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Espaço Preso, Mercosul Biennial

SITE-SPECIFIC

Group Exhibition,
Mercosul Biennial

CURATOR

Marcello Dantas

YEAR

2022

LOCATION

Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

SERIES

Ludic Spaces
or Evil Maze

DIMENSION

2,7 x 4 x 10 m

MATERIALS

Wood, wire clamps, rubber bands, Lamp, motion sensors, computer and audio equipment

CREDITS

Photo: Thiele Elissa
Sound designer: Paulo Santos

ABOUT THIS WORK

Text by Marcello Dantas

Janaina Mello Landini's installation Espaço Preso ( Trapped Space ) activates an affective experience through an individual-environment connection. The artist invites visitors to walk through a room with a visible entrance and exit. The interior, however, is intersected by a sequence of "force groups," structures conceptually constructed by repeated sets of elastic bands creating a chaotic space. As the body walks through this tangle, the elastic sets become deformed, thus vibrating the space and creating new layers of experience. The sound of the rubber bands' movement is one of the work's fundamental aspects. Musician Paulo Santos wrote the harmonic composition, which was decomposed into 16 channels distributed throughout the installation. In contrast to the almost invisible order of the elastic bands' construction, the soundtrack created by the visitors' movements can go from the most harmonic to the most cacophonic state, but always randomly.
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