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Disorientation Devices

2022


Camila Cadogan
Ricardo Diaque
Michel Gantous
Paola Medina
Haylie Jimenez
Sydnie Jimenez
and Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas (curator)

"Disorientation can be a bodily feeling of losing one's place, and an effect of the loss of a place. [...] Disorientation involves failed orientations: bodies inhabit spaces that do not extend their shape, or use objects that do not extend their reach. At this moment of failure, such objects 'point' somewhere else or they make what is 'here' become strange".

Sara Ahmed

The world is built in relation. Such is that your way of speaking will influence my voice, creating then a constant negotiation between bodies. However, when we are born, we are able to listen (to understand?) before we can respond (defend?). Consequently, and for a significant time, we have no means to negotiate against the verbalities that dominate our surroundings. Anthropology reminds us how a colt is able to trot even hours after being born, but humans are dependent for years in their surroundings in order to obtain food, shelter, and education.

Therefore, what's already built –established kin between humans but also between humans and apparatuses– determines our orientation towards the world. Being able to comprehend that our orientation towards the world is predetermined by devices of a greater scale than ours (devices that don't allow us to dictate the rules of the game) can be frightening, and even a moment of trauma.

The artists encountered throughout this exhibition embrace the closest orientation device: the family; and from the domestic space it inhabits, they seek to rethink their sense of orientation.