A shallow pool of water flips the insides of the former slaughterhouse refrigerator chamber at Abierto x Obras. To "activate this installation," as artist Eugenio Ampudia instructs, all viewers have to do is call the number +34657529016, which will cause a ripple to grow on the pool’s surface. This is Ampudia’s greatest public intervention, entitled Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness, a name inspired by the quote by Samuel Beckett.
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Beyond the beauty, the work, explains Ampudia, is a critique of modern communication. “It’s true that modern technology has allowed us to connect with thousands of people almost instantaneously. But what is happening with communication?” the artist asks in a press release. “Why is draft legislation being put forward to veto the flow of information among citizens? What is more disturbing: people trying to communicate something or people uniting with the same intent? Who is scared of the words ‘network’ and ‘community’?” To answer his questions he turns to the text Micropolitics: Cartographies of Desire by Félix Guattari and Suely Rolnik, that states that democracy becomes a consolidated and consistent entity when change happens at the “molecular level.”Below, peer inside Ampudia’s cavernous reflection on communication:
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