MaMA 

I was sure I would find it here, or at least there.
Instead, it was only a drawing, visible in fragments and larger than the Earth itself.

For the exhibition shadow circuits at MaMA, a field research publication was produced in collaboration with program maker Ruby Reding. This publication brings together various background stories, research methods, and anecdotes that delve deeper into the work on display during the exhibition. Field research (or fieldwork) in a creative sense is closely linked to a regional location and captures a range of ways of perceiving and interpreting, such as writing poetry, taking photographs, and recording sound with a recorder.

The publication is for sale in our showroom and contains contributions from all the artists of Shadow Circuits: Matteo Bettini, Amauta García and David Camargo, Kyra Nijskens, Nabila Ernada, and Á. Birna Björnsdóttir.

I was sure I would find it here, or at least there.
Instead, it was only a drawing, visible in fragments and larger than the Earth itself.

A few years ago as a result of a long and exhausting graduation project, I went for a trip. Carrying my body for several weeks, I moved along a pipeline transporting natural gas that seemed to be barely perceptible in the landscape. This path stretches as far as the distance between my home country and the one I now live in. Along the way, I followed an endless series of poles stuck into the ground, cartographic remains left by mapmakers so they could later find what they had previously hidden on paper.

Gas, like much other matter, travels underground and inside pipes in order to minimize obstacles and unforeseen events. Pipelines improved precarious transport lines that depended daily on weather and road conditions, making travel faster, cheaper, and completely unaffected by local interference: no slope, mud, or snow would stop the movement of matter. Its location would be neutralized and flattened into departure and arrival; the human body that once carried the matter would never grow tired again.

Underground pipelines radicalized an already existing transformation started with trains. But pipes no longer transport people—only things—without bodies involved. Naturally inclined toward the shortest possible path, pipelines create a sealed, frictionless world. In this system, friction is treated as a defect, because it consumes time.

Today, a dense network of pipes of varying size and capacity are buried just a few meters underground and the remains are only marked on the surface by simple stakes. Like a treasure hunt, these sticks are there to make the pipes traceable, and to avoid losing them entirely. Their presence, however, is technical and ambiguous; their plates and numbers are unreadable, turning them into objects transparent to most people’s gaze. The poles point to something, yet hope to remain unseen.

These transport paths, born from maps rather than from the ground, often cross entire mountains, glaciers, lakes, rivers, and human constructions in straight lines without hesitation. For the body, on the other hand, following their pace and direction is sometimes physically impossible. What the pipeline leaves on the ground is purely cartographic: points, codes, and coordinates. The poles are thus tangible remnants of cartography, torn ruins of the map that started the very fabric of our petrochemical energy infrastructures.