Carlos Martín Rodríguez

Carlos Martin Rodriguez’s project is hybrid in nature, falling somewhere between the sculptural, installations, and experimental speculative listening. The guiding thread is Ray Brassier’s concept of anterior posterity, which is applied as a dialogue between human and non-human entities. This dialogue will be explored as a contingent ecosystem open to possibility, oscillating between archaeology, the synthetic body, future non-existence and sonic listening. To do this, from the sculptural medium —which will be traversed by modular synthesis— the objective is to obtain objectual and sound events that exceed a human semiology.

The sound part will be carried out through three types of interrelated, linked events: feedback loops that are directed toward entropy or negentropy, according to their causality; an anteriority/posterity of the voice, as non-voice (xenovoice), from a dissected collectivity; and finally, sound events that try to go beyond a human phenomenology.

The process of producing the sculptural pieces begins with the random, digital manipulation of the 3D scanner of an archaeological object: a fibula. This is the name for a type of complex, protohistoric brooch that was used in Europe and the Mediterranean to pin together a dress, a robe or a cloak starting in the Late Bronze Age. The resulting formations are reproduced in fiberglass and are hollowed out to produce a structure that is transformed into an almost unrecognizable fossil artifact. Assemblages that generate residual narratives on the synthetic (human) body through different intersecting layers will be nested on these hollow shells. These stories unfold in the form of silicone fragments of tattooed prostheses—with references to both popular culture and theoretical production; or protective elements for the human body: casts of motorcycle helmet padding pins, which are reproduced in “integral skin”, a material used on car dashboards, for example. Forms of inter-entity coexistence will be sought through the union of these ensembles and as a sculptural question. This way, the project will try to build a synthetic ecosystem of remaining, speculative and post-archaeological narratives.

BIO
Carlos Martín Rodríguez is a visual artist, researcher and teacher. He lives and works in Madrid. A professor of fine arts at the University of Salamanca, he is currently finishing his doctoral thesis in the Department of Art History and Theory of the Autonomous University of Madrid. His artistic practice takes place at the intersection of sculpture and installation, experimental cinema-essay, sound and textuality. Different speculative explorations coexist in his work through the hybridization of these media. Starting from the sculptural as a temporal and material quandary, his projects favour non-linear causalities and quasi-autonomous systems of theory-fiction: apparatuses that generate contingent displacements and that travel between archaeology, language, technology and theoretical production. He has won grants such as the XXX edition of the Plastic Arts Circuits of the Community of Madrid, and his work has been seen in the Laboral of Gijon, in the Sala de Arte Joven of the Community of Madrid or in the Galería Fran Reus in Palma de Majorca, among others.