By Lorenzo Sandoval
The film "Fábrica Colectiva", part of Shadow Writing (Fábrica Colectiva) 2020, is a project that investigates the relationships between the textile industry, the processes of collectivization of factories in Spain during the Civil War, and how that story is still absent today in Spanish art institutions: there is hardly any work by anarchist artists in the country's collections, when this political movement was one of the most important until the dictatorship. The project looks at this way of self-organization and its systems of writing as a divergent model to draw inspiration from. The textile ("Machines & Diagram for Self-Organization", another part of Shadow Writing (Fábrica Colectiva) 2020) presents an image of a textile machine and a diagram for self-organization of one the textile collectivized factory in Alcoy 1937. The diagram shows a decentralized mode of operating a factory, and a possible model that one could link with cybernetic models.
"Movable Membrane" 2019 was Sandoval’s contribution to the Miracle Workers Collective project for the Finnish Pavilion in the Venice Biennale 2019. It is a modular set inspired by an element developed by architects Aino Marsio-Aalto (1894–1949) and Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) as one of their iconic signatures: the curved surface. The form functions as a deconstruction and a re-engagement of their work. It rethinks the role of architecture in the construction of the welfare state — which at times has been presented metaphorically as a miracle itself, made only viable with the exploitation of the colonial infrastructure and a situation of privilege. The set works as a composable membrane: it is a place for osmosis and a threshold where the transaction of knowledge is facilitated.
By Benjamin Busch
AlgoRhythmanalysis is an approach to studying the relations between rhythms—those of the body, society, and the environment—and algorithms—sets of instructions. It seeks to make visible the routines, choreographies, and automated processes that underlie the everyday, as part of a methodology of restoring harmony within difference. It uses the techniques of rhythmanalysis combined with tools for describing (and designing) algorithms, namely their visual representation in flowcharts. At an early stage of AlgoRhythmanalysis, these charts can be used to register observed (poly)rhythms in daily life. Later on, they can be used to propose new rhythms or new arrangements of existing and/or not-yet-here rhythms—utopian polyrhythms.
The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER) began in 2015 as a fictional institution understood as a habitable sculpture. Its research unfolds from the notion of the endotic, a term coined by Georges Perec antonym of the exotic that could serve well as a way to rethink genealogies of institution making. It has since brought different practices together, namely architecture, art, mediation and curation, to foster a transdisciplinary approach. TIER works as a basis for experimenting with forms of institutionalization mediated through encounters between people, materials and devices. Lorenzo Sandoval founded The Institute for Endotic Research in 2015. Since 2018, it has been co-directed together with Benjamin Busch. TIER is currently working on an exhibition series and publication titled “Maintenance! Domestics as Institutional Becomings”. http://theinstituteforendoticresearch.org/
