Founded by Garanti BBVA, Salt’s new exhibition, "Let Us Go Back to the Beginning," is a new iteration of Spanish artist Itziar Barrio’s "Material" trilogy, comprising film-based projects and newly commissioned sculptures that explore the intersections of technology, labor, identity and matter.
How do scientific breakthroughs transform our understanding of what it means to inhabit this world? What is the social function of technology, both as a product of human labor and as an agent shaping collective perception? Drawing on these questions, Barrio weaves together discourses from various fields, including astrophysics, anthropology and robotics engineering, with speculative narratives that address the interplay between social constructs, cultural values and the production of “objective” knowledge.
The first part of the trilogy, "A Demon That Slips into Your Telescopes While You’re Dead Tired and Blocks the Light" (2020), looks at scientific discoveries charting the course of technological progress and astronomical phenomena at the edge of human perception. It probes the notion of planetary imagination through astronomical studies that seek to materialize the indeterminate or non-visible.
Employing video and robotic sculptures, "ROBOTA MML" (2019-ongoing) follows the etymological origins of the term robot, first used in Karel Capek’s science-fiction play "R.U.R." (1920). The characters of this play, set in a factory where robots are built to alleviate human labor, are repositioned in a contemporary context sensitive to the function of the body, identity and gender.
The final chapter, "Particle Matter" (2021), presented in the Salt Research space, is a materialist inquiry into manifestations of the micro, incorporating audio recordings from the anechoic chamber at Nokia Bell Labs (New Jersey, U.S.) with images of dust, pollen, steam, smoke and various geological events. Produced with the collaboration of sound artist Seth Cluett, the video highlights the interactions between seemingly distant or opposing forces. Site-specific interventions accompanying the first and second chapters spread across Salt Galata.
"Let Us Go Back to the Beginning" is a multilayered exploration of the material world, scientific inquiry and the sensory dimensions of lived experience. It expands on the idea of communal existence and how bodies constitute the locus of memory and perception. The entanglements between human, non-human and machine-driven come to the fore, prompting a reflection on the constructed nature of our social realities.
Programmed by Fatma Çolakoğlu and designed by Emirhan Altuner from Salt, the exhibition is on view at Salt Galata until Sept. 29.
Itziar Barrio’s "A Demon That Slips into Your Telescopes While You’re Dead Tired and Blocks the Light" (2020) is produced as part of the BBVA Foundation’s MULTIVERSO Grant for Video Art Creation.
