TROIKA
NO SOUND OF WATER
12.11.2021 – 15.05.2022
NO SOUND OF WATER
No Sound of Water (2021), a new work for the first time shown at and commissioned by < Arte Abierto > delivers large quantities of salt from the upper level of its framework into its trough like a bottomless hourglass. The structure is adapted from an industrial processing machine, a reference to the extractive technologies that have contributed to the planet’s anthropocentric transformation. The salt crystals are always in motion and over time become increasingly uncontrollable, spilling into the room, collecting in cracks in the floor, lungs, rolled up trouser legs, keyboards, and the lunches of the foundation’s staff.
No Sound of Water acts as a simulated mineral landscape, as a physical embodiement of the way technology has transformed our relationship with nature and the land, a vast salt plain evoking a lunar landscape leading to a larger-than-human mechanised cascade of salt.
Still dwarfed at a distance, and supported by a distant rushing sound, the saltfall is blurred, silky smooth, bright white. On moving closer, contrary to what one may expect, it’s appearance doesn’t get any clearer and making us wonder and search for clues as to what its real make up may be.
Visually, the sculpture refers to a familiar iconography of waterfalls: due to long exposure times in the early days of photography, movement of water was recorded as a blurry and dreamily suspended entity. These images were often produced as albumen silver prints, coated in an emulsion of egg white and salt. Creating an image of the American West as an endless expanse of awe-inspiring and ‘untamed’ beauty, they formed part of a programme of economic settler expansion organised by the US-American Department of War.
The mechanism that is tasked with the sisyphean pursuit of hauling the salt from ground level to the top of the cascade, just to capture it and move it up again once it has descended, contributes to semantic reading of the saltfall, anchoring its origin in the man-made extractive technologies. The machine itself has been entirely developed and design by Troika over the course of 3 years, and is capable of re-circulating up to 30,000kg of salt per hour.
The saltfall is placed in diametral opposition with another machine, a large LED display half burried in the salt (Terminal Beach).
Both the materiality and purpose of these two machines complete one another: the saltfall accomplishing the motion of salt, rendering the crystalline matter mobile, while the display, and its LED made of salts, shine light onto the scene.
The title ‘no sound of water’ refers to T. S. Eliot’s poem ’Wasteland’.
Written in the aftermath of the First World War, Eliot’s poem describes the disorganization of society and the role of technology and industrialization in Western civilization.
No Sound of Water by Troika is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 12 to 7 pm in Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the 2nd floor Artz Pedregal (Periférico Sur 3720 Col. Jardines del Pedregal, CP. 01900 CDMX).
