Marta
Jourdan

Launch Zone # 1 is a machine of the moment. It is an overhead projector (HOP), which, rather than projecting still images from a transparent support, projects drops of water. As the projected images appear at the same time as the drops are dripping onto the projector’s glass base, they form shapes in real time on the projected surface almost as if they were a film. The same movements of water on the surface of the projector are magnified in their reproduction, giving the impression that the surface is turning into liquid.

Marta Jourdan’s intervention captures time as an instant, as proof that it cannot be held back, that its passage cannot be halted. Which is why time is not inside us; it is we who are inside it.

The relevance of this work to the Breathing Project is that it raises questions about how to stop time, as Eva Klabin wished to do by musealizing her life through her house. In fact, time cannot be stopped. The only thing we can do is create strategies for resistance. Art is the greatest form of resistance when it makes the past take shape in the present through materialized presences.

By liquefying the walls and objects in Eva Klabin’s bedroom, Marta Jourdan has created a hybrid environment, metamorphosing the space in order to speak to us of the contemporary sensation and perception that time is slipping by ever faster. This awareness can be appeased by museological structures (therein their increasing importance in today’s world), which can serve to make time spin more slowly. Not to stop it, but to slow it down.

Marcio Doctors
Curator