Weavers in the dark (knitting a cosmic symphony): Notes on the Arachnid Work of Tomás Saraceno

Main Article Content

Paulo Andreas Lorca

Abstract

The present study examines examines the arachnid work of the artist Tomás Saraceno— Galaxies Forming along Filaments; Hybrid Webs; Arachnid Orchestra —in light of its affinity with ideas proposed by Quentin Meillassoux and Timothy Morton as answers to the non-human turn in contemporary thought and arts. I argue that Saraceno’s work, in its different stages—reticular, hybrid and bioacoustic—, not only renders hierarchies inoperative between types of knowledge, but destabilizes presupposed notions about artistic authorship, agency and technic.  The junction between animal and technological, human and non-human in a symbiotic making of this work makes it necessary to reconsider the concept of creation, in order to re-establish that reconciliation between poiesis and physis which Heidegger had already proposed. In each and every stage of Saraceno’s artistic collaboration with spiders, we see a movement towards an ethic of objects without hierarchy that points to the direction of an axiology that inverts the universe of the formal (from the concept of formless of Georges Bataille) in order to liberate art from the supremacy of the visual and the human.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

Section
Articles
Author Biography

Paulo Andreas Lorca, Cornell University

Paulo Andreas Lorca es candidato doctoral en el Departamento de Estudios Romances de la Universidad de Cornell. Su investigación gira en torno a la novela y los géneros literarios de los siglos XX y XXI en el Cono Sur, con particular énfasis en producciones que problematizan las relaciones entre la literatura y otros  medios, como la fotografía y el arte. Con título "The Voice of the Cave: Witch and Craft in Chilean Letters ", su tesis analiza la persistencia de la figura de la brujería en la literatura chilena desde su prematura aparición en La Araucana de Ercilla a la producción literaria de nuestros días, como una clave privilegiada por donde emergen las ansiedades sobre la transculturación, la heterodoxia y la tradición. Además de su labor académica, se desempeña como traductor y editor. Colabora con reseñas en Revista Otra Parte.