The Spherical Axis: Escombros and La Memoria de la Forma by Javier Aravena Costa
Athens Design Forum presents Escombros and La Memoria de la Forma by Chilean researcher and photographer Javier Aravena Costa. When extraction is articulated as a symptom of industrial annunciation, architectural permanence is dismantled. In the absorption of a geography’s lack or abundance, Costa deciphers the conscious alternation of landscape and how ‘new contexts of resistance’ inform the forging of territorial identity.
THE SENSORIAL MASS.
a photographic archive of blegen’s excavations at prosymna
“The pursuit of forms is only a pursuit of time, but if there are no stable forms, there are no forms at all.”¹—Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance
In the wake of archaeological photographic images, we may begin to decipher Paul Virilio’s conception of the sensorial mass: how the stabilized form of an excavated artifact becomes eternalized within the cage of a photograph. If photography functions as a penetrative method to assert an influence of cementation, then the decisions that remain unspoken—placement, framing, repetition—are prolonged in time. In this stillness, a series of anomalies accumulate.
FRANCISCO CANTON, Offset
Athens Design Forum presents Argentinian photographer and director Francisco Canton’s series, Offset, a penetrative entry into the forensic rhythm between frames. "The choreography of these images arises from a limit I impose on myself," Canton notes, "using timing and sequence to create a rhythm and sense of continuity in the work." Repetition reveals rupture and familiarity becomes estrangement, evolving forward in the innocuous presence of a metronome.