whether this is in fact the sound that forms and/or deconstructs Dança do Labirinto.

Harking back to Hume, the root of the problem in the imagination mechanism lies not only in the merging of ideas, but also in the simplification of more complex concepts, such as imprints of objects, signs or memory traces[6]. For example, the passage in which the cello is taken from its construction to its dissolution and, once again, to the making of a sign, but which, in one way or another, is alien to our perception. According to Hume’s model of imagination, the ‘deconstructions of sensory impressions into memory fragments become excerpts of floating ideas that can be reassembled into new ideas’[7], a conceivable premise from which the exhibition is built in the visitor’s mental labyrinth.

In Dança do Labirinto, sound is the material used to create and promote an immersive and interactive experience, like a perpetual mousetrap, always set by the trapped animal itself, which can therefore trap experiences indefinitely and even work while hidden in our subconscious.

Dança do Labirinto is on show until December 13, 2024.

 

[1] Claire Bishop, “What is installation art?”, in Bishop, Claire, 2005, Installation Art and Experience, London: Tate Publishing, p. 6.
[2] Graham Coulter-Smith, “Recombinación: desmistificando la creatividad: Juegos artísticos”, in Coulter-Smith, Graham, 2009, Deconstruyendo las instalaciones, Madrid: Brumaria A.C., pp. 141-142.
[3] David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Of the Different Species of Philosophy”, in Hume, David, published by Thomas Green and Thomas Grose, 1875, The Philosophical Works of David Hume, Vol. IV, London: Longmans-Green and Co., pp. 9-10.
[4] David Owen, “Hume and Ideas: Relations and Associations”, in Owen, David, 1999, Hume’s Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 67.
[5] Vd. O Parlamento de Caríbdis, 2022, at Galeria Bruno Múrias.
[6] Monika Jadzińska, “The Lifeplan of Installation Art: Processualism e Relativity of spatial relationships”, in Scholte, Tajta, and Wharton, Glenn, 2011, Inside Installations, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 24-25.
[7] David Owen, “Intuition, Certaintly, and Demonstrative Reasoning”, in Op. cit., pp. 84-85.

José Pedro Ralha (Chaves, 1994) has a degree in Art History, with a specialization in Philosophy of Art, from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, and a master's degree in Curatorial Studies from the College of Arts of the same university. His dissertation was entitled The Artistic Installation through the work of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva: Analysis of the works 3 Suns, Falling Trees and Papagaio (djambi). He participated in several projects, including LAND.FILL, 2019, with Gabriela Albergaria for the Laboratório de Curadoria; the Coimbra Biennial Anozero '19 - The Third Bank, 2019; and Terçolho, 2021, anthological exhibition by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva at Fundação de Serralves. He collaborated with the Serralves Foundation and played the role of Executive Producer of Museum Projects for the Porto Museum and Libraries. Among the exhibitions he produced, the following stand out: the Exposição Inaugural do Ateliê António Carneiro, 2024; Participação Já!, 2024; A Revelação: Os Manuscritos de Santa Cruz 1, 2024; 70 Anos TEP – Um Arquivo Vivo, 2023; A Urgência da Cidade: O Porto e 100 Anos de Fernando Távora, 2023; Para Aurélia: Desenhos de Fuga, 2023; Delírio & Cura, 2023; e Parque da Cidade: Composição da Paisagem, 2023. Currently, he works at the Porto Matadouro Cultural Center as Executive Producer of Museum Projects, contributing to the development of the Cultural Center and the Convergências Museum.

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