Juan Pablo García Sossa (jpgs) with Aarati Akkapeddi, Aycoobo, Kathleen Bomani, Gabriel Chaile, Stephanie Comilang & Simon Speiser, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Ex Soup / Javier Guzmán Cervantes, Sarah Kazmi, Marcos Kueh, Mwana & Latedjou, Semilla AI Studio / Hexorcismos, Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, Paola Torres Nuñez del Prado
The Caribbean text [or the Tropical text] … is a text that speaks of a critical coexistence of rhythms, a polyrhythmic ensemble whose central binary rhythm is decentered when the performer (writer/reader) and the text try to escape ‘in a certain kind of way’.
Antonio Benitez-Rojo, The Repeating Island
Since the very conception of the idea of the globe, a one-world way of being has been our main cosmology and dominant system. The dominant cosmology of globalism is deeply rooted in modern binary understandings of the planet, with embedded hierarchies within them – divisions such as nature/culture, civilised/savage, human/subhuman, East/West, and the so-called Global North/South. These binaries and dualities validate what is done on one side of the line and render invisible what is done on its counterpart. Technology and computation have been frameworks and tools closely tied to ideals of ‘progress’ and globalism. Besides the conception of a 1/0 binary system, computation has come with the imposition of a so-called Universal Standard Time or a Unix Time. Some would argue that this kind of time has been fundamental for global synchronisation, but one could also say that it has been responsible for rendering invisible other notions of time: the way it passes, its rhythms, how it is embodied and its system architectures.
So what forms and shapes might the very notion of time take? How could we render a multiplicity of worlds? Chronoplasticity is an exhibition, curated by Lars Bang Larsen, that asks how history can be embodied from below, and from the point of view of the body as a social sign. Lars Bang Larsen invited me to respond to this framing through the lenses and prisms of my artistic research into other forms of situated knowledges, technologies and ways of netting from a Tropikós perspective (Tropics as region and as a mindset). This response is guided by my extended practice with Futura Tr!pica Netroots, an InterTropical Net of Grass- Root Local Networks connecting communities and nets of support and affection within the Tropical Belt (Abya Yala or Latin America and the Caribbean, the African Continent, South Asia, South East Asia and the Paci#c). For this project, I present as a conceptual offering How to Eat a Rolex: an annex to the exhibition and its title.
How to Eat a Rolex is a reflection on and examination of practices and ways of pluriversing time. A pluriverse refers to the Zapatista’s envisioning of a world where many worlds #t. It could also be thought of as a cosmos where many cosmoses #t, co-exist and are braided together. To understand the pluriverse as a verb presents the opportunity to open up space for a multiplicity of worlds. With an intention to spell and craft more-than-binary systems, How to Eat a Rolex revolves around examinations of polyrhythm, elastic time, chronofagia and cannibalising time, trans-temporal communication and more-than-linear time systems, gathering together practices and protocols that can be found turning within the Tropical Belt.
Situated in the top floor apartment of Raven Row, How to Eat a Rolex is a show within a show, which situates works within works. It draws its name from a series of anecdotes and reflections linking Abya Yala (Latin America) and the Caribbean to the African Continent, all the way to South East Asia, while going through South Asian winds.
POLYRHYTHMS
After spending a day reflecting on and enacting carnival and the dances
and motions of social movements at Plataforma Caníbal, one heated
afternoon in Barranquilla, Colombia, Jaider Orsini commented ‘In
Switzerland they have the Rolex, in the Caribbean we have time.’ This
stuck in my head and body, while the gently powerful winds coming
from the east embraced our faces, birds sang and yells came from
street vendors. But if the Caribbean has time, what is it? Especially if
one considers the ‘Repeating Islands’ of Antonio Benitez-Rojo, or the
‘Archipelagic Thinking’ of Édouard Glissant, where a multiplicity of times
and rhythms take place simultaneously in generative ways. If time is
measured by clocks, in Benitez-Rojo’s view, the Caribbean apparatuses
operate in ways so that ‘every machine is a conjunction of machines
coupled together, and each one of these interrupts the flow of the
previous one; it will be said rightly that one can picture any machine
alternatively in terms of flow and interruption.’ So what mechanisms
measure time? How could we embrace multi-linear systems of time and
what of those are at our disposal?
CHRONOFAGIA
It was in Uganda that I revisited these questions for
the research netting project Magical Hackerism or The
Elasticity of Resilience developed together at SAVVY
Contemporary and panke.gallery. It was there that I
encountered ‘The Rolex’ in the streets of Kampala: a
belly-#lling wrap made with eggs and chapati bread. This
dish is one of the top street foods along the Kikomando
in East Africa. So I was reminded that day – I used to
think the Rolex was in Switzerland but apparently it has
been all this time in Kampala! And you can actually eat it.
Since then, energised by my artistic research practice on technologies from a Tropikós perspective (Tropics as a Region and as a Mindset) and drawing inspiration from Brazilian Tropicalia, I thought about cultural cannibalism, which is also known as anthropofagia.
