🌎 ESPAÑOL // ENGLISH
Delusions of decay (2014)
Artists:
Miltos Manetas, Luis Alfonso Villalobos, Joge Satorre, Joaquín Segura, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Arturo Hernández Alcázar, Theo Michael, Javier Barrios
“Reading Buddha or any other who lives off the sublime just makes me want to order a garlic soup.”
E.M. Cioran, The Passionate Handbook
The first morning after Y2K, I woke up with delusions of decay. It was my first eschatological hangover, the hangover of the Apocalypse programmed to match the turn of the century. But the day after the end of the world the appointment had to be rescheduled.
Delusions of Decay is the symptom of announced endings. The expectation is as stubborn as contagious, and it generates a state of collective hysteria. We announced the end with the murder of God; when nature ceased to be comfortable; with the fall of existence and the crisis of modern humanism in the post-war era; with the break of the world order and the collapse of civilizations. We live the hangover of Art’s obituary and the executioners of avant-garde; when the theory of relativity imminently drilled scientific absolutism and with the digitalization of history’s great narrative.
We are used to dealing with the end associating it with the notion of expiration. Organic matter restrictions and object lifespan had convinced us that, when discarded, things are not anymore. Nevertheless, a look at the huge piles of trash accumulated around the world prove the delusion of decay: although they came to an end, things are still there, provided with an after.
The end, then, is not final or absolute, but the measure of an after. Endings, in the plural, give familiarity to the use of postas a prefix and transform the compendium of universal history into a book of short stories. This is a lineal conception of history, but the line is segmented by particular endings: it is a dotted line ------.
Delusions of Decay gathers together a series of exercises about the end as imagery in order to propose teleology after the end of the world.