Vernacular is pleased to present the solo exhibition, The Intermittent Movement of Speech Acts, featuring the site-specific work of Mexico-based Argentinian artist, Valentina Díaz. 

Díaz’s practice outlines a mechanised language that conjures abstract geometry, body, and rhythm. With a 1960's knitting machine inherited from her grandmother, she employs the obsolete manual technology to encode mental states. Her work focuses on the production of woven fabric and characters that serve as the impetus to performances in which the relationship between human and machine, emotional time and the time of a metronome, frequently appear in friction. In her pieces, the structural knitting pattern forms a graphic score that guides the movement of each of the characters while simultaneously exploring the structures associated with a range of processes of diverse complexity. Continuous translation operations, fictional scenes, movements of variable repetition, and elements reinforcing the mechanisms of control within the body, make up this unique structural system in order to understand and experience emotional, physical and mental states. Together, the pieces and performance work as a ritual, one that begins with the artist, from within her thoughts, her body, her knitted time, and is carried out by another body that becomes the next gear of the system. 

Derived from the existing piece /A Å Æ )A(, the new work is conducted in a theatrical setting to foreground the metaphor of ritual. In addition to the video and drawings, The Intermittent Movement of Speech Acts stages a piece of live installation activated by performances. 

A Note on The Intermittent Movement of Speech Acts

written by Jo Ying Peng

intermittent 

adjective

: starting, stopping, and starting again : not constant or steady

The intermittent is its rhythm. 

The intermittent brings friction. 

The intermittent breaths its own balance. 

The intermittent conjugates the forms. 

The intermittent verbalised A Å Æ )A(. 

The intermittent speaks for its moves. 

The intermittent is scripted by the emotional process. 

The intermittent is woven by the metronome.

The intermittent doesn’t have to belong to the metronome but with it dance. 

The intermittent starts at ________, stops at ________, then starts again at________.

movement

noun

1 : the act or process of moving

   : ACTION, ACTIVITY —usually used in plural

2 : TENDENCY, TREND

3 : the moving parts of a mechanism that transmit a definite motion

To left, to right, upward, downward, onward, backward.

The TYPEWRITER and the KNITTING MACHINE are choreographed by the HAND. 

The movement is written through the dialogue between the machines and the human beings. It is to be: a river, a ritual, a constant and unrepeatable trajectory, a counter-clockwise direction, a series of moves from one place to another and try to hold the rhythm indicated by the metronome. 

The metronome gives the heartbeats for the movement. 

speech

noun

1 : a spoken expression of ideas, opinions, etc., that is made by someone who is speaking in front of a group of people

2 : the ability to speak

3 : spoken language

There is no smoke without fire; there is no speech without tongue.

Tongue

noun

: a fleshy movable muscular process of the floor of the mouths of most vertebrates that bears sensory end organs and small glands and functions especially in taking and swallowing food and in humans as a speech organ

The first tongue delivers the characteristic. 

The second tongue translates the resistance. 

The third tongue vibrates the relationship between the human and the machine. 

One by one, repetitively, orderly, steadily. 

Then the last tongue codifies fate. 

act

noun

1 : something that is done

2 : one of the main divisions of a play or opera

The act is scripted by the score.

The score is

to encode the river (the movement). 

to encode the exchange. 

to encode the tongue (the speech).

to encode the inked choreography. 

to encode the written flow.

The score is the presentation of the methodology of The Intermittent Movement of Speech Acts. 

* The definitions of the vocabularies are sourced from Merriam-Webster.

Valentina Díaz (Tucumán, Argentina - Mexico City, Mexico) 

She studied Visual Arts and Fashion Design in the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (Argentina 2011- 2014). Participated in the SOMA Educational Program (Mexico 2016-2017) and the Escuela Flora (Colombia 2019). She received a grant from Talleres de Producción y Seguimiento de Obra del Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2012-2014). She was awarded the Travel Grant of the Oxenford Collection (2015), the Prince Claus Fund Mobility Prize (2017), the Beca Creación Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2017), and the Beca Formación Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2019) and the sponsorship of the Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo to print the book The Room of the Language or the Language of the Room (2020). She is studying a Master’s Degree of Visual Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Among her major exhibitions are: Continuity is just a mathematical technique to approach things of very fine grain (Flora ars+natura, Colombia 2019), We are not the river (El Galpón, Argentina 2019 / Marso Foundation, Mexico 2021), /A Å Æ )A( (Squash editions, Mexico 2019), The room of the Language or the Language of the Room (Museo Experimental el Eco, Mexico 2018), The Movement is not on the Screen (SOMA Mexico, Mexico 2018), Tide Effect. The Link Urgency (Salón Nacional de Arte contemporáneo, Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina 2017), How to do Things with Words? (Domicilio Conocido, Centro Cultural Tlatelolco, Mexico 2016), Sequel to a fragment (Rougés Cultural Center, Argentina 2015), Crater (Subsuelo Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Argentina, 2015). 

Room 1

The Intermittent Movement of Speech Acts

Natural wool, acrylic yarn, branch, ceramics, copper tubes, needle, bench, metronome and performance

Dimensions variable

2022

Performance: Robert Clay Harris, Eulalia Prisco, Jesús Octavio Gómez Rivero

Branch: Irak Morales

Room 2

Hand

Print by typewriting on paper

23.5x100cm

2022

Hole

Print by typewriting on paper

23.5x100cm

2022

Score

Print by typewriting on paper

23.5x100cm

2022 

Room 3

/A Å Æ )A(

Video installation

Dimensions variable 

11 minutes

2022

Camera: Sébastien Capouet 

Edit: Sebastián Agulló

Performance: Olmo Cuña, Jorge Lopera

/A Å Æ )A( was a performance developed for Squash Editions in 2019

The Intermittent Movement of Speech Acts

Management and Guide: Alberto Perera 

Installation: Todo Woooow

Lighting: Lauri Abad

Copy Edit and Translation: Ashley Casillas, Carla Lamoyi

Documentation: PJ Rountree

Curated by: Jo Ying Peng 

Special Thanks to: 

Sebastián Agulló

Alejandra R. Bolaños

Javier Velázquez Cabrero

Sébastien Capouet

Eva Cárdenas

Pamela Desjardins

Gabriela Gallardo

Rosario Guillermo

Joshua Jobb

Jorge Lopera

Irak Morales

Alejandra Mosig

Elva Peniche

Sara Restrepo

Paola Uribe Solórzano

Ximena Tafoya

Ana g. Zambrano