Gabriel Lacomba ‘#crònicapandèmia’

—

Curated by Jaume Reus

'#crònicapandèmia'

Gabriel Lacomba

Loading video, please wait

Loading video, please wait
- 00:00
Gabriel Lacomba, '#crònicapandèmia', 2020. Gabriel Lacomba’s work #crònicapandèmia is a clandestine journey through digital stages in times of pandemic lockdowns. These stages are both natural (Mallorca) and urban (the airport), designed for mass use, and which now suffer a forced break with a frightening absence of bodies. Only the images from the past allow us to see what life incarnate, so-called “normality”, was like. The creator’s critical vision uses the artificial bodies of two masked mannequins to guide us through the uncertainty of indoor and outdoor landscapes. These motionless objects paradoxically lead us through space at high speed, like lives immobilized at the global scale by a virus that lacks a body of its own, and which requires others’ bodies to… “live? Travel”?..

About this programme

‘#crònicapandèmia’, along with ‘#diarilacomba a #instagram’, emerges as a response to the lockdown period and to the subsequent proposal of an alleged new reality. This video work is approached from a position of physical immobility in a private home through archival images from the past [Aqualand El Arenal water park; Torrent de Pareis and Barcelona airport] and digital trips with Google Studio [Palma airport, the island of Mallorca, the Earth, the Moon and Mars]. A diabolical mannequin and a hairdresser’s mannequin head are present on the rooftop, fitted with chromed facemasks that create a game of mirrors.

The trips from the computer allow you to comfortably navigate all kinds of territories, but there are no humans. We move in an inexpressive, frozen space that is devoid of movement, and we see that both the mannequins and the territory are nothing but skin, a lining of sorts. Façades become unstable; the inside and outside, both of one’s own body and that of the immediately prior body of society are currently being redefined and challenged due to a simple lack of physical movement. The bombardment of news stories on the media is meshed with images from the past, with previous philosophical interrogations and the intense viewing of television series.

The video formally uses this key as the pilot episode of a series whose story is as of yet unknown to us, but which has already emerged as a defense and exorcism against the delirium and uncertainty of the moment.