Volumes Táticos/en

from the series Tactical Volumes: object #1

Clara Ianni

At first the creation of a wall is a reaction to the need of protection against the inclemency of external weather. Its concretion, however, involves a previous intellectual preparation: that of space as an entity determined in terms of outside and inside. In this sense, preceding the wall is the formulation of the line, the comprehension of the divide as an affirmative form of separation. Therefore, to wall becomes providing a concrete form to the abstract map of property, makes solid the political condition of possession, of the conquered territory. For that reason the wall is the figure of the stable element, exemplary symbol of fixedness and permanence.

Clara Ianni's work seeks to subvert this notion. It points at a new dynamic of space ordering and, because of that, of the politics underlying its configuration. It suggests both, space and politics, as an unstable and indeterminate zone in which the logics of property and accumulation — and its inherent categories of inside and outside, retention and expenditure — give place to the ideas of mobility and flux, or, as the economist would say, of flexibility and working capital. Without ever properly separating, demarcating, containing or isolating something, its construction draws our attention to a land where, there having no inside nor outside, the frontier can be anywhere, or better yet, anywhere convenient to those who control and position it. In this point, the tacit invitation of the artwork to participation imposes to the visitor an uncomfortable and risky interaction: its surface is rough and crude, its movements are difficult and clumsy, which can even become a threat if not properly controlled.