Lucas Albuquerque: The work “OK/Cancel” consists of a project with manually made circuit boards that function as blockers for 2G, 3G, and 4G cell phone signals. Choosing to present this work in an exhibition space therefore involves limiting the spectator’s access to the outside world, enclosing them in the here and now of the work. Questions regarding inside and outside, entry and exit, are also important to works you have previously developed, such as “Encontrar uma saída” [Finding a way out] and “Saída pelas Frestas e Entrelinhas” [Exit through the Cracks and Between the Lines]. What function does displacement play in your poetics, and how can the sensory scrambling of the circulation of bodies propose another aesthetic experience to the viewer?
Elias Maroso: The “OK/Cancel” proposal was conceived within a series of works focused on traversing space, on making coextensive dynamics between inside and outside tangible through different approaches, whether of subjective or critical reading. This led me to produce open-air interventions, specific installations that problematize the disciplinary confinement of art, and also, the construction of electronic circuits that emit electromagnetic waves, capable of physically passing through the walls of exhibition venues. Before “OK/Cancel,” I had already approached simpler devices involving electromagnetism, such as pulsating coils and FM radio transmitters. These investigations persist as a practical repertoire in the activities I carry out today.
It is important to point out that, in the creative process, the elaboration of mind maps and diagrams is recurrent in the preliminary stages of all artistic proposals developed so far. By introducing principles of electronic engineering, the diagram that remained as a schematization of abstract terms begins to take the form of a device that causes physical effects in reality, a transition from abstract immateriality to a physical immateriality – as electromagnetic waves do not present the same physicality as material particles/objects in nature. Through radio broadcasting, I stopped merely indicating an interest in the undisciplined crossing of the art exhibition space to introduce it as a concrete effect of passage. I see in this path a movement of de-utopianization, that is, bringing intentions that remained placeless, only in the attribution of mental abstractions, into the shared and lived space.
The self-taught learning of emitter diagrams was a very relevant practical achievement in this trajectory. In a concrete way, the production was in more than one place at the same time, as these invisible energetic emanations have the property of passing through matter. If you’ll allow me a schizoid thought exercise, I could say that, from the “perspective of the electromagnetic wave,” the white wall of the exhibition room is transparent, completely passable. On the other hand, by getting involved with these poetic resources, I came across the dizzying amount of transmissions that cross our time. When I “make transparent” the white and disciplinary wall of art, I not only go out into the outside space but an unthinkable amount of waves also enters its interior space. It’s not very evident, but the digital telecommunication system operates on principles of radio broadcasting and dictates the rhythm of our daily lives.
Given this, “OK/Cancel” seeks to create an interval of communication as a force field on a domestic, non-massive scale. A claim for a thinking and creative solitude that is continuously colonized by the informational waves of today. I seek to evoke, even if for an instant and a short period of time, an informational hiatus. Note that this is not about technophobia, a rejection of the devices of the Digital Age 2.0. It is more about a disposition to profane them, interfering with one’s own hands in this logic, an opening of its black box. It uses technology itself to mark another stance in the face of the communicational and totalizing control so present in contemporary times, in the routine of our lives.
LA: In the description of the work in your portfolio, you state that “The notion of space ceases to be just one to vary in different atmospheres. It gives way to an art that does not fit in just one place.” The variation of art in different atmospheres can refer to the idea of reproducibility, dear to thinkers like Walter Benjamin and André Malraux. However, in works like “OK/Cancel,” you limit the reproduction of your own work on networks by interfering with cell phone waves. If art does not fit in just one place, why is it still so important to value the here and now of the aesthetic experience?
EM: When I talk about the transposition of unitary space to variations of atmosphere, I am trying to say that art can be realized in more than one circumstance, in more than a single disciplinary prescription or specialized field. Walter Benjamin speaks of the advantage of technical reproducibility while maintaining the imaginary that a type of sophisticated Art could be disseminated to the masses. Although still hegemonized by white cubes, the term art pulses in different crafts, whether or not they are legitimized by the dominant system. It is a common term in various places in society and it would be somewhat problematic to say what cannot be an artistic activity.
Furthermore, as much as its concept arose from a Westernized view of a specific type of image production, it is possible to extract from this Art that presents itself with a capital A within established apparatuses, emancipatory resources of language, tactics to desacralize its activity and, who knows, achieve effects in practical life. As a person dedicated to this craft of language, I seek to establish a minoration of this Art that presents itself as majoritarian. To situate it in a horizontal relationship with the many other practices that present themselves as artistic. An exit from Art through art. It distances itself, therefore, from the unitary context of codes for its realization. Like an electromagnetic wave, reaching more than one place at the same time.
“OK/Cancel” is conceived both in the form of an artistic object and as an open tutorial for anyone interested in producing their own force field in a domestic perimeter. This does not mean it needs to be reproduced identically, but to apply its schematic diagram in one’s own way. In this specific case, I do not see this proposal as limited to a single place, as it opens its code for other authorial applications.
