ESCAPARATE
For 12 consecutive days, the artist occupied the display window of DT Scenic Area (Madrid) for 30 minutes each day, developing a performative investigation into ways of occupying an in-between space from scratch. Through minimal and accumulative gestures, the artist progressively transformed the storefront into a territory of experimentation between the visible and the invisible, between the inside and the outside.
The process began with the placement of blue filters over the space’s own lights, altering its luminous atmosphere. Subsequently, the artist wrote continuously on the glass, describing what she saw inside and outside, as well as the thoughts that emerged during the action. The surfaces gradually became covered until the writing was exhausted, which was then erased with water, generating a palimpsest of traces and temporalities.
At one point in the process, Gatti invited a passerby to enter and inhabit the space alongside her, asking them to respond to the question “How do you occupy a space?”. In the following days, she filled the storefront with more than one hundred blue balloons until immobilising her own body, then burst them all, transforming the action into a sonic and bodily experience.
In the subsequent sessions, she introduced paper and blue spray, “solidifying” the space until dissolving the boundary between interior and exterior. On the final day, she dismantled everything and cleaned the storefront during the last thirty minutes, closing the cycle and returning the space to its initial state.
Although the action had a limited duration each day, its traces remained visible for the rest of the time, generating a constant dialogue between the space, the passage of time, and the gaze of the passerby.
Description:
Duration: 12 days / 30 minutes each day
Credits:
Escaparate (DT Scenic Area) by Amanda Gatti
Conception, and performance by Amanda Gatti
Production support and documentation: Pedro Mendes
Thanks to: DT Scenic Area
Past dates:
28.11 - 10.12/2023
DT Scenic Area, Madrid
