CHPPS
Irina Novarese
2002
Voice: Bianca Jannuzzi
Cello: Maria Baeza Ramirez
The poem is the third Act of the multimedia installation WHILE WE SINK (the word is on flowers) that starts with five black and white drawings that translate images of the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also called plastic continent. The marine debris is an accumulation of garbage in the Pacific Ocean that has reached a size similar to Texas, and that researchers and activists who observe it, describe with names such as “The Soup”.
The work is mainly inspired by a series of conferences presented at the beginning of the pandemic by the Riga Biennale, in which ideas and positions on the concept of the future were presented in different thematic focuses by thinkers such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos, CAConrad, Federico Campagna, Jack Halberstam and Astrida Neimanis. My proposed cartography, or rather my vision of a possible mapping of these mobile islands, the harmful remains of our daily actions, is developed through different elements and materials, trying to approach a more optimistic vision.
The installation is composed by different media integrated into the narrative of a journey, translating the dynamic map into a visual and semantic form. Textiles, poetry and ceramics describe a darkly threatening present and the utopian possibility of reacting positively by keeping flower seeds in time capsules to celebrate our disappearance.
Learning to be carried by nature
Learning to follow whatever path
Learning to dive
Learning to swim
Learning to float
Sinking sinking to the bottom
Learning to find new orientation
Learning to read new compasses
Sinking sinking
Sinking floating
Learning to offer a space to new forms of life
Learning to trick the perception of other beings
Learning to let yourself get carried somewhere
Again and again and again
Sinking Floating Floating Sinking
Learning to become almost invisible
Learning to come back and be part again of your life
Again and again and again
Learning to be offered from mouth to mouth
From her to her
From you to your beloved people
From he to her
From them to all the others
Learning to adapt to your body
Learning to connect to similar forms
Learning to create a new space together
Sinking sinking and floating
and floating longer
We don’t all flow or drown equally
We are not all gestating the same future
Because while sinking to the floor
we find again
And again
And again
All your dumped needs
Desires?
Going further:
Learning how deep is the deepest point
Learning to hide
Learning to come back everywhere
Learning to come back every moment
Learning how to kill life
The one that gave us colors
Or simply brought us home for whatever reasons
Learning everything now
Because all what you have is now.