It smells like dust and wood. We get into the limbo of memory. An endless number of carefully carved objects tell us that there was once a time when clocks could take their time. There are mirrors of all sizes. Contained inside the glass is a heavy, sparkling history that is now coming across new eyes. I can’t stop wondering how many glances coexist in this reflection.
Within this universe of furniture, certain vessels of different cultures materialise. Sound waves lie hidden in its curvatures, words from a past life that do not reveal its secret. Hundreds of statuettes, old-time icons, have gone from being avant-garde to being memories, to discover the sound of an unstoppable metronome that seems to set the beat faster and faster. Singing of the past, voices reverberate out of magnetic tapes and interfere directly in the present. At the same time, an absent-minded listener modifies these sounds with his contemporary perception in a return trip around the collective consciousness. Meters and meters of celluloid, immortalised memories are afraid of losing their eternal nature when confronted with fire.
On 8-millimeter film, a little girl looks at her dad’s camera while she is playing in the river. The little girl is laughing and dancing. She fascinates us speaking about the unique, yet it scares us when she shows us what is unrepeatable. She draws an invisible past, without which our existence would be impossible. Dark matter of the present time.
According to cosmologists, dust, wood, mirrors, vessels, statuettes, the little girl and any other thing we can see with our eyes, or through using instruments at our disposal, are just five percent of the universe. The rest is dark energy and dark matter, a mysterious substance that reminds us just how much we do not know compared to what we know. That our perception is limited and subjective and that life would not be as it is without this mysterious and dark reality. Just as it would not be as it is if the little girl, her father, the camera or the river had not existed. Just as life anywhere in the world would be the same if all these thwarted realities at Marché aux Puces in Marseille had not taken place. Just as all the stories lying about in the market had not occurred if the rest of the universe had not been in motion. My dark matter.
A reality that is not there anymore and whose echoes are the only things I can still hear. A reality that is not mine and I do not mind, because I do not even know that it exists. A reality that I cannot touch and whose unknown nature scares me. The sleeping truth in the unconscious. The invisible. My dark matter. Borondo
In collaboration with BRBR Films, Carmen Main, Diego López Bueno, Edoardo Tresoldi, Isaac Cordal, Robberto Atzori, SBAGLIATO. Gif by A.L. Crego. Curated by Carmen Main
Galerie Saint Laurent. Hall des Antiquaires, 130 Chemin de la Madrague-Ville, 13015 Marseille
http://www.galeriesaintlaurent.com
Image: Borondo. Matiere Noir. Marché aux Puces. Marseille