Tomás Saraceno takes directly part to the project IN TOUCH with an exclusive video-message. Starting from the description of one of his artworks, Particular Matter(s) Jam Session, the artist invites us to reflect in a new way on ideas like sharing, awareness and solidariety.
“Our movement influences how fast or slow particles drift through the air. Reducing our movement, and slowing the particles will help everyone to stay safe. In solidarity with Palazzo Strozzi, Italy and the World, let’s move differently for better times.” (Tomás Saraceno)
Hello, my name is Tomas Saraceno. And I want to talk about an artwork which is exhibited at Palazzo Strozzi. It is an artwork that consists of a light beam, that illuminates what is floating today through the air. There are millions and billions of particles that move and their movement depends on how we move.
If for example, I talk very close… or I move, some of the particles in my pullover… you can see these particles are released into the air. And if I talk a little bit further from it these particles start to move much more slowly.
What you hear, in Palazzo Strozzi – you what you can hear now this video – is the sound these particles produce when they move. That means every time that I move faster, you can hear the sound moving faster. It’s this “beep beep beep”… If we move slower, the particles produce a different sound. This means it is a way to sonify the way how we are moving through the earth or the movement of particles into the air. This means, if in this time we need to move slower, the sound would be different and the particles will move slower. This means in solidarity for all the people in Italy, in Europe and in the world.
We hope we can become conscious about our actions. How the air it moves today and how much our movement can influence the way… Of how also we can restrict this movement of some of the particles that became so harmful for many people today on the planet earth.
Tomás Saraceno, Particular Matter(s), 2020. Installation view of Aria, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2020. © Photography by Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio
A visionary artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses art, social and life sciences, Tomás Saraceno (Argentina, 1973) creates immersive works and participatory experiences that suggest a new way of living in our world by forging connections with such non-human phenomena as spiders, dust particles and plants, which become players in his works and metaphors of the universe. As his work unfolds along a path from the courtyard to the exhibition halls of Palazzo Strozzi, Saraceno interacts with the historical context by creating an original dialogue between the Renaissance and the contemporary world – a shift from the idea of ‘man at the centre of the world’ to the concept of ‘man as part of a universe’ in which a new harmony can be sought.