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Alexandre Estrela’s A Natureza Aborrece o Monstro at Culturgest

‘I see two pictures, with the duck-rabbit surrounded by rabbits in one, by ducks in the other. I do not notice that they are the same. Does it follow from this that I see something different in the two cases? (…) But what is different: my impression? My point of view? – Can I say that? I describe the alteration like I perception, quite as if the object had altered in front of my eyes.”[1]

When writing this excerpt, Ludwig Wittgenstein was referencing the famous duck-rabbit head, a drawing whose deliberate ambiguity allows its observer to see it as either a rabbit’s or duck’s head. Together with others with a similar effect, this figure comes with the objective of addressing the concept of ‘seeing as’, to the extent that, by clarifying the subjective nature of the act of seeing and attributing meaning, it sets it apart from interpretation. Within the context of his elaboration of ‘meaning as use’, the rabbit-duck figure becomes the central image for exemplifying the shaping of meaning through the use of the subject who sees it: the image itself stands for nothing other than the use that those who see it attribute to it. Alexandre Estrela’s A Natureza Aborrece o Monstro, one of the most striking pieces in the exhibition, deals directly with this image. The large video screening Rabbid Tuck fluctuates between the image of a bird and a rabbit, causing a new entity to emerge from the temporal intersection of the two through retinal retention. By turning the original figure upside down, in which the same drawing can depict both animals – here through two photographs devoid of ambiguity -, a new figure emerges that seemingly does not exist: a monster. We are also reminded of Wittgenstein when, by observing that the bird is not actually a duck, the artist, by bringing us into dialogue with the original image, allows us to ‘see it as’ a duck.

While Alexandre Estrela’s work is not, nor does it claim to be, a reproduction of Wittgenstein’s example[2], one aim is still paramount: the importance attached to perception and the flexibility of a subject’s way of seeing when faced with an image. The exhibition, currently on show at Culturgest’s Galeria 1 and consisting of several works made between 2010 and 2024, reveals several other moments in which the schematical nature of the image is paired with a willingness to shape its perception. Or, rather, to let perception mould the image itself. For example, the piece Barómetro materialises this ability in a particularly sardonic way, in which, by overlapping an arbitrary graph and scale on a plane of grass, it implies an apparent relationship between the plane and a non-existent scientific mediation.

Likewise, the piece Pockets of Silence, a two-channel video installation together with a scientific poster and a brochure, uses fear conveyed through silence to construct two audiovisual apparatuses whose steady, aggressive movement becomes commonplace and, at times, a fickle moment occurs when the two, in sync, are interrupted. Regardless of whether the luminous image of a helicopter is stretched across the space or the switch between different perspectives around a defined centre on the screen, the perceptual breakdowns are combined with another important element: the standstill moment is randomly determined, synchronised with the aforementioned Rabbid Tuck. Although the random generation of this moment may seem frivolous or inconspicuous, it represents just one of the apertures through which the exhibition seems to open up, either internally between its elements or to the outside. Contrary to a rationale in which the displayed objects are shut and the result of a human and subjective intentionality by the artist, the pieces shown here are constantly intersected by different kinds of agency, whether it be an (attempt at) randomness, or, for instance, the colossal Redskyfalls, continuously displaying the image of the macOS High Sierra screensaver as it reacts to global seismic activity. A second example of the relationship between the different elements is seen in Teia, where part of the projection is rerouted to be framed by Rabbid Tuck. Something particularly evident is the way in which the elements, rather than being static and enclosed objects, are distributed as devices triggering movements, disruptions, alterations and constantly in dialogue with each other, with a certain ‘outside’ of that space and, most importantly, with the subject who is looking at them.

This is precisely why these devices are constantly challenging themselves by disrupting and rearranging perceptions. On the subject of formalism in Florian Hecker’s work, Reza Negarestani says: ‘it relates to the technologies of form as systems able to create higher orders of cognitive freedoms, drawing on the constructive propensities of form, such as rule-governed manipulability, the ability to order experiences, the externalisation and disincarnating of cognition and, in particular, compositionality and synthesis due to the autonomy of forms in relation to specific sensitive or semantic content.”[3] While, in this case, the author stresses these characteristics in relation to a sound work and its perception, his remarks are nonetheless extremely accurate when it comes to describing Estrela’s process with regard to visual perception. Indeed, his work is similarly close to the so-called structural cinema practices, not in terms of illuminating a pre-defined cinematographic structure, but rather insofar as, eschewing immersive intentions, it attempts to bring about changes and re-syntheses: ‘Disinterested, disengaged and detached from any real desire, aesthetic judgement, its conditioning experience and the art conception it implies, thus represent the purest form of autonomy (…). …] This dissociation or detachment gives formalisms cognitive freedom, the ability to manipulate forms and their rule-governed connections against new contexts, different problems, phenomena or frameworks, so as to identify and map new forms of intuition or new semantic contents beyond the reach of ordinary experience or thought.”[4]

Together, the pieces Entrada/Saída and Square and Circular Sounds illustrate this interest extremely well. Not only does the former experience the illusory process articulated between a tube and a metal screen projection, but it literally serves to disable the spectator from travelling down the corridor between them. Within that corridor, in a space simply observed from a distance, the work Square and Circular Sounds thrives on the video being reprojected onto the very same material visible on it, blending the real and the virtual.

Estrela’s work, besides video, is centred on its intersection with reality, space and objects. Harking back to Wittgenstein, if the rabbit-duck figure represents the formation of semantic content through usage, the whole of Estrela’s work here appears to be involved in a constant modelling of new ways of ‘seeing how’. Fernando Zalamea is right when he sees in Wittgenstein’s philosophy an approach similar to the Beam Theory in maths: ‘what sort of rule turns a local absurdity into a global meaning? (…) A beam is a rule for bringing absurdity together with meaning’. The absence of local meaning, an inevitability in any given proposition, exists precisely alongside the creation of meaning in language as a global whole. It is only from the monsters we see in the images that we will ever be able to attach (any) meaning to Nature.

Alexandre Estrela’s A Natureza Aborrece o Monstro is at Culturgest in Lisbon until February 2, 2025.

 

[1] Wittgenstein, L. (1995). Philosophical Investigations. In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus – Philosophical Investigations, pp. 540, 541-542.
[2] The artist James Coleman had already borrowed the figure more literally in his 1973 piece Duck – Rabbit.
[3] Negarestani, R. (2016). Technologies of Form as Technologies of Autonomy. In Mackay, R. Florian Hecker: Formulations, p. 36.
[4] Negarestani, R. (2016). Technologies of Form as Technologies of Autonomy. In Mackay, R. Florian Hecker: Formulations, pp. 40, 41.

Mariana Machado (2000) was born in Porto and studied Cinema at Escola das Artes - Universidade Católica Portuguesa. She is currently studying for a Master's Degree in Digital and Sound Arts, also at Escola das Artes. She is an artist and researcher, interested above all in manifestations that articulate the moving image in a context between cinema and contemporary art, as well as the artistic potential of new technologies and their articulations with other materialities.

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