#body_writer is a project that takes the idea of a body that it's turning into a complex, virtual presence thanks to the ever improving technologies available and functioning due to it's constant (and now) permanent relationship with internet. Body_writer it's about queer bodies, which won't adapt to rigid social structures, their corresponding times and spaces, but instead, finds on internet the availability to create or rewrite new ways of self awareness and enriched behaviours of time and space, to be able to be present in one or several places and defying that way, popular ideas about conditions only accomplished for sacred or divine beings.
That way, I thought about myself as subject of investigation and as some sort of virtual performer. To start, I rewrote (measured) my whole body in a long process of exploration and recognition (something that as a gay person around a complicated social sphere was difficult to understand) and rebuilt my body in a 3d modelling software. In that process, I tried to rethink and understand some popular social media terms used as hashtags like:
#body_building
#body_improvement
#body_under_construction
#body_denial
#body_acceptance
#body_improvement
#body_under_construction
#body_denial
#body_acceptance
grabbing attention from people who use this terms, describing other situations in their social media posts. In the same way, I wanted to post myself (my virtual presence) imitating some popular situations or poses, seen on social media, but giving them a new significance.
This images have been posted on my instagram account to begin my research, and the whole project was presented as an artistic installation that uses and resignifies several digital devices as mobile phones, tablets, screens, projections, 3d printed objects and VR glasses. Making of the resulting images, dependant of such devices to properly manifest in the gallery or exhibiting space.
This work finally deals with bodies that appropriated the virtual space to enrich themselves, to affirm themselves and to reinforce themselves discursively, so that their manifestation in society is undeniable. Bodies denied but in turn, utopian bodies.
#mirror_selfie
#mirrorselfie is the first formal piece of bodywriter, i think of it as my debutante ball / coming-out party.
I wanted to create a situation that involves the discussion of the notion of presence and the need for a physical body to support it or to verify it, under the tendency to take semi-nude mirror selfies to show off one's physical state.
Augmented reality allowed me to establish my digital version as a presence that manifests only through the screen of a mobile device but that can surpass to a physical space, breaking or spreading ideas such as omnipresence, simultaneity, multiplicity and persistence , who personally felt them as reserved only for divine beings.
On the other hand, I present myself in this piece as something that seeks to be seen, that lures another one's gaze to enter its ultimate space.
This installation can be described as a hybrid diorama between physical and virtual resources: A tablet that powers my digital version through a free application of repositories of 3D objects, which are presented in augmented reality and a 3D printing object consisting of a washbasin with bathroom mirror, pointed by the tablet.
My digital version as a demi-god, made possible by the WI-FI signals that make up my halo.
Most vulnerable in my first mirror selfie;
wi-fi signals illuminating. Can't wait to appear outside, through the doors of AR.
#outsider #gaze #loop
#bodyunderconstruction
#bodyunderconstruction is the second piece of my project. I use the image of San Sebastián as a popular gay icon that survives the consequences of living his truth and his convictions. In this particular version, I take the figure of the arrow as a symbol of the words that classify and affirm identities in social networks, as known as hashtags.
Myself as Saint Sebastian comes out unscathed from the arrow/hashtag attack, because his body opens orifices that absorb/retain/digest these objects, giving him sovereignty and control over his own definition of him.
This piece was proposed as an installation, with several 3D printed arrows/hashtag replicas, hung from the ceiling in a way that simulates the trajectory of its launch, pointing towards a digital print of me.
I couldn't understand any relationship with my own body,
until I reconstructed it within the virtual space
(soul truly runs through the veins, I wish it can become data and spread)
The painful job of a classifier - labeller - marker - archer
#classifiy #pierce #scar #identify #mark
# locate #pigeonhole #wound #recognition
@NoLugar Quito
2019
#instapleasure
I think I can feel your real time gaze
and the tender touch of your finger, through the small screen
#pleasure #messenger #touch
#closeness #telepresencedevices
#instapleasure is the third piece of my project. I am very concerned about the way that technological devices are built to generate an increasingly immersive experience of communication between users, particularly touching through the screen, the intimate and affective.
This installation was originally intended as the broadcast of a live video shared on an erotic video chat service for tips. Every time a visiting user pays to view, a 3D printed part with an internal vibration mechanism would be activated, which can be seen in the image next to my digital persona's hand.
In some way, I am interested in exploring the possibility of the integration of all the human senses in the experience of communication, especially touch.
#ourpresenceisabattleground
#newtimes #newspaces
#sameoldbattles #online #offline
In #ourpresenceisabattleground, I make direct reference to the work “Your body is a battlefield” by Barbara Kruger and the painting “Battle at Thermopylae” by Jacques-Louis David. On one hand, I take Kruger's work as a complaint that remains more exacerbated and current than ever, due to the use of social media as a negative normalizing collective entity. On the other hand, my personal taste for the particular homoerotic representation of Leonidas as a warrior preparing for battle.
