Daniel Lima
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TheskyiswaTchingus: arTworkdeveloped
in 2010 in sao paulo
Introduction To talk about this work I want you all to imagine that at this exactly same time, a satellite is scanning Milano, more precisely the centre of Milano. Here, the Piccolo Theatre is in this scan- ned area. Therefore, I want you also to imagine that this satellite is producing a photographic image with 50 cm resolution. This means that any object like this table would be a pixel of this image. This image is produced in 3 seconds.
Now let us imagine that in the Milano area, we have many groups and individuals acting to produce interferences in that satellite image. All these people are working at the same time to produce one unique image of the city: one representation of the city, that is to say one cartography created with collaborations between many participants all together at the same time.
Therefore, we have the connection of a time dimension and a space dimension of the city to produce one artwork, one art process.
The sky is watching us Fundamentally, this was what I did in Sao Paulo in 2010. I will show some images of this process and will comment on them.
How to make it real ? As an artist, I had this idea. How to make it real? In other words: how to get the money for producing it? In that case, we had a private sponsorship through a competition. In this project, there were some rules: 6 months to produce a short film of 7 min and a tight budget.
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On the other hand, I proposed conceptual limits: I will not produce all the images by my own. Only artists will create it, all together without distinction. I will not have direct contacts with all the participants. Moreover, all the informative data will be sent by internet. The idea was to propose the situation as a catalyst.
Satellite GeoEye The first image is the study of the satellite process to produce the image. Which satellites were available at that time? Let us consider the technical aspects: the resolution, the value and the access to information like the schedule of its scan. Thus, I found the satellite GeoEye. As sponsored by Google, this satellite pro- duced many Google images. At that time, it was the best satellite resolution in the sky.
Area The second step was to determine the area the satellite would cover: 100 km2. In that way, many questions will occur: what are the criteria? Densely populated areas? Artistic and cultural neighborhoods? Geographic center of the city? Finally, I chose one subjective criterion: my house in that area and the area that I
“used” of the city: my own particular cartography.
Mobilization The next step was public mobilization. My intimate rule was to produce mobilization only on the internet, especially through social media. Moreover, that was the support of the final exhi- bition of the film: the internet. Therefore, I worked on many posts and I had many interactions on social networks. I made an open call for the people to interact with the satellite image. Many people asked me if the proposal was real: was there really a satel- lite or was it a kind of joke? In fact, the most important part of the work was exactly that: mobilization, everybody doing actions for the sky at the same time.
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What to learn ? Finally, the work met difficulty to deal with that institutional limit: the best month (without clouds in the sky), as you can see the image is 50% covered by clouds. Another problem was that we believed in a total precision of the timing of the satellite.
However, it passed 15 min earlier. Thus, some of the works were in the middle of the process.
Conclusion In conclusion, the work deals with this idea (that was dis- cussed yesterday) of time as a social agreement. “Dwelling the space is dwelling the time”.
Finally, I asked this question: how can we imagine and consi- der this process not just as an individual proposal but as an ins- titutional proposal (like this event) involving universities, cultural institutions, thus creating different layers on a huge map on a one to one scale? Moreover, there are many different supports that can receive that process: books, films, exhibitions and so on.
The most important is the idea to consider this work as a col- lective and simultaneous process. In the last years, we met many situations that expressed this phenomenon as flash mobs, occu- pations and social mobilizations created on the web to gather into a simultaneous action. In this case, it is not mobilization in the same place, but in a dispersed area. However, time is in common.
BiBliography
See The sky is watching us film: https://www.youtube.com/
playlist?list=PL9HY-dFAduByTjB3Uj7SUfILVGCLvE9v2 Read about it in:
https://issuu.com/invisiveisproducoes/docs/arte_cultura_e_cidade
PALLAMIN. (2015), « Espaços urbanos e práticas artísticas coletivas em São Paulo: sobre a ação 'O céu nos observa' », in V. Pallamin. Arte, Cultura e Cidade, São Paulo, Invisíveis Produções, pp. 167.
