Thasonomia formenterensis

Festival Pronostica, 2003

I participate in the project "Thasonomia Formenterensis" in the 2002 edition of Valencia Observatori's contemporary art festival, as a catalog project. It is the documentation of a work of ephemeral land art, a detailed analysis of the scene of intervention: a circle of stones defined and reorganized with objects and material from its interior. An analysis of the present, of order and disorder, of natural structures and their change over time

Thasonomia Formenterensis: Microgeosomatic
On 13 July 2002 in the "Cap de Barberia" of Formentera, in the Balearics, I marked a circle with radials 3 steps in length. I traced the circumference with several stones. I collected and redistributed – according to kind and dimension – all sorts of objects found within the circle's interior, up to sizes of approximately 1 cm. Those objects considered "notable" were classified, scanned by computer and stored. Once the circle had been completely emptied, I proceeded to return the material that had been previously set aside according to an "aesthetic order" totally different from the original natural disorder. I thus obtained a rural mandala, from reorganized natural elements. The work evolved over different sessions: the 13, 17 and 22 July and the 6, 9 and 10 September. On 10 September the constructive phase drew to a close; the method of entropic disorganization will be photo-documented at monthly intervals over the course of a year.
The work aims to be a sort of "process-project" whose result is not only an object but also an experience and its consequences. A collection of "aesthetic" data and information regarding a circle 6 paces wide. Apart from and in parallel with the analytical and organizational work effectuated on the ground, photographs, drawings, scanned images and digital graphics – produced with and from the circle and its contents – are put in place. In this piece I try to apply to the artistic sphere analytical processes typical of scientific disciplines like archeology, zoology and anthropology. Unlike these disciplines, the work behind "Thasonomia Formenterensis" has no hypothesis to support, the process is divorced from any cognitive exactitude, and open to every possible consequence.
One year after its realization the material produced will be published on a SOURCE CD-ROM in Open source coding, without copyright restrictions, at the disposition of any artists or creatively minded individuals wishing to take part in this chain of viral information. Thus the experimental aesthetic journey will move progressively further and further away from its point of origin (a circle in Formentera) by virtue of the work done by other investigators, in contagio-mutation chain of information.
This project proposes an exposition that uses photographs and digital prints to illustrate this journey, from the creation of the circle to the final consequences before launching the exposition and so proposing a new chain of experiences.
EXPERIENCE (the circle) – OBJECTS (material from the circle) – DATA (CD-ROM) – ELABORATION (artists) – EXPERIENCE (exposition)... and the chain continues.