In my version, Kruger's phrase is altered as "Our presence is a battlefield", expanding the idea of collective, body and space as contemporary notions. The text is also replaced by the emoticon resource, among other elements.
For the proposed installation of this piece, a kind of net was made in the room with yellow nylon thread, which referred to a spider web. Placed in the center, was a cell phone that had activated a user profile created on the gay dating network Grindr, with the main image of this piece. It was intended that, through the ambiguous information that this app provides about the proximity (in meters) between users, other people could find the gallery and meet my work.
@NoLugar Quito
2019
#trophy #self
Struggling to maintain balance while I pose calmly
(imitation of a graceful flamingo)
#showoff #axis #balance
#trophy #self was made up of two digital impressions and an animation, which, as an altar, proposed my personal need to question my validity as a human, as a (gay) man, as a user of a social network, among other roles, which almost function as prizes or trophies. I pose in the image as balanced, harmonious and impossible as a Flamingo.
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@NoLugar Quito
2019
#whenyouaccidentallyopenyourfrontcamera
A whole world fits in the hand 🔴
#imabsorbed
#imabsorbed
@NoLugar Quito
2019
Taking as a starting point the trend of sharing “candid” images resulting from the carelessness of opening the front camera of one person's phone in a position of the face that is not harmonious, I made an animation that refers to the technological device as an entrance to a complex multisensorial universe that can absorb the individual.
#whenyouaccidentallyopenyourfrontcamera was presented on a screen tilted from the ceiling, facing the audience from an authoritative gaze. In a complementary way, a selfie filter was created that allows the user to stand in this same position.
A
#followmyself
The cyclic route of self companionship.
Wherever I want to go, I'm there to take my hand
and make me repeat (multiply)
#selfpals #selfpartnership
#marrytomyself #loopdance
#returntoyourself
In #followmyself, I start from the trend of couples on instagram, of taking pictures in romanticized touristic places to idealize a lifestyle. In these images, you can see the back of one of the two, taking the hand of his/her partner, whose arm is barely showing and who is asumed to be taking the photo. I was concerned about this popular representation of a couple as a complement, where full faces or bodies are not appreciated and space is given priority (it does not matter who you are but where you are)
I take this pose to present my digital version in a similar circumstance, taking the hand not only of an incomplete clone of myself but of two, which somehow symbolize the process of building the bodywriter project, which demanded me a lot of effort at a technical level and attention to detail and precision. I persistently followed myself in this process.
This piece was proposed as an installation with 3 telephones hanging equidistant and at face level, showing 3 selfie filters published on my instagram: The "complete filter" one, modified the user's face with a superficial and exotic tourist appeareance; the second, as a half representation of a pyramidal head and with several eyes, "aware" of its surroundings. Finally, the third phone featured a more stark, nonsensical, spherical version of the head.
I wanted them to be 3 entities due to a personal obsession with the number 3, but also due to the cultural symbolism of this number (the 3 moiras, 3 dimensions, the 3 graces, the cerberus, the holy trinity, etc.)
@NoLugar Quito
2019
#send #receive
#share #propagate
Tell me more
@NoLugar Quito
2019
A
#send #receive #share #propagate was presented as a diptych of digital prints, where I appropriate the particular figure of Perseus with the head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini. Specifically, thought as a study of the pose and harmony of this sculpture, but also placing my digital version as victim and victimizer simultaneously, through the use of instant messaging, where our emotional state often depends on two blue checks (the whatsapp symbol of received and read message). On the other hand, I wanted to address the idea of the transmission of affections not only from the physical (fluids, physical/sexual contact) but also from how they are represented in the virtual.
#wheretheheartis
Find a precise time and place to present my heart, to share it until I lose it in a multiplied and simultaneous use, to show myself telepresent.
#heartbeat #doubletap #commonheart #sacredheart
#wheretheheartis made reference to a popular representation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as an image that validates a traditional home in my latin american environment. This image was repeated in familiar homes, school friends and close friends and perhaps it was my first approach to a symbol that became omnipresent and simultaneous within my culture. I wanted to contrast the Sacred Heart with the "like" resource that instagram offers in its user feedback system. Our heart beats when someone shows us attention in this social network.
The installation was presented as a still image of my digital version, intervened by a cell phone carrying an animated heart, published as augmented reality on instagram, so that users could potentially make it omnipresent depending on its use.
The installation was presented as a still image of my digital version, intervened by a cell phone carrying an animated heart, published as augmented reality on instagram, so that users could potentially make it omnipresent depending on its use.
