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An Angelic Transmission

Curated by Alejandro Alonso Díaz

The air is heavy and the residues of life, endless. Energy is transmitted through chimneys, windmills, pipelines, radioactivity, engines and turbines. Our physical environments absorb the vibrations of all these combusting channels. Systems and structures are recipients of material efforts where immaterial desires are consumed, perpetually in flames. This heavy atmosphere is also where everything angelic resides. In the shape of whispers, fragrances, exhalations or dreams, immateriality dominates everything solid.

Energy is the field not only of the potential, but also the sacred: angels, spirits, dragonflies, ancestors, corpses, sunsets. Frequencies and scents of the unspeakable gather across immateriality. According to Anne Boyer, ‘‘Angels leave no artifacts. And the instant is always at risk of being strangled by a more contemporary unit called –the moment–, which is the present’s vacuum substitution for the deep immeasurability of the quasi–eternity, the instant once made possible inside of time.” In an inconsolable and compassionless present, the value of life has been reduced to nothing but a commodity. Embodied beings as material entities, can be subjected to transactions, murdered, dispossessed, burned alive. Condemned to move from one logistical moment to the next, we need to come up with an angelic transmission. If we are to die, let’s reinvent eternity. Let’s melt the foundations of this material world into an angelic sphere.

An angelic transmission, –the organizing principle for this series of films– considers the non–tangible, somatic and immaterial variables that guide a potential transformation of energy: one that is compassionate, transformative, ephemeral and powerful.

Alejandro Alonso Díaz is a curator and writer. Since 2017 he directs fluent, a non–profit organisation dedicated to contemporary art. His practice considers the semiotics of energy as a site of contestation and a way of thinking through. He has developed research and curated projects for Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Fundação Gulbenkian, Lisbon; dOCUMENTA 15, Kassel; Fundación Botín, Santander, and Foundation KADIST, Paris among other institutions and museums. His writing moves across genres, mostly from theory to poetry, and it has been published extensively by e–flux, Sternberg Press, Mousse Magazine, frieze, Concreta, or Terremoto.

Alg Many Ways To Now Ig 03

May 1 – 29, 2025

Armin Lorenz Gerold

Many ways to now, 2023 (2025 edit)

Video, color, sound, 86:26 min.

Armin Lorenz Gerold’s Many ways to now draws inspiration from Anne Boyer’s work The Fallen Angel of the Senses, in which the author and poet maps the decay of the minor senses; touch, taste, and smell, in our “present arrangement of the world”, hyperextended or fractured from “capitalism’s distortions and pressures”. Originally conceived as a 12-channel audio and video installation presented at Mint, Stockholm, the work is also an invitation to a range of artists and poets to contribute texts that negotiate questions about time and temporality through a variety of cultural, political and poetic angles that disrupt, alter or shape the present.

Armin Lorenz Gerold is an artist and composer based in Berlin. Throughout his practice, he investigates multiple aspects of sound using the spoken text as a recurring point of departure. His work has been presented at Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Austria, KW Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; LambdaLambdaLambda, Kosovo; fluent, Santander, Mint, Sweden, and the Gothenburg Biennale for Contemporary Art, Sweden. In 2025, Gerold will be a resident at Rupert Centre for Art in Vilnius, Lithuania.

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