CHALAZA solo show

THE ELEPHANT GOT IN THE ROOM AND NEVER LEFT

The stench is strong, the noise is loud. We are walking between elephants´ legs but nobody sees them.

Francisco Trêpa's artistic practice translates into a transdisciplinary approach that tries to materialize the often complex articulations between the human animal and the non-human animal, while crossing  realities of conquest, confinement, speciesism and exhibitionism.

In this exhibition, he presents an installation employing significant elements of an animal exploration  practice that can be traced back to the elephants pit at the Lisbon Zoo in the late 80s and early 90s. The  ringing bell ‘trick’ was a well disseminated attraction and a mandatory stop for children and adults, having since become a sort of collective memory shared by those who visited the zoo in that period. The spectacle  consisted of an exchange forged by a kind of commercial triad: the visitor threw a coin into the cage pit,  the elephant received a peanut, and then rang a bell (A coin, for a peanut, for a ringing bell: a coin, for a  peanut, for a ringing bell). This dysfunctional repetition is what constitutes the method for the works  presented here, resulting in materializations that not only reflect a concrete problem of animal  exploitation (which is always disguised) but also have the capacity to tease the viewer into questioning their own impressions.

The irony resulting from this subversive humdrum becomes a constant. For instance, The only way is  through was made with 1700 individually reproduced paraffin peanuts and resembles a type of curtain commonly placed on doors and passageways, acting as attempted blockades to flying insects. While  seemingly inviting, it was built using the same logic of a trap employed at the zoo: the peanuts act as bait,  the trickery is granted by paraffin, a material that simulates bees wax, the awkward disproportion  between the height of the curtain and its width seems to draft the unfeasible task of fitting an elephant  through a door. Thus, the passage we see here is somewhat paradoxical, being simultaneously attractive  and impossible.

This interplay is also evidenced by the pieces suggestive of the shape of an elephant's trunk. Despite signalling trunk, we are immediately disconcerted by its human scale, which reveals the reductive nature  of a novelty mask. Identical but displayed in various configurations, the hard but delicate trunks are calling  us to consider different topics through their common denominator: porcelain. When thinking about the  discursive possibilities of porcelain as a material – white and irreversible – and the references to  speciesism proposed here, we are faced with another inseparable point of tangency: that of a “fine”,  antiquated, hierarchical and discriminatory system which, at times, lets out the fragility and hollow  emptiness of its interior. This is the case in Re-reunion, an induced circular formation that recalls the gatherings of mourning elephants.

There is a Buddhist parable that tells the story of a group of blindfolded people who, unaware of what an elephant is, attempt to apprehend and conceptualize it through touch. Each person feels a different part  of the elephant's body, leading them to describe it based on a partial experience, resulting in different opinions. In some versions, people become suspicious of each other and end up in conflict. The moral of  the story is that we tend to claim absolute truth based solely on parts of a whole, a point of view, while  ignoring other people's experiences and not making an effort to understand the shared totality of what is  called into question. It's hard not to think about this story when experiencing Elephant in between, two  pieces that establish the limits of the average length of an elephant on the wall, insisting on conjuring its  presence in space, like two fragments that urge us to fill the gap in between, to complete a space that  seems to be absent, in an attempt to fully grasp its dimension.

The video Apnea, installed on the back wall, seems to encompass an equally obsolete activity in the  context of current Zoo practices, that of marine animal shows, exposing the absurdity of its standardization. By integrating one of the main elements (peanuts) from the initially referred show into

the orca amphiteatre, the entire format is put into question. While these marine shows have been merely adapted, the peanut trick has been abolished altogether, according to new policies that bet on showing  the public more ‘natural’ behaviours of animals.

Thus, there is a permanent dimension of theatricality in the Zoo that is also noticeable here. Sometimes through more direct associations, such as in Apnea, or more subtle associations, such as on The only way  is through which could refer to the theatre curtain as a separating element between actor and spectator,  stage and audience.

In Why look at animals John Berger proposed a theatrical optic applied to the Zoo, where definitions of stage, audience, actors and spectators are made somewhat interchangeable, in order to be accessed critically. We know that animals often look at visitors. We also know that the role of a visitor is decidedly active: it involves walking around and observing the animals. If so, the question arises: (who’s watching?) who in this “weird theatre”? More so, while reaching beyond appearances in the attempt to apprehend  the entirety of an elephant, are there definitive actors and spectators on this twisted show?

Beatriz Coelho, June 2021

The elephant got in the room and never left

Edgeplant

Tongeyes

Echo As Logic [2020] is a project centered around two urban habitats chosen by portuguese bats: the Mafra Palace Library (where their insectivorous diet contributes directly to the avoidance of bookworms and thus the deterioration of the archive) and the peninsula of Tróia (where bats dislodged by a famed demolition had to be re-located to a bat-shelter). The bats’ correspondence to each architecture has its own specificities which we tried to render visible through processes of translation: from sound to image, from negative to positive, from flatness to three-dimensionality.

We were interested in exploring sound reverberation as a strategy for locomotion, the potential of inter- species cooperation, bats as cultural agents, the organicity of an archive which can be chewed on and bitten off.

The project which has been more seminal than actually conclusive is currently constituted of a series of solar prints spectrograms of bat chirp frequencies collected on site - in bat studies, it is far easier to tell sounds apart by looking, rather than listening to them - a series of CNC cut MDF where the worm trails from deteriorated books were translated into vectors for the cutting machine, as well as a 13min film.

Echo As Logic is a project created in collaboration with Gabariel Ribeiro with the support of CO-Residency

Echo as Logic

The notion of trap is humorously employed with the assitance of a camera trap, as a strategy for capturing animal performance. Once this apparatus is activated by the animal, it institutes an immediate face-to-face existential connection between camera and body, reflecting on their complicity or the failure to establish it.

Who's watching?

This formal investigation focuses on  the concept of ration as a product that is intended to be unifying and all encompassing, bringing together in the same form all the nutrients necessary to live. At Least We Can See The Stars  isolates and exaggerates the form of a feeding device for bird cages. This device demands enclosure, in order to be functional, as its dented hook is specifically designed to fit the void between the metal wires in cages. 

Add

Francisco Trêpa