Screening: November, Wednesday 26th & Thursday 27th
Fragmenting Obsolescence is a curatorial project comprising a series of exhibitions produced within the framework of BIENALSUR 2025. The project explores works and artists that challenge the modern notion of technological progress by suggesting potential fragmentations, ruptures, and fissures. This progress has led us to an unprecedented crisis, making it essential to imagine alternatives to the linear temporality that we adopt for objects, materials and beings.
This video selection allows us to think gathering as one of the most basic and archaic human activities. It combines two fundamental concepts: walking and the bag, which are both regarded as essential cultural artifacts. Despite their simplicity, walking, gathering items and storing them in a bag represent a situation that is both deeply rooted in the past and highly relevant in the present day. The videos that make up The Paths of Gathering feature characters who move, observe, search and attempt to find elements in their surroundings in a particular way. The videos also highlight the qualities and materials gathered in relation to their context, contrasting city streets with farmland.
In these actions, the body becomes an entity that collect and absorbs everything consumed, whether directly or indirectly. The works highlight the immediate surroundings of the slow and deliberate act of walking, involving the collection of waste, remains or plants in various contexts and locations. The gathered items are transformed into protuberances, halfway between technology and nature. In addition, these practices turn the body into a strange sponge, both symbolic and real, which moves through different settings while expanding its capacity for absorption and collection, becoming simultaneously a producer of waste and a consumer.
Image: Diego Bianchi