Double Bottom

Installation.

The idea for the Nave Principial project was to uncover the stone tiles and to excavate a 7x25 m (ca. 23 x 82’) rectangular opening in the slanted floor, exposing the underlying surface, parallel to the existing floor level.

Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City.

year: 2013

It turned out to be impossible, so I placed a concrete panel of similar measurements on top of the structure; it is supported directly by the surface of the floor on one side, and on the other side by car lifts, holding it horizontally in place. The layout was specifically designed so that the slant of the floor in Nave Principial was taken into account and the leveling of its ground was achieved. The modern concrete panel was taken out of its context and upgraded to the status of an all-encompassing unit.

The laser beam pointing out the perfectly level line serves as a point of reference.

The concrete slab marks another surface, from where I was trying to excavate my way to the “absolute” bottom. The rectangular opening on three sides reaches all the way to the edge marked directly by the floor. From this side on, I signal the beginning of descend beneath the existing floor level of Nave Principial, on which the concrete panel was installed.

The excavation exposing surface of the platform is not an archeological gesture nor does it represent any attempt to reach any “right” level. Rather, it is a means of a new kind of relationship -- a modern artifact. It was never my intention to allow the place of rich past history like Ex Teresa to dictate a context in any way.

The “modern” element is devoid of any décor or meaning, disconnected from history and from the viewer, and totally self- self-contained in its industrial sterility.

I am trying to establish what is going to happen when “inappropriate” pieces fall into “inappropriate” places. An element disconnected from its causal context becomes irrelevant; it produces an obsolete impression of uncertainty and disintegration which is a proof of exhaustion; it is a project conceived of the lack of something, of nonexistence. It is a fictional material gadget, lacking any connection between its inside and outside.

Double Bottom - video