Fragment Manifesto
Paula Sánchez, Vicente Moronta and Luciana Morelli
In this project, we investigate different manifestations of the fragmentary in today’s culture. Under the light of the current conditions of artistic production in the midst of a global pandemic, it becomes more evident that the “fragment” dominates the contemporary world, from social relations and aesthetic experiences to the way we know and understand the world through the black mirrors of our devices.
On the internet and in social networks we find millions of fragmented contents. The obscene amount of information that circulates makes its content become banal and meaningless. And at the same time, the content is poor because it is produced to be consumed under this logic. Everything we see on a screen takes on real value while the body and experiences in the real world are devalued. In response to this accelerated and empty circulation, we seek to generate materials in which the fragment recovers its value as a way in which bodies are imprinted, leaving our mark and our view of the world.
In Fragment Theory (1998) Bartoszynski defines the fragment as a “non-everything”. The fragment may be “natural”, as a text that was conceived as a totality by its author at the time of its production, but by the passage of time or for natural reasons it remains fragmented. For example, the incomplete works of Mozart. But it can also be artificial, that is, a sought-after effect that aims to open the work to new meanings and in turn suggests that there is no such thing as “the whole”. For example, improvisation music, authors like Beckett or works by John Cage. Unlike the fragment understood as part of a whole that is possible to know, the artificial fragment is a fragmentation of a whole that does not exist.
The artistic production is in itself fragmentary since the artist creates from a cut, a point of view, and in the same way the perception and aesthetic experience is fragmentary because it is also experienced from a person, a body in a space and time with its history and its sensitivity. The fragment expresses an unrepeatable here and now. But today, it seems that if things are not on the Internet, they do not exist. For that, the content must be adapted to the measure of the virtual platforms generating images, music or videos in equal formats, even forcing us artists to think our creations directly in the digital formats to which they will be converted when shared in the networks. For example in the consumption of music by streaming, all songs or musical works are leveled to a certain amount of dB depending on the platform. In addition, the concept of the album as a whole, as an integral work, is lost in the random reproduction or the possibility of downloading a playlist or listening to a mix programmed by an algorithm. Many times artists opt for the publication of singles or EPs. Under this logic a homogenization of the contents under the rules of the digital programming is produced. In addition to adapting their format, on the networks the contents are also fragmented. The fragment is easier to circulate, easier to reach a massive audience and in consequence, easier to be used for other purposes that perhaps were not what the artist had thought. What matters is the massiveness and not the quality. Its circulation is uncontrolled, it can be shared and forwarded millions of millions of times. It is also offered in loop, video-minutes that start again and again with the hope of seeing something new in each repetition.
Faced with this type of consumption of fragments generated for quick and effective consumption that generates a banalization of content and a loss of experience that saturates the networks, we want to claim an “aesthetic of the fragment” that recognizes itself as a fragment, that does not hide its identity and points to itself to remember that it was created by a real person through an experience in the “offline world”. These fragments awaken our curiosity and stimulate our imagination, and also draw attention to what is not shown, what is “missing”, what is not represented. In other words, everything that is shown is hidden at the same time. But when we refer to what is not shown, we are speaking mainly of the real bodies of flesh and blood. The person who has registered those images or interpreted those sounds becomes the out-of-field, but she/he becomes present through she/his cuttings, she/his voice, she/his sounds.
We want to claim the fragment as a point of view of our being-in-the-world, as a symbol of a partial vision that allows the opening to the mystery of things. Fragments in the form of images, texts or an improvisation not only reproduce the pathos of a lost totality, but also propose perspectives and points of view that would not be offered if they were “complete”. We offer our fragments as open and unfinished works for an imaginative practice that finally help us to rethink our relationship with what is absent in the virtual world, therefore with the body. In a way, we seek to return the body to the virtual, and to remember that the body is our first way of approaching reality, it is the medium and the point of view from which we perceive reality. We incarnate ourselves through the fragment, recognizing the diversity of points of view and against digital homogenization. While it may be ironic to upload material to Instagram, YouTube or Soundcloud, we believe in subverting the normal use of these platforms.
During the process, each member of the team worked remotely, placing in this document their productions, a description of them and a reflection. The result is a kind of diary/dialogue that we reproduce below.
PAULA 5.5.20
Sound diary:
I started keeping a diary of images and sounds.
A trace of places, objects and texts that caught my attention.
All of them were saying something to me..
1
Estar despierto, estar-ahora, estar en la actualidad, en la que como en un destello, el pasado se une con el presente en una constelación, cargada de tiempo.
Las cosas remotas y las cosas cercanas reunidas juntas en su irrenunciable singularidad
2
Which is the quietest sound of your body?
-La piel que roza
3
J’étais débordé, Inondé
4
Le temps
était rempli
d’ailes
en infinies
rivières
5
That day I woke up at 6 am. We went to the forest by the river. Next to the train tracks, among the trees, there was a man singing…
6
The sound of water is the surface of the water. Passage. Moment. Shape.
7
Perceive touch as someone who listens. The sensible body, listening/feeling. The friction that appears and disappears, temperatures, and textures that melt together.. Juxtaposed , surrounding me.
8
I wonder.. can a presence be captured by sound?
LUCIANA 7.5.20:
Experiment with vocal improvisation and texts:
Improvisation #1: “Where would you like to go today?”
I start to experiment with the fragmentation with texts. Sometimes a text could reveal a truth when you just read some fragments by chance. The reconfiguration of a preexisting text reveals new meanings.
For this improvisation I used fragments of Google’s privacy policy and screenshots of Google Maps. I first saved the audio file under the name of “Big Data” but when I added the images a new meaning came out.
“Where would you like to go today?” refers to a way to go out in a moment that we have to stay home and at the same time calls for a re-reflexion on the fragmented way we relate to reality by being able to “see” different parts of the world at the same time, from our device without leaving our home. But at the same time with the incapacity of really been there in presence or get to know this places. It also denounces how we use internet to satisfy our middle-class needs but under the interests of large corporations that hide behind the suspicious privacy and data protection policies that we accept every time we use the internet and its “free” services.
Improvisation #2: “Are you listening?”
In this case, I took a poem of Oliverio Girondo, an Argentinian writer, and I record myself reading it in different ways. Then I added, as if it was a collage, different fragments of singing exercises I’ve been doing or random improvisation melodies. Then I recorded another improvisation over it that it ended to be an imaginary dialog with someone else who is not there and who is also not listen to me.
This experience demonstrate that we can not read or say the same text the same way every time, that are different velocities, tones, pauses, and that this is not possible in the internet-loop world of the digital reproduction. With every click on ”play” you will hear and watch the same thing over and over again. At the same time, on the internet we are all talking at the same time without listening each other, everybody is sharing, everybody is streaming, everybody is doing everything at the same time.
Experiment with collage made of old art magazines:
Collage #1: “…unparalleled mastery, the artist portrays the environment’s influence on GRÖSSTE”
I took old art-magazines that I had and start cutting figures and things randomly. While I was scrolling the magazines what caught my eye was the amount of images in where a man was oppressing a woman somehow. Then I started pasting the figures creating a different relation between them.
Vicente all days
BETWEEN SHEETS AND PURRINGS
I must confess that I’ve never been very fond of animals and especially of felines.
These days of confinement I have shared with a cat whom they call “Nena”. As it’s common, cats decide how and when they want to be sharing space and time with strangers.
Well, in these times of quarantine I have woken up every day to the sounds and gestures of Nena, who, showing her affections, brightens my day from very early on.
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