Cultural cannibalism played a signi#cant role shaping the Tropicália movement, arguing that Brazil’s history of cannibalising other cultures was its greatest strength, and had been the nation’s way of asserting independence over European colonial culture. In my opinion this cannibalism isn’t only limited to Brazil but is rather endemic to the Tropics. Cannibalism refers to the belief that when consuming an opponent or a counterpart, one would gain their virtue. So in a way, cultural cannibalism refers to the act of taking external influences and chewing them and digesting them, until one comes up with situated versions of it, responding to the speci#cities of a local context. Tupi or not Tupi? Such reflections were at the forefront of the Manifesto Antropófago, published in 1928, and pushed strongly by the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade.
If there’s anthropofagia, there could be tecnofagia too, as Giselle Beiguelmann proposed in her show III Mostra 3M de arte digital: Tecnofagias (2012) in São Paulo. Cannibalising technologies might be related to or be situated near to the Tropical Hacking I’ve been studying for the past few years, along with Futura Tropica Netroots, of the likes of Brazilian Jeitinho and Gambiarra, Colombian Rebusque and Hechiza, West African Goorgoorlou, Indian Jugaad ++. This can refer to the re-appropriation of technologies and the process of situating them in local contexts and systems (which can be thought of, too, as LAN·SCAPES, environments as Local Area Networks). And if there’s anthropofagia, and there could be tecnofagia as Giselle suggests, I believe there could be chronofagia too, meaning: cannibalising time. Something to chew on…
TROPICAL CHUTNEY & JAM KARET
After spending hours in traffic jams, and realising Bogotá might be the antipode of
Jakarta, I reflected that, if we were to dig a hole in one of those cities, we would arrive
– partially or exactly? – at the opposite one. This journey would potentially involve several
hours or days of delay given that these places compete every year for the top positions
in the worst traffic jams on the planet. In any case, we would excuse ourselves by saying
we were stuck in a traffic jam and things will continue as usual. It was in this mixture that
I encountered Jam Karet: an Indonesian Bahasa expression to describe ‘rubber time’.
Within this elasticity, I thought about IST, from my time in India coordinating calls with
practitioners in South Asia. IST wouldn’t necessarily convert to Indian Standard Time
– unlike CET (Central European Time), PST (Paci#c Standard Time) or WIB (Western
Indonesia Time [Waktu Indonesia Barat]) – but rather to Indian Stretchable Time. Time
is elastic and rubber connects us from the Philippines to Kerala, all the way to Ecuador.
With their embedded histories, herstories, theirstories and their complex realities.
The invitation to respond to Chronoplasticity speci#cally involved an intervention in ‘Rebecca’s flat.’ On the top floor of Raven Row, three sisters lived together for over 50 years. Their parents worked in the famous Spital#elds food and vegetable market, and years later, Rebecca and her younger sisters worked as seamstresses in the local fabric (‘rag’) trade. Rebecca also worked for some time in a Lyons Teashop. They used to work with textiles and crafted their apartment with an abundance of patterns and textures. At the entrance of the building, on Artillery Lane, one can #nd two bells. One for Raven Row and another for ‘Rebecca’s Flat’.
Rebecca’s flat is a space with certain character. In contrast to dominant global/ modern apartments, the decor leans more towards maximalism than so-called timeless minimalism. In a way, this space is already a sort of time capsule – a state that implies particular questions. For instance, how to reflect past worlds, their present and the ones yet to come? Are there things that should be preserved or that rather ferment, get rotten and transform into fertile grounds for things to come? Overcoming the temptation to fully transform the space and erase the apartment, I chose the (I would say Tropical) approach to world with what’s at hand: to work, rest and world system- speci#c, a term I borrow from artist Nolan Oswald Dennis.
For this response, I invited artists from various regions and paths of life to situate works within the apartment, and thus introduce various notions of time. One could say that these gestures serve as trojan horses. At #rst sight they seem to be part of the apartment, but given a closer look, it’s possible to identify multitemporal layers not only in dialogue but perhaps gossiping between each other. These layers can be presented as contradictions, mirages or paradoxes: ultimately, hopefully, historiographic openings for pluriversing notions of time. speci#c, a term I borrow from artist Nolan Oswald Dennis.
For How to Eat a Rolex, works are placed in various rooms and spaces such as the living room, kitchen, corridors, bedrooms and terrace, among others. Some works are intended as props, to be interacted with by visitors. Others will change over time for the duration of the show. Running or flowing in parallel, a public program will offer company over the months that Rebecca’s flat is accessible. A digital layer of the show and a series of workshops and activations in the apartment will offer further invocations and spells to embody a multiplicity of times. Such activations include: YuKèSabe La – a workshop on Nets and Roots through cassava as a Rhizomatic InterTropical connector; How to Eat a Rolex – a workshop on preparing Rolex and cannibalising time; and Chutnefying Entropy through Jam Karet – a workshop on elastic time. These are food gatherings for collective envisioning while chewing and digesting time. With all this, we hope to get closer to spelling and crafting the means to render a multiplicity of worlds through more-than-binary computing, guided by notions of polyrhythm, elastic time, chronofagia and cannibalising time, trans-temporal communication and more-than-linear time systems. Please feel at home in How to Eat a Rolex – don’t forget to take off your shoes.
More soon++
