THE ARCHIVIST
The CT1LN project, by Henrique Vieira Ribeiro, has been in development since 2014 and consists of the artistic interpretation of a collection accumulated over the course of four decades by amateur radio personality Paulo V.
What distinguishes this project and makes it unique is not just the theme behind it, which is novel or at least uncommon in the field of visual arts, but also its strikingly unusual aesthetic and poetic approach,which reveals a reality that is not widely accessible and shaped by the use of a range of media.
Conceptually, the CT1LN project is split into two parts: Part I, As Viagens de Paulo V. [The Journeys of Paulo V], presented at the Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações until 29 June, is made up of works of photography, drawing and installation; Part II, O Arquivista [The Archivist], evolved around an effort to catalogue the collection of amateur radio identity cards that Paulo V compiled over the course of his practice and is materialised as an interactive installation based on a dialectic between past and present, absence and presence, the material and the virtual. It is an artistic proposal that uses the Internet and digital and computational languages
The exhibition comprises two video projections: one that presents an indexing glossary, and the other exhibiting the cards referring to each term from the glossary. An interface is placed between these two projections: Paulo V’s original microphone, assuming its condition as an object/artefact adapted to new technologies. Interaction is created when the visitor voices one of the glossary terms, summoning up the presentation of the selection of cards that were indexed for this term. In addition to these three elements, Paulo V’s original filing cabinet is displayed in the atrium of the MNAC by way of introduction and as an element of articulation between Part I and Part II of the CT1LN project. The archive and its documentation thus become ‘a place of all times that is itself outside time’ (Michel Foucault).
The visitor is now the new traveller.
Curator
Adelaide Ginga
