Soliloquium

The installation consists of Soliloquium, a three-screen video that projects simultaneously the dialogues through which three representations of reality are conveyed. The projection is shown alongside an arrangement of the glass objects from the sculpture series A Special Form of Darkness and the following drawings by Ramón y Cajal: Circunvolución frontal ascendente [Ascending Frontal Circumvolution], Asta de Ammon y circunvolución del hipocampo [Ammon’s Horn and Circumvolution of the Hippocampus], Colaterales de la médula espinal [Collateral of the Spinal Cord] and Dos células de corteza cerebral de gato [Two Cells of a Cat’s Cerebral Cortex]. We can see a person engaged in dialogue. At first sight, we believe that the dialogue is held among several different people. As the video progresses, it is easy to see that it is this first person who interacts with herself in the construction of each of the dialogues. Each dialogue represents a different reality, but belongs to the same person: three models of reality produced by a single human being. In the three dialogues, the main reference is the clinical phenomenology that characterises agnosia, a notion introduced by Sigmund Freud in On Aphasia (1891), underlining the difference between anomia and agnosia in what concerns recognition disorders. The transparent glass objects, arranged on the stage where the action of Soliloquium takes place, are objectual representations based on the drawings of Ramón y Cajal, a precursor of modern neurosciences. The objects’ transparency directly alludes to the use of this characteristic within Metzinger’s philosophy: the experience of perceiving reality without being aware of the processes involved in its formation. These objects will have a relevant role in the development of the three dialogues of the video piece “Soliloquium”.