Monitor 1: Facundo traducido [Translated Facundo], 5’
Monitor 2: Martín Fierro traducido [Translated Martín Fierro], 5’
The two milestones of national literature, Facundo by Sarmiento and Martín Fierro by Hernández, are remade through algorithmic processes that empty their content, destroy them and reencounter them.
The chaos and math contribute to the confrontation: Facundo “weights” digitally and textually 395 kb, and Martín Fierro, 101 kb, while the audio-book versions weigh 427,4 MB and 361,8 MB respectively.
The first step was to translate the books to a language invented by me, which has no meaning at all. The books may be leafed through, but the meaning is lost, though it seems to be there. Then, I mix/bundle both audio-books as soundtracks. From this mix, I take a fragment and obtain a photograph that shows a graphic representation of the sound of the combined books. The audio that cannot be heard can be seen. The founding ideas are erased. How can we read what’s invented/what we invent? Source: Itaú Cultural Visual Arts Award 2019-2020 Catalogue