Arca (de caín)

Arc is an installation and an ongoing project based on the collection of sculptures of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Chile: A collection composed of mostly plaster copies of famous sculptures brought from Europe during the early 20th century by Alberto Subercaseaux, the piece aims at transferring these copies into the digital domain as yet another process of conservation/degradation. The digital copies reverse the traditional dynamic of sculpture as an object to be surrounded by the spectator; encased in monitors and TV's that embody our contemporary material culture, the  digital statues orbit the spectator -instead of being orbited by them-, in a seamless loop where they also seem to be animated. 

Behind the display of screens, portable speakers and packing material, lies a 4 part video projection shot on location at the Museum: The video presents slow motion footage of the sculptures of the museum and computer animations of a flash flood within the museum itself. Accompanied by audio narrations related to the myth of the Universal Flood, the story of the museum and the ill fated artists that exhibited here, whose sculptures  -many of them now destroyed- are somehow victims of a metaphorical flood: Abandonment, ineptitude, petty rivalries and other human and cultural dangers whose effects, rather than being historical anecdotes, are still present.

As if the natural condition of this museum, built on the site where a lagoon used to be, is that of a perpetual flood.

special thanks to Gloria Cortés and Eva Cancino from the MNBA.