4 messages

A key piece in the production of the Peruvian artist Teresa Burga, this work was originally titled Structure-Report-Codes-Comprehension-Messages. In it, Burga appropriates four sentences or “messages” taken at random from different national television channels, at different times, on the same day (December 27, 1973), which are transformed into new sign structures. The first comprises the “fragmented vision” of an artifact (close-up of a calculator) via the projection of slides on the wall; the second, by the filming of a face making three dumb gestures: the third, by the graphic-visual conversion of a written text; and lastly, the emission of taped distorted sounds. As the curator Miguel López confirms, the installation in its totality was a sum of suspensive and irrelevant fragments, where every referential indication (the “message” taken from television for “informative” purposes) was transformed into a series of signs that destroy the communicative expectancy. Even when cryptic, 4 messages is understandable as a rarified shock with an immediate social reality in a complex excess. Inasmuch as the new sectorial reforms begun in 1969 affected the regimes of property and management of the means of communication in the country, the polemic on their political “role” became more relevant.