@NoLugar Quito
2019
#sovereign
#gaze #confronted #traverse #filtered #space #armor #prison #sovereign #idle #imperceptible #overwhelming #telepresent
@Hausmann 9.0 USFQ
2019
safely seeing each other,
detailed but distant
grandeur implies violence
detailed but distant
grandeur implies violence
#sovereign
#bodywriter demanded an insistent approach to the concepts that emerged or were expanded with each piece, this also implied being very reflective in the selection of the media that could manifest each experience. #sovereign was proposed as a piece for the USFQ's Hausmann event. On this occasion, I wanted my digital version to be perceived on a large and small scale at the same time, as a sovereign of a space yet to be created. I needed a medium that could force the user to enter and be absorbed, to have an experience of smallness. It is then that I took advantage of the use of virtual reality but that it was complemented with a small physical installation that plays with the ideas of presence and absence.
#multiple_self
#multiple_self was originally proposed as a participatory installation, the user would be placed in front of a platform with 3 telephones with augmented reality filters and could be observed through 3 giant screens, in reference to an idea of immediate prominence. Finally, the work was shown only as an animation, which presented the idea of multiplicity possible through technology.
@nolugar
2019
#body_offering
#body_offering was presented as an animation on the screen, intervened by a cell phone that projected an object in augmented reality.
In this piece, I wanted to address the implicit idea of owing our body to the approval of collective opinion on social networks, especially vulnerable communities such as LGBTIQ. I also wanted to question symbolic conventions, such as structures that are maintained even in places that try to defy them. Such is the case of the LGBTQ flag, which despite using the variety of colors as a representation of diversity, maintains rigid borders, limits and schemes, which do not account for the fluidity and constant change that we experience.
In this piece, I offer a copy of my copy, with the potential to multiply it indefinitely.
@nolugar
2019
#sea_of_unrequited love/#narcissus
a sea of unrequited love
a waste
#sea_of_unrequited love / # narcissus takes Caravaggio's Narcissus as a reference to simulate the pose and situation of my digital version. This Narcissus is reflected in his own semen, once he spilled it as a "waste", term that I have previously been a victim of, when questioning myself as a non-reproductive man due to a patriarchal ideology, in the face of the fact of being homosexual.
The installation consists of three video pieces, the first shows my Narcissus in the act of reflection; When turning their gaze, the user is faced with two screens, one placed at eye level and the other leaning against the adjoining floor, on these, an animation of Narcissus himself is projected: standing, cropped and suggesting the act of spilling his seminal fluid . The title that accompanies the piece "sea of unrequited love" aims to poeticize love as an affection that transcends bodies and does not necessarily correspond to procreation or biological multiplication.
@nolugar
2019
#touch_me_back
#touch_me_back was made at the beginning of the mandatory confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as a nostalgic and ironic look at an individual belonging to a vulnerable community, previously pointed out in a pejorative way, by another pandemic that was very poorly socially addressed.
#touchmeback is an animation that was broadcast on instagram live from the Gallery, in an attempt to invite the public to touch the screen and therefore touch me, in a safe, close but distant way, without risk of contagion. The touch of the screen symbolizing the touch to the skin of others. At the same time, an attempt was made to think of this situation as a virtual performance, accepting once and for all that the body is not only constituted by the physical / organic aspect but by its multimedia manifestation through the technological device
This piece, in turn, remains on display within the SPAMM.FR space (SuperArt Modern Museum)
@Qgaleria @spamm
2020
#enlighterz
DETAILS
Instagram effect, virtual performances
2021
#enlighterz
This is a piece on hiatus, due to the complexity demanded by the initial idea.
In this one, I take the figure of Saint Lucy represented by Francesco del Cossa to study and apply her symbolism and pose, recombined with the figure of Mazinger, a famous Japanese animation from the 70s and 80s.
I apply this amalgam of identities as a reference to the Drag Queen, established as the activity of dressing by playing and challenging generic sex conventions and the act of highlighting the personality through clothing.
So I create my digital version of the drag queen "Enlighterz", who in times of darkness due to the pandemic, is that little light that is perceived far away through Zoom meetings.
Enlighterz for now, is presented as an augmented reality experience published on instagram, but it aspires to work with Artificial Intelligence, loaded with all audiovisual material from philosophers, thinkers, scientists and artists who reflect on what is queer / cuir and who give their own voice to this digital version.
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#proudboys
DETAILS
Instagram effect
2021
#proudboys was a short experiment in digital clothing design under the guise of Donald Trump's appropriation of the notion of #proudboys to describe his extremist party, when this term rather refers to girls/boys/nonconformists who are proud of who they are. Then I present clones of my digital version, forming a wall of resistance but at the same time, of welcome.