Jazmina Figueroa. Call Signs
Online opening: November 4, 2021
A spiral exposes the progressions of chaos.
“The spiral is an attempt at controlling the chaos. It has two directions. Where do you place yourself, at the periphery or at the vortex? Beginning at the outside is the fear of losing control; the winding in is a tightening, a retreating, a compacting to the point of disappearance. Beginning at the center is affirmation, the move outward is a representation of giving, and giving up control; of trust, positive energy, of life itself. Spirals – which way to turn – represent the fragility in an open space. Fear makes the world go round.”
-Excerpt from Louise Bourgeois: Spiral (2019)
Throughout history, shells were used as currency. Their biological architectures reflect the genesis of new currency that is characterized by iteration, in other words, all of that which was and is tallied into previous attempts. The endeavor to sequence entities deriving from the culmination of a whole can be visualized through the study of a shell: the calcified material network – the arrangement of oblique lines and relief-like patterns with obscured interpretive origins. For what it’s worth, all of what makes up a mollusc’s shell is also part of the force that drives movement across the Atlantic Ocean.
Call Signs, 2021, by Jazmina Figueroa is part machine-generated and part sensorial. It is based on the subversive, radical traditions of expanded media for information exchange and transference. The project concludes the two-month residency research of Jazmina Figueroa at ZKM | Karlsruhe within the framework of Beyond Matter, an international, collaborative, practice-based research project.
Text excerpts from Call Signs, 2021, by Jazmina Figueroa
Curated by Theodoulos Polyviou
Additional credits:
Call Signs, 2021, (virtual performance lecture, 25:26 minutes) written and composed by Jazmina Figueroa
Curatorial support from Theodoulos Polyviou
Sound support and mastering by Tobias Koch
Spatial effects made with the support of Andrew Madden
Special thanks to the Beyond Matter Team: Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás (Initiator and head of the project) Felix Koberstein (Project assistant) and Marianne Schädler (Copy-editor)
Jazmina Figueroa is a Berlin-based writer. Her writing and research critically examine data extraction and experiences with technology as immensely personal, non-scalable, and inherently socio-political. Jazmina’s writing has been featured in Texte Zur Kunst, Flash Art, ArtForum, The Arts Of Working Class, to name but a few. In 2020 she was shortlisted for the Montez Press Writers Grant who commissioned her essay Infinite Whole. Her other published essays include On Expanded Spectatorship (March Journal, 2021), The Double Helix and Indigeneity: The relationship between identity and genomics featured in the 0.1% exhibition publication (Navel, 2019), and Methods of Representation for the book Authenticity?: Observations and Artistic Strategies in the Post-Digital Age (Valiz, 2017). In 2020 Figueroa co-founded tbc. (To be continued…) with Anastazja Moser with the aim to initiate an open-ended action network through which toshowcase meaningful work that is produced across echo chambers by providing a platform for presentations by artists, activists, musicians, and thinkers.
