One minute before the Black Hole
sculpture,
limestone
The Gregorian calendar is now universally applied. However, when you open the calendar on a phone, you find that the days from October 5 to October 14, 1582, are nonexistent. Astronomical observation software, based on scientific data, allows us to see simulated images of the universe at any moment in the past. However, when you try to set the time to October 5, 1582, at 00:00, the system and the image of the universe automatically jump to 00:00 on October 15. It can be understood that the calendar is merely a representation of the notion of time, while astronomy is its foundation. In this sense, these "ten days" also seem to be excluded by the realm of astronomy. These "ten days" have left no memory, no history, no birth, no death. The artist places commemorative monuments engraved with these ten dates on the ground, resembling almost tombstones, according to the angles of rotation of the ten planets of the solar system, from the Sun to Pluto, at 23:59 on October 4, 1582.
The image of the universe at 23:59 on October 4, 1582, thus transforms into an exhibition space. The next minute, all representations of time become obsolete. Limestone itself is a fossil — the remains of marine organisms. The artist uses this proof of death to write the impossibility of death, by raising a monument to a period of "nonexistent" time, gently touching on the mystery of the truth of time. Looking up at the wall of the exhibition space, you will discover aligned engravings of years and names, the "real" time and the "real" names, echoing with the ghostly and "nonexistent" ten days.
The Hole of the 'Lunar Seas', Part I: Museum
installation,
glass boxes, stainless steel
The reason why the "seas" of the Moon are named as such is that early observers, seeing the dark regions of the lunar surface, supposed they were seas. This misnomer, based on perception and intuition, has persisted. On Earth, many prehistoric marine organisms have existed and disappeared. Their remnants are preserved as specimens in natural history museums. The artist created glass boxes simulating these display cases, stacked to form columns about 1.8 meters high, establishing an "up and down" relationship with the vaults of the exhibition space. Between the boxes, pseudo-scientific labels are inserted, consisting of three types of names: those given to terrestrial marine organisms, those of the nonexistent lunar "seas," and those discovered in 1582 (the year missing ten days in the universal calendar).
The glass boxes are designed to preserve and display the "knowable objects," just as the museum relies on scientific discourse representing neutrality, rationality, and objectivity. In front of this imposing structure, scientific discourse replaces the sacredness of what opposes it. The number of labels visible through the boxes depends on chance, with the difference in height subtly constructing a sort of "hierarchical classification." Faced with this column, the viewer's vision is determined by a height they cannot choose from birth. The difference in height, which does not participate in the construction of class order in our symbolic reality, echoes the innate identity differences causing various conflicts in social reality. Here, the short may not see the labels at the top, while the tall may only see all these meaningless symbols — an illusion formed by a collage of three types of names of dubious veracity — the equality between words and things.
In the end, only a heap of names remains, onto which humanity projects all its loves and hates.
The Hole of the 'Lunar Seas', Part II: The Cracked Plates
image transfer on stone, sculpture, installation,
alabaster, universal ground
The title of Yukio Mishima's novel "The Sea of Fertility" is borrowed from the name of the "Mare Fecunditatis" on the Moon — a region that seems abundant in liquid, but is actually empty, as the lunar "sea" has no water; it is a crater, a hole. Can we then say that impact craters are the truth behind the name "lunar sea"? The artist transferred images of the "lunar sea" taken by NASA onto the surface of alabaster (a stone that contains water), thus simulating the cracked plates of the "lunar sea." The organic soils of Earth have replaced the inorganic lunar soils to create a simulation of the impact crater. When these two simulations meet, will they open a path to the Real, or will they further push the limits of our understanding towards the impossible?
Self-engulfment of the Black Hole
installation,
Chinese Ink, printers, plexiglass
The moment a person encounters the Symbolic Order and becomes a subject, they are captured by language. If we cannot find the truth of the world through language, then, at all moments when signifiers lose their meaning, or before all symbols are constructed, does the truth exist there? Printers use ink to produce signifiers, ink being akin to a pre-discursive raw material. Just as the subject is subjugated by language, and thus spoken by the Other before they can speak. When the ink engulfs the printer, its internal mechanism is destroyed and it loses all function of producing signifiers, "The raw material I used to produce destroyed my own production," becoming an internal looped black hole. The scanning screens inside the printer, soaked with ink, become black mirrors, reflecting the image of the viewer, leaving behind only the image of oneself.
Before me, the flood; After ME, the language.
© Ugo Casubolo Ferro
The Hole of the 'Lunar Seas', Part III: Grazing the Ghosts
film photography,
photo print on transparent film
The portraits of marine fossil specimens, captured by film photography at the National Musuem of Natural History Paris, have their negatives immersed in the developer (a metaphor for seawater/amniotic fluid), then reprinted in a returning way on transparent films, suspended at the entrance to the underground cave.
Echoing previous works (series The Hole of the 'Lunar Seas'), the portraits of fossils, as re-simulations of reproductions, have not been preserved in the simulation of the museum's glass boxes, but rather dispersed as intangible and mysterious objects, floating in the air like specters, their forms almost transparent, waiting in the corridor. To continue exploring the exhibition, visitors must pass among these ghosts, barely touching them. How many ghosts, in the process of "knowing" the world, have always been beyond the possibilities of knowledge, infinite, condemning us to eternal defeat? At the moment we cross the threshold of the history museum, is it us who visit the ghosts, or is it the ghosts who gaze back at us?
The bodies of the spectators also participate, the contact of the skin with the photos providing a corporeal effect, which the artist calls Corpo-Réel, a word she invented, a homophone of the French word "corporel," composed of "corps" (body) and "réel" (real).
Endless conversation: Filling the hole
interactive sound installation
telescope, sensor, arduino
The telescope is oriented towards the position of the black hole in space at level 0 (Self-engulfment of the Black Hole). Inside the lens is a hidden interactive sound program, where two AI-generated characters discuss the question, "Is this world real?" The conversation lasts six minutes and is entirely generated automatically by AI, traversing the fields of physics, philosophy, mythology, etc., condensing millennia of human understanding of the world. The last sentence of the conversation connects back to the first, creating an endless loop, a sonic Möbius strip, an endless conversation.
As soon as the sensor inside the telescope detects a person in front of it, it immediately stops the sound transmission. It seems that a microcosm exists inside the telescope, where the viewers are not observers but the observed. The inspiration comes from quantum mechanics experiments and the "observer effect."
© Ugo Casubolo Ferro
EVENT HORIZON
installation
LED neon
“AND WHEN DOES IT START AND WHEN DOES IT END” — these ten words form a circle, installed on the wall of the cave. In this design, two types of questioning about the “origin” and the “end” are involved. The first question concerns the structure of this phrase itself. Where does this sentence begin? Spectators, placed in the exhibition space, are enveloped 360 degrees by these ten words forming a circular structure, and thus cannot determine the beginning or the end of this sentence from a grammatical point of view. The second question refers to the question posed by the sentence itself: When did all this (the universe) begin? When will it end? Our process of inquiry and knowledge always takes place within the Symbolic Order, just as in this cave space, spectators are enveloped by this endless phrase, and the circular structure forms the extension of the black hole.
Thus, the outline of the “event horizon” is sketched. According to the definition of astrophysics, it is a concept used to name the boundary surrounding a black hole, beyond which no light or other radiation can escape. The end of possibility, the beginning of impossibility.
© Ugo Casubolo Ferro
MIND MAP ( Labyrinths? A vortex? An outer circle around a black hole? ) OF ARTIST’S CONCEPT