PROST
Performance by Sabina Simon and Luiz Simoes for the event UNTERGANGART - Updating the Downfall
Kunsthalle Halle G - Museumsquartier, Vienna. March 2012
A performative laboratory as discourse space in the constantly recurring downfall and reconstruction game. An artistic suggestion against the perhaps greatest danger, that in the end everything remains unchanged.
Instauration by Sabina Simon and Luiz Simoes for the exhibition PROPHETIA
Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona. 12 March to 7 June 2015
Still flowing through the Universe, the electromagnetic wave of 160.2 GHz called Cosmic Background Radiation is supposed to be the echo of the Very Beginning.
We normally associate the idea of echo as post-something, but hardly conceive it as cause-of, as cause of a new drama that will evoke a new reverberation, producing, maybe, another drama and so on infinitely.
An expanding Universe on its way to collapse, is part of an "evolutionary freedom" that perhaps only in the Downfall finds a way to reborn.
During a vernissage people are taking glasses of wine (glasses as a metaphor of celebration, climax, happiness). In the centre of the room a glass table with four high frequency speakers at the corners is hanging by steel cables. A full rang speaker, placed 5 meters above, reproduces in low volume the pleasant sound of a fine crystal wineglass resonating. This harmonic sound gradually becomes a constant frequency and its volume begins to rise and disturb guests. At this point, a warning voice is heard through the speaker.
Your attention please. We inform you that your glass might explode in your hands at any moment. We suggest you leave it on the table. Keeping holding it is up to you and at your own risk. No one will take any responsibility on that.
As the volume rises, the sound explodes the wineglasses near the speakers and people begin to lay their glasses on the table. Full of glasses, the table begins to slowly rise. The frequency and volume gradually rise and the glass plate, not withstanding, breaks down. The huge cascade of broken glasses falls down from five meters up on a black wooden board covered with a thin transparent layer of polyester resin placed in the area of impact. The resin, still liquid, expands through and when hardened, the glass pieces become attached to the black surface as a metaphor of a new expanding universe, containing order and entropy.
PROST Vienna, 2012. Polyester resin, glass and wineglasses on dyed wood. 210 x 130 cm.
