Under the Volcano is an art project where the artist overlaps the idea of film and exhibition through a series of interventions that will take place both outside and within the MNAC-MC spaces. Conceived as a means of questioning notions on exhibition, institutional space and public intervention, the various fragments that will result from this process of interventions occurring between July and November will be gathered at the MNAC-MC from November 25th, 2016, as an exhibition apparatus. The integration of these fragments with a series of other elements proposes the rethinking of notions of space, time and reception implicit in contemporary experience.

Juxtaposing Malcolm Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano and a transcription of an unusual psychoanalytical session transcribed by Jean-Paul Sartre with his own earlier work, Endless Killing, Canoilas combines his experiences of film with his longstanding considerations on Hélio Oiticica and Neville de Almeida’s Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – ‘program in progress’ (1973–74). Through this series of processes that are part of his heterogeneous practice Canoilas articulates considerations on sound, painting, text, video, performance and photography and the ways these operate to create agency and empower the spectator as a critical agent.

Through rethinking the exhibition format as something capable of gathering together a heterogeneous set of elements the artist creates an environment that makes demands of viewers’ reasoning, memories and bodies. In this way, the project comes together as a spiral movement of continuously repeated small elements activating short memories and perceptions.