Meeting points between the written and visual languages, alphabets and typographies are recurring universes in the work of artists Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain, from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Creators of the visual and graphic identity of the 16th Videobrasil, they will occupy part of the ground floor at SESC Avenida Paulista with their Braille Ligado installation, in which fluorescent lamps draw paths on two panels forming a V shape.
The two artists participated in the 26th and 27th editions of the Bienal de São Paulo and, more recently, in the biennials of Valencia and Venice.
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Curator's text Detanico Lain, 2013
Lines of pure light join the dots as only the blind know how. In their installation produced for the 16th Videobrasil Festival, Detanico and Lain manage to make an action normally the preserve of touch invite the senses of vision and, in the extreme, of the entire body. Synaesthesia by semantic displacement.
However, this pointillist Utopia cannot come without a certain discomfort and perplexity. Set before such a wholly seductive object, the viewer is faced with some impossibilities. We see the glow, we read the title from the plaque (Braille ligado [Braille switched on] and we automatically think of putting fingertips to work. The object of desire, however, lies out of reach, could burn if touched and requires a certain distance in order to be apprehended in its totality. We are obliged to seek out an ideal vantage point. Yet we know that should we move too far away or too close to a surface it slips out of focus (a simple equation already elucidated in Detanico and Lain’s graphic design for the 15th Videobrasil Festival). Little consolation, then, for those who cannot see, as who is going to touch a lightbulb that has been on for hours on end? Inverse/perverse.
As with some previous works (notably Utopia and Pilha), we are not in the field of language construction here - this theme supposedly evincing a point of tension and one of the most interesting artifices along the path of this Brazilian duo. What is sought here lies someplace else: the sensibility of an operation that is at the very foundation of the construction of meaning. Would it be possible to grasp space/time in the act of issuing some nexus? This would seem to be the question raised by Braille Ligado. Detanico and Lain’s projects inhabit this perhaps irreconcilable place, this moment of transition between some known code from the public domain and another, the grammar witch is less accessible or requires some specific knowledge – whether of architecture, typography, design, or Braille.
Writing occurs in the void of languages, Roland Barthes reminds us (L’´mpire des Signes). “La existencia en suspenso de las cosas sin nombre” *, write Detanico and Lain in Braille ligado.
*The suspended existence of nameless things.
ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. 16º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica SESC_Videobrasil. De 30 de setembro de 2007 a 25 de outubro de 2007. p. 177 a 178, São Paulo, SP, 2007.