LA: Another constituent element of the work “OK/Cancel” is a video that teaches the viewer how to assemble their own signal blocking circuit. Do you understand this action as a guerrilla practice? What is your desire in making this type of practice accessible?
EM: Opening its functional code follows a principle of sharing very common among practitioners of amateur electrical engineering. The very electronic component scheme used in this work was derived from other projects, continuing a shared process of learning and technical improvement. Many tutorials are available on online platforms, and the presence of the “OK/Cancel” step-by-step on YouTube, for example, starts from this principle to establish a game of being simultaneously an accomplice and a rival of the platform and the informational waves. The collision of the positive command (ok) with the negative command (cancel). Its operation is very unstable and minimal. It has little efficiency compared to industrialized cell phone blockers. It is more of an invitation to technological autonomy. In a way, it has its guerrilla content, if we consider that knowledge of electronics is emphatically restricted by the symbiosis of economic and state power.
LA: The circuit board draws attention for the typography that surrounds its edges, which was developed by the author himself. Its graphic design condenses both the appearance of a futuristic visual project and traces of an ancestral and organic writing. How does the tension between these distinct times mark your production?
EM: The typography used in “OK/Cancel” is another production available for the use of interested authors and is present in graphic essays, installations, and urban interventions. It is called “Recombinante.ttf” and can be downloaded for free at the following address: https://www.dafont.com/pt/recombinante.font. In this applicable and online version, there have already been more than 5,500 downloads. It is always gratifying to receive creative feedback from a user, inserting this typography in graphic products and visual poems. It indicates to me a certain signic vitality, a poetic propagation through recombination.
Regarding the futuristic or ancestral character aspect, I would say that this effect appears as a very welcome compositional accident. Countless formal arrangements were tested in the projection of its printed circuit board to arrive at this result. I believe that much of this organic aspect is due to the use of colors, in which the ocher tone and the metallic copper correspond to the conventional material for the production of handmade circuits (phenolic composite). The graphic insertions in black and white are solder masks inserted more as marking and graphic index than for any function in the system. In any case, there are recurring visual elements in the poetics I practice, such as the presence of the circle and continuous text bands. I also identify an interest in technical precision, artisanally mimicking serial manufacturing procedures of electronic devices.
LA: The boundary between seeing/not seeing is also a theme dear to your production, as shown in the “Criptocromo” series. Furthermore, the serigraphs “I agree to the terms and conditions of use” and “ok, ok, ok” impose a mantra of acceptance to terms or agreements to which we do not have access. What are the developments of this topic in the work “OK/Cancel” and in the serigraphs?
EM: In the “Criptocromo” installation, I poetically resize studies in quantum biophysics that seek to simulate the visual ability that migratory bird species have to perceive the immense electromagnetic field of our planet. It displaces the human visual apparatus as the primary measure in the perception of things in the world. There are countless phenomena that we cannot see. In the case of communication systems, the invisibility of electromagnetic waves is present in our routine, leading us to make decisions in automatic mode. Isn’t it surprising how many agreements we consent to by using digital applications? In the serigraphs “Ok, Ok, Ok” and “I Agree To The Terms and Conditions of Use,” I present repetitions of words and phrases as an immense codifying wall, commands that are not very evident to the multitudes of users of digital culture. With these and other works, I seek to bring to the surface this instance of everyday life that, for the most part, is secreted and fueled by individual devices and profiles.
LA: How does your work open up possibilities for the imagination of other realities?
EM: I believe that art in tactical use is about meddling with the language and codes of everyday life in a way that shows what doesn’t fit in closed rooms, in control strategies. Of course, it is not a guaranteed effect. Several productions endorsed by the term art pay reverence to or long to occupy only hegemonic spaces. It requires an attentive commitment to a creative vitality that precedes recognizable forms, a will not to be in just one place. We live in an era of atrophied imagination, conformed to creation compartmentalized into specific tasks. The notion that the “outside” is impossible and that the reality of the day presents no other way out is fed. The conformity of saying that there is no possible way out, that everything is captured by the order of the day. I understand creation as a will to overcome oneself, what has already been seen, formulated. A restlessness that comes before capture and persists, because it is proper to life. Given this, our chance lies in continuing to search for exits, one after another, however impossible they may seem.
Many artists and poets made impossibility itself the condition of their practice. They dedicated themselves to seemingly lost causes. They evoked the unthought, the unsayable, the unseen through a commitment that was both an accomplice and a rival of language. They showed with studies, actions, words, and images what does not fit into the things that are said daily. They open exits from the code by exceeding the code itself. With the works I create, I seek to pluck signs of possibility from the walled-in nature of different contexts of insertion. To handle these signs in a way that they become anomalous, not fitting in the very place from where they began to appear. It is an endless problem, as each conquered exit is also the entrance to new practical challenges. With each crossing, I have to think of many others in continuous succession. It may be that no expected effect happens. Even so, I persist in this difficult commitment to create passages in the face of each wall that appears before and behind the eyes.
