Signifiers is a project in collaboration with Alvin McIntyre and Lavinia Bottamedi (SpiegelimSpiegelKollektiv).

 

The collaborative intention is to re-enact or create rituals to transform and transcend the unspoken language of symbols into knowledge.

 

Hypothesis: New knowledge can be achieved by combining universal symbols within a work of art, combined with the prior knowledge of the observer, so that new information, a new perspective, is created within the observer.

 

A “Signifier” is the form that stands for a content, or the physical experience of meaning. The necessity for rituals arises from certain circumstances in life that bear a surplus of significance, like an overabundance of significance that flows out of the enclosed form and asks to be elaborated otherwise. As if caught in the exact moment before the intellect has a chance to intervene, the impact of physical information, derived from internal sensations, and reactions to what is observed in the artwork is what allows knowledge to emerge prior to intellectual analysis. The knowledge is in the physical reaction to the primal gesture(s) enacted in the rituals, already known, to some extent, but not readily recognized, remembered like the rapidly vanishing details of a dream. The gestures, symbols and objects we use, are employed in a way that is separated from specific religions and other cultural traditions that use ritualistic forms.

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“Signifiers” will be exhibited throughout 2019 as part of the “Project Anywhere” exhibition program.

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A full description of the project can be found here: 

http://www.projectanywhere.net/signifiers-aurora-del-rio-alvin-mcintyre-and-lavinia-bottamedi/