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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.

Jenna Bliss The People Detox 12

January 30 – February 20, 2025

Jenna Bliss

The People's Detox, 2018

Video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.

Jenna Bliss’ The People’s Detox uses documentary footage about the events in November 1970, when Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx was taken over for the second time through the collective organizing of local heroin addicts, revolutionary health organizations, the Young Lords and others. Through political education, the clinic examined the role of global politics in the influx of heroin into urban centers as well as the economic incentives of the established protocols for drug treatment. With the introduction of acupuncture as an aid in detoxification, eventually replacing pharmaceutical treatments, it was not only the walls of the hospital that were breached but the very apparatus of addiction and recovery.

Jenna Bliss is an artist, filmmaker and video editor based in New York. Her practice explores the political dimensions inherent in our ways of seeing and telling stories. She primarily uses film, photography, sculpture, and collage in works characterized by detailed research into often overlooked and marginal topics that nevertheless reflect major global events. Bliss employs research and intuitive associations to sift through collective memory, questions common assumptions, and thus expands an accepted narrative. Events are examined in an attempt to illuminate the works’ subjects through a mixture of fact and fiction, abstraction and detail, drawing a wide-eyed portrait that reveals larger patterns. Through the montage of self-filmed, found, and archival footage in the form of text and images, Bliss elicits inherent ideologies from the material and reveals historical links that are invisible at first glance.

Jenna Bliss The People Detox 11
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 13
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 2
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 3
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 4
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 5
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 6
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 7
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 8
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 9
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.
Jenna Bliss The People Detox 10
Jenna Bliss, The people’s detox, 2018, video, color, sound, 57: 45 min.

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