Blackout
Allora & Calzadilla
Allora & Calzadilla
artwork:
Blackout, 2020
Copper, ceramic, iron, steel, oscillator, speaker, vocal performance
139 x 262 x 129 cm
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
performance:
mains hum, 2017
Vocal performance, directed by Donald Nally, based on a score by David Lang
Produced by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and performed by the Brouwer Choir and ESAD on the occasion of the exhibition “Abundant Futures” at C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía
Performance view: Allora & Calzadilla, mains hum, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía C3A, Córdoba, Spain
Photo: Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza | TBA21
Allora & Calzadilla
Blackout, 2017
Copper, ceramic, iron, steel, oscillator, speaker, vocal performance
139 x 262 x 129 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Installation view: Allora & Calzadilla. Blackout, MAXXI, Rome, Italy, 2018
Photo: Luis do Rosario | Courtesy the artists | MAXXI, Rome
- Date
- 2017
- Medium
- Copper, ceramic, iron, steel, oscillator, speaker, vocal performance
- Dimension
- 139 x 262 x 129 cm
- Credit
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
- This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Details
The relics of an electromagnetic transformer that exploded in Puerto Rico in 2016, causing a lengthy power outage and complete blackout across the country, are reimagined by Puerto Rico–based artist duo Allora & Calzadilla as an instrument that reproduces energy flows. Ceramic insulators and transformer coils form an amorphous mass of electrically charged copper assembled into a monstrous power station of sorts. The pieces were acquired from the chronically underfunded Aguirre Power Plant in Salinas, which is operated by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority—one of the largest bond issuers responsible for the current 74-billion-dollar debt burdening Puerto Rico’s economy.
Blackout’s frayed, mangled, and corroded body presents a state of material and sonic decomposition. It expresses the depraved political, financial, and environmental network that weaves energy production and debt, embodying economic distortions, structural disfunction, and legal maladjustments.
mains hum is a series of vocal actions created in collaboration with the conductor Donald Nally and the composer David Lang that explores the mains hum—the continuous, low humming that buzzes from old or improperly grounded electrical transformers. The composition uses a quote by Benjamin Franklin, only the words remain indecipherable, transformed into a system that controls the music. The quote reads: “In going on with these Experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig’d to destroy! If there is no other Use discover’d of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble.”
(Text written by TBA21 and used as wall label in the exhibition "Abundant Futures", C3A, Córdoba, 2022)
