Arqueologia do Presente

Marco Rocha

28 sep – 09 nov 2024
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  • Exhibitions
  • Porto

Curadora: Estefânia R.

Arqueologia do Presente

“The point of insurgence, the arché of archaeology, is what will happen, what will become accessible and present once the archaeological investigation carries out its operation”*

In this work by Marco Rocha, episodes are “unearthed”, not as traces of a past memory, but rather as undated insurgencies of our time, whatever it may be. There is a clear desire in the photographer’s gestures to carry out a topographical survey of his daily life; however, what he presents to us is not a description of the objects of the world, but rather the construction of elements that are already objects of the aesthetic universe. The camera is here a device of aesthetic mutation where spaces and functional constructions are transformed into forensic landscapes, totems or spatial events that we associate with the logic of installations.

The photographic device (the 35mm camera) is used here in micro-adjustments as if it were a scanner, using a device that was designed for mobility in an almost static way.

Thus deconstructing the programme of the photographic apparatus, which is also ideological and cultural, as Vilém Flusser suggests.

This is a methodology of extreme rigour in defining landscapes, aesthetic artefacts, as cultural appropriation of the territory.

These images are dubious, they leave us in suspense, something has happened, we can’t identify the time or the purpose. They are therefore resistant images that reject illustration as a support for more explicit discourses.

Instead, Marco Rocha opts for a discursive line that risks demanding the viewer to be extremely attentive and to be able to think imagistically and exclusively with photography’s own tools.

These photographs are a contemporary survey of our present, whether it’s our cultural imaginary or the photographic ballast we already possess.

Francisco Varela, 2nd July 2024.

* Agamben, Giorgio. (2019). Signatura rerum: sobre o método (p. 152). Boitempo, São Paulo.

Adorna
R. do Rosário 147, Porto

Opening Hours:

Thursday – Saturday
14:30–19:30