El borde de sí mismo (The edge of Itself)

(2015-2016)

Manifest

1

The poem asserts itself on the edge of Itself, calls itself and brings it back, in order to persist, incessantly, from its No-More to its Always-Still.

Paul Celan

Paul Celan writes “The Meridian” on the occasion of the awarding of the Georg Büchner Prize; there, in that speech, Celan reads Büchner's work not as alien but as his own. Celan, poet – from the edge of himself – reads Büchner, playwright. Reflections on poetry open the field of perception of those who read (or knew how to listen to that speech given on October 22, 1960 in the city of Darmstadt, Germany) – we no longer talk about poetry but about poems. That way of naming, that new baptism allows us to think not only about poetry: the poem - then - is all the artistic expression.

This cycle will try to read the other's poem as their own.

2

At the time they were written, the books that now constitute the canon of Western literature (the Iliad, the Bible) were held to be true chronicles of real events. In 1572, when Montaigne set himself the task of nominating the "new" type of work he was composing in his journals - which would later become his books - he came across the medieval French word essai, meaning "proof," attempt”, “experiment”.

David Shields

The visual arts from the edge of Itself read the theater; the theater from the edge of Itself reads the visual arts. From one's own self, from one's own limits, another territory is perceived, rehearsed, experimented, tested that other territory.

This cycle proposes, then, rehearsing - from the edge of oneself - apparently foreign territories, virgin spaces, unexplored areas, but interviews from one's own experience.

3

Experience is a dim lamp that only illuminates those who hold it.

Céline

Sharing the experience, sharing the time, sharing the process, the construction of the work: imagining what does not yet have a form and allowing mistakes and encouraging failure: living with the public in a space and time to which they are not usually invited.
The work is in the process: the work is written, it is gestated in the tension between the gaze of the artist and the public.
The experience of the public will illuminate -hopefully- the path of the work.
La experiencia del público iluminará – ojalá - el sendero de la obra.

This cycle invites the public to be part of the work.
This cycle invites the artist to lean out to the edge of himself to look at the public at eye level.

4

The feeling that life is speeding up actually comes from the perception that time is tumbling aimlessly. (...) The temporary dispersion does not allow experiencing any type of duration. There is nothing that rules time. Life is no longer framed in an ordered structure nor is it guided by coordinates that generate a duration. One also identifies with the fleeting and the ephemeral. In this way oneself becomes radically transient. The atomization of life supposes an atomization of identity. One only has oneself, the little me.

Byung-Chul Han

Slow down time, abandon the search for the result: surrender to the duration of time, to the aroma of time.
That the work finds a channel in time; that the public be part of that channel, give it shape – build temporality together with the work.
Let shared experience rule time.
Try to think of yourself no longer ephemeral.
Stop having only yourself. The work and the public, then, can meet. And join.
From the edge of myself perceive that there is something beyond me.


This cycle encourages what is written.

5

So that in the wavering interval, so that in the dark there is something graspable.

Friedrich Hölderlin

(…)

Alejandro Tantanian,
Buenos Aires, July 2015.

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Photos: ©Josefina Tommasi para el Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires

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