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Test Tubes7 June - 22 June 2006Elida Tessler [Brazil] Elida Tessler is a guest of RMIT University, School of Art International Artist in Residence Program and the South Project, courtesy of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. |
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Essay
To construct her installation Test Tubes, Elida Tessler has drawn from a book by the Brazilian theorist Donaldo Schüler (O homem que não sabia jogar, translated as 'The man who doesn't know how to play.') The artist has extracted words beginning with an 'e' or 't' and placed them in approximately 2,500 test tubes distributed evenly around the gallery. The 'e' words are in red and the 't' words in blue.
On first visit, we are confronted by an alchemic kind of hermeneutics. The gallery is transformed into a metaphysical laboratory, as though the scene of an experiment conducted by alien beings attempting to break the code of human intelligence. Like a literary version of the human genome project, Tessler extracts, sorts and mixes words. But as to what meaning?
For an Australia audience, Test Tubes is an opportunity to encounter a foreign knowledge. Certainly, 'ET' suggests an alien consciousness at work. We are confronted with a particularly literal reading of text, where words are aligned on a purely formal basis. However, what's new to us is actually a well-established methodology for Tessler. Her previous installations have included such arrangements as verbs in a 360 degree landscape outlook and a text stretched on horizon across a real beach.
So where is she coming from?
Tessler's work is the start of a journey for Melbourne audiences. The journey includes the Kabala, the school of Jewish mysticism that ascribed creative powers to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. A link between Kabala and contemporary art is then found in the work of French author Georges Perec, who once composed an entire novel, La Disparition (1969), without using the letter 'e'. Like Tessler, this Oulipo school of experimental fiction uses formal constraints to express something that cannot be spoken directly.
And somewhere along the way, we pass through the largest Catholic country in the world, Brazil. Arguably the most self-confident of southern cultures, Brazil claims to have invented its own kind of modernism. One of its idiomatic cultural practices, anthropophagia, advocates the cannibalising of western culture. Tessler's works take language literally, rendering the symbolic realm into our embodied experience.
Perhaps Test Tubes also says something closer to home. Can we see ourselves as these containers? Hosts to mystery? Vessels of words foreign to our understanding?
Kevin Murray, June 2006
Elida Tessler's TEST TUBES <> TUBOS DE ENSAIO is an enigmatic work - a poetic discourse of fragments that come together with a resonant yet silent musicality. The 'text tubes' line the walls of the School of Art Gallery reading as a score of caught, slivered words that float nebulously within the glass tubes secured to the wall. The work resounds with what is not said, what is not written and the space between words fills the space. Tessler's process of making is meticulous and particular. She is a collector of words. Utilising Donaldo Schüler's essay O homem que não sabia jogar (The man who doesn't know how to play) 1998, she collected and transcribed all the words beginning with 'E' and 'T'. These letters serve as both an artistic signature, being the artist's own initials, but more so as markers of an experimental discourse with notions pertaining to narrative dialogue where e, in Portuguese meaning 'and', and é, meaning 'is', are poignant markers of an absent narrative. Tessler works with the poetry of what is not said, of silent spaces, and of absence rather than presence. The work has a sense of an eerie melody; the glass tubes becoming pitchpipes and holding not only air but the potential for sound. The gallery space is very quiet and I walk very slowly and silently, conscious of my breath and the air that fills the space. I listen to hear the words caught in the glass tubes, vivariums for live words. I find myself also listening for the words that are not present and imagine the containers for these, absent, words. Tessler's TEST TUBES <> TUBOS DE ENSAIO is a fragile work; metal hooks secure each test tube in position but barely manage to hold the work. A random word or two inexplicably smashing to the floor each day - the words have weight, the thin slivers of ink on acetate encumbered with an unstable load. There's a drama in the fall and poetry in the random, audience-less show played out within the space. TEST TUBES <> TUBOS DE ENSAIO is a work to be experienced, where one's presence, breath and words become part of the work and one becomes conscious of all that isn't said, remembered and recounted, of the loaded space between words.
Louiseann Zahra, June 2006
Catalogue
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Acknowledgements
Elida Tessler has been a guest in the School of Art at RMIT University as a 2006 recipient of the International Artist in Residence Programme. Her residency is supported by a partnership with The South Project through an annual RMIT / South Project residency agreement. Elida Tessler's residency has been marked by an open and direct response to many individuals and groups within RMIT and in the Melbourne community. Her residency marks the already rich and diverse global perspectives that are central to the RMIT School of Art and The South Project partnership.
This residency and exhibition project has been made possible by the dynamism generated through the South Project. The artist acknowledges the support of Dr Kevin Murray, Director of Craft Victoria and South Project Manager Magdalena Moreno. She also wishes to thank Peter Westwood, Coordinator of International Projects and Development and Dr Louiseann Zahra, Coordinator/ curator of the School of Art Galleries for their warm enthusiastic involvement and support.
The support of Professor Elizabeth Grierson, Head of the School of Art at RMIT is also gratefully acknowledged in fostering this residency. The artist also wishes to recognise the great assistance and support given by Daniela Tessler (architect assistant), Julia Powles, Nicola Harvey, Fay Reynolds, Simon Stephenson, Olivia Gleeson, Ceri Hann, Vasilius Devletoglou, and her family Edson, Sofia and Alice.
The artist is particularly grateful to students of the RMIT School of Art for their participation and friendship.
The support of the Instituto de Artes, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and Taylor Van Horne of the Sacatar Foundation, New York is gratefully acknowledged.
Elida Tessler is represented by Galeria Oeste, São Paulo, Brazil
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