We Are Imagoglossia
or What Can Replace an Absent Object?
No one arrives anywhere alone. Wherever you happen to set down your suitcase and rest, that strange feeling of an irreparable lack, an immense absence, will surface. You will search your pockets and look for the right words to name what you feel, but you will not find them. Seeking comfort, you will open your photo albums and recognize the objects and the people, but this will bring no relief.
Tugá is like that: she burns, freezes, falls silent, runs, crosses herself, mocks, prays, curses; she is merciless and holy. She is the juxtaposition of your own experiences and those of others that have settled upon them. Why else would you long for a pier on the river of a village you have never visited? Or weep for that adobe house, with its dry well between the plum tree and the apple tree, its walls peeling away as it is consumed by flames in the middle of a winter night, in a village where no one lives anymore? A house made of words, forever burning in the continuous present; the voice of the person who told its story became your tugá: an active past, a past that also persists in the continuous present.
When I left, I crossed the rusted city one last time, a city sunk into a coma induced by unemployment, and then the frozen, inhospitable steppe. I entered a church and lit a candle. It was the warmest and brightest thing I had held in my hands for a long time. I swore that I would not miss it—and more than an oath, it was a plea.
Tugá is merciless. I told you so.
Туга́ (tuhá) —pronounced approximately tuhá, since the Ukrainian "g" sounds like a soft, voiced "h"— expresses a blend of longing, sorrow, anguish, and desire for something absent.
Access to the Work
Video art projected onto the wall (looped playback):
https://youtu.be/N3bVKzxNM8Y
Sound from the box through headphones (looped playback):
https://youtu.be/39HwsC_Rq8Y
Visual documentation of the inside of the box (without sound):
https://youtu.be/cnrq491rtTk
Documentation of the installation—the video-art projection and the sound box:
https://youtube.com/shorts/TQ6OYoIQ_hs
The audiovisual installation explores the feeling of toska. The video projection on the wall represents the mental processes involved in searching for a word to name an unrecognizable emotion. Beside it, in semi-darkness, stands a sound box-device representing introspection. It is accessed individually by activating two lights and listening through headphones.
The box’s two compartments represent the present and the force of collective memory that precedes the subject and constitutes them as such.
1. approach the installation
2. put on the headphones placed next to the box
3. keep the lights on throughout the audiovisual experience
The box-device was constructed using the Pepper’s Ghost technique, a nineteenth-century optical illusion.
Materiality | The box contains two compartments that are at once separate and connected, each marked by a specific kind of lighting: a warm tone represents the force of collective memory that precedes the subject and constitutes them as such; a cool tone represents the present body, itself embodied by a flexible, translucent material that evokes Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity. In the warm-lit compartment, alongside the image reflected in a mirror, lies a crumpled letter. It may be a letter that was sent but never received, or one that was imagined but never written.
The mirror reflects an image that is, in turn, projected into the adjoining compartment, where a piece of inscribed plastic lies under a cool light. The dialogue between the two compartments is produced by activating the two lights installed on the lid of the box. When one of the internal lights is switched off, the illuminated space remains silent, awaiting a sensory exchange.
Sound | The specially designed sound accompanying the box is accessed through headphones placed beside it. The audio plays continuously through a device concealed behind the box and connected to a power outlet.
The audience | Proximity is essential, as the contents of the box are intended to be viewed individually. The required semi-darkness creates a moment of intimacy and introspection.
The space housing the installation should be dimly lit, in semi-darkness. The box apparatus should be placed on a support approximately 110 cm high, against the wall and beside the video projection.
Support for the sound box apparatus | suggested dimensions
Height: 110 cm
Base: 50 × 60 cm
Box apparatus | dimensions
Height: 18.5 cm
Width: 25 cm
Depth: 30 cm
Documentation of the spaces that hosted the work:
Galería Umbral, April 2024 (left)
Asociación Italiana de Socorros Mutuos de Belgrano, September 2024 (below)