SUBSUELO

The elaboration of the memory recording distinct events, occurs through the affects and transitions that readjust our psychic experience subjectively. In the short instant that transpires the moment, there exists a physical neurosensorial exchange between the conditions of the mental structure and the stimulation of the outside world prior to the event happening. It is precisely in this intersection that exists the commotion that comes from the unexpected, the world expands in its condition of uncertainty. The images that compose the series Subsuelo investigate the potential affect that displaces the rational discourse and submits us to moments of commotion, where it is possible to recognize visual and technical references. However, the result in the reproduction of the images is not entirely calculable in its material consequences and subjective perception. Subsuelo employs the antique photographic process known as Colodion, or Wet plate. The techniques demands that it must be exposed while the emulsion is in its liquid state. In this series, the realization of the photographs consists in a process of putting the emulsion on the plate and then submitting it to the vibration of a speaker. The audio emitted is a result of transforming the graphic registration of a sismograph into a series of audible frequencies that vary in amplitutde depending on the force of the sismic movement. Afterwards the image is exposed onto the wet plate with the magnifier, as the speaker reproduces specific moments of the earthquake; altering the image. The audio is obtained with programming language, which transforms the graph generated from the sismograph into sound waves. To achieve this, the event had to be accelerated to make the frequency audible to human beings. Once this was determined, the frequency made a relationship between the Richter scale of the sismo and the amplitude of sound that was being injected into the speaker. The stronger the movement in Richter degrees, the larger the volume of the sound and more intense the vibration in the speaker. Each image was submitted to the specific sonor vibration determined in the moment of the graph. The movement which has more intensity distorts the image to a higher degree. The images imprinted onto the plates were extracted stills from a video found on the internet. The video captures the exact moments that the eartquake begins in Japan on the 11th of March, 2011, and films its entire development from 0 to 8.9 Richter degrees. In this recording three moments

can be clearly observed; the moments prior to the quakes movement, the beginning and the posterior events of the sismo. At the large of the sequence we witness the variation of the context and the reactions in the attitudes of the two people present during the filming of the earthquake. By taking a video of a previously existant event and converting it into a photography sequence using the Colodion technique, it alludes to the manner in which an image is elaborated and apropiated for its specific purposes. Even though the mediatic flux of the image is present, the attention is centered on the consequences of a state of shock that take place in the technical proceedure altered by movement. It is in the poetic quality of the images that break the aesthetics of catastrophe linked with spectacular contemplation, therefore inserting itself in a reflective condition employing technical ressources. The result of the image imprinted constitutes an altered body which relates not only symbolically to the event, but as well in a concrete manner to each photograph in relation with the sequence. In the same way in which this event alters our corporality in a direct relation to the happening of the event, the possible meanings never cease to take form during the present time.