In a period in which our relationship with time has irrevocably changed, Living in Time makes visible the power of transforming small actions and repetitions into rituals. Responding to the architecture of the former church that currently houses the Ex Teresa Arte Actual museum, Arantxa Araujo, in collaboration with LUM Arte y Medios y Vicios Ocultos, Alejandro Chellet, Miao Jiaxin, and Verónica Peña, consider how place grounds experience and how our environments mediate our connection with ourselves and others. The title refers to the text We are opposite like that (Subcontinentment books: 2020) by the writer and artist Himali Singh Soin. The poem begins, “we live in time, even as we experience the world in duration,” and continues to trouble the “invisible tension between objective reality and the subjectivity of perception.” While this extended moment of crisis brings new anxieties, it also presents an opportunity to unbound ourselves from a linear relationship with time and imagine new forms of communication.

 

In Timelessness (2022), a new performance created for this occasion, Arantxa Araujo, in collaboration with LUM Arte y Medios y Vicios Ocultos, explores the nature of time by embarking on and breaking cycles of fluidity. Following a set of prescribed actions centered around ritual involving melting wax and icy water, she constructs a mask only to remove it and leave a piece of herself behind. Set against the light interplay of the projection she has choreographed and sound Mariana Uribe has scored, the motions repeat and upend at different intervals and speeds, ultimately dissecting our perception of presence and existence.

 

Alejandro Chellet’s Navigating human traces (2022) investigates human development through the history of our relationship to water. After spending extended periods within this major territorial force on this planet and attuning himself to a different pace, his research looks to shift a perspective of framing time on land. He also considers the historically violent interactions that water facilitated (of colonialism and conquest) and now experiences when humans extract oil from the sea. Inspired by recent sailing experiences on México’s Pacific Coast, Chellet will perform a series of intuitive movements atop a collection of maps.

 

In the premiere of Bubble Breathing (2022), Miao Jiaxin stands inside a glass box, blowing soap bubbles dyed with red pigment. As a microphone amplifies each of his breaths via the speakers set up in the space, the bubbles explode onto the walls. The red pigment slowly covers the glass layer by layer as the performance progresses, marking the artist’s respiratory cycle. Through the accumulation of time, the presence of breath intensifies, and the existence and the potential threat of breath are made manifest.

 

Verónica Peña's The Body in the Substance (2018-2022) is an ongoing project in which she considers notions of ritual, time, the counteraction of violence, and the promotion of human harmony. Through this durational work, Peña will submerge herself underwater while a metamorphosis transforms her body's appearance. In the confined space of the water tank, time presents as both suspended as if she is in a primordial or embryonic world and acutely dire with her breathing at threat.

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