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Adrian MELIS_currículum vitae
Importaciones, Lote Nº 1 (Importations, batch Nº1) considers the rules governing the importation of products into the territory of the Republic of Cuba. The introduction of certain typologies of commodities, especially computing hardware, is prohibited by the law. In reaction to this official decree, Melis proposes to break apart technological artifacts into pieces, so they can be removed from the category of functional objects and enter easily the country. A container collects some objects dismantled by the artist, who identified each separate component to facilitate the reconstruction once introduced in Cuba thanks to the complicity of people that will carry them into the country.
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378.890 m2 proyectados / 378.890sqm projected
378.890sqm planned‘s point of departure is the activity of Cuban companies that produce materials for construction. Noticing the discrepancy between the companies’ planned productivity and their true balance, Melis calculated the difference between the prognostics and the real results and virtually used the unproduced quantities to elaborate a model of what could have been built if the production plans had been respected.
2012. 244 X 122 cm. Model made of wood and PVC, vinyl |
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Plan de producción de sueños para las empresas estatales en Cuba
Dreams Production Plan for State-run Companies in Cuba
2010 – 2012
wooden boxes, written paper, photographs
20 x 25 cm photographs, 20,5 x 11 x 2 cm each box
In Plan de producción de sueños para las empresas estatales en Cuba (Production plan of dreams for state-run companies in Cuba) the artist focuses on companies that are part of what he designates as “the areas that are most vulnerable to improductivity”. The workers received a notebook from Melis with the instruction to record the dreams they have during their working day, when they fell asleep on the post. In opposition with their unaccomplished official job, the dreams become a psychic production, an active time at the service of another employer: the artist himself – even if here, the contribution is not paid. The written narratives are exhibited into wooden boxes that evoke a manufactured product, ready to be sold. They are shown together with a series of photographs documenting the project and its actors. |
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STOCK
Installation of 20 photos
Digital print on pvc, 25 x 20 cm, 2012
The photographs from the series Stock display another documentary approach to illegal activities. They document the theft of material from under-construction buildings or warehouses. Each image is completed with a note that specifies the quantity and typology of the subtracted material. The words replace what is absent, restituting what has disappeared and reintroducing the indexical condition of the photographic images |
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Momentos que marcaron al mundo
Video, DVD Pal, 3 min, color, stereo, 2012
Momentos que marcaron el mundo (World´s significant moments) juxtaposes the fixed shot of a street in La Habana at the present and the audio archive from the CNN live broadcasting the fall of the Berlin wall, in 1989. This simple disjunction between image and sound suggests the persistence of an ideological system which already fell apart in certain parts of the world, but still conditions life in Cuba.
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Turismo sin documentos (Tourism without documents) Video, DVD color, stereo, 15’, 2011, ed. of 10
The work began with the travel the artist carried out to reach the Kunsthalle Museum in Basel, to exhibit his work. At the time of the travel, Melis didn’t have any valid document to be identified and recognized in any country. This happened because he had been living in Spain more than the period allowed by his visa and his Cuban permission expired too, transforming Melis into an illegal expatriate. The trip planning was completely illegal: crossing borders and escaping from the authorities with the risk of being captured. The travel started in Barcelona, city where the artist is temporarily based in, and ended in Basel, Switzerland, crossing the French and the Swiss borders. Melis did the same route to come back to Barcelona. During the trip, the artist recorded everything happening around him: the passage through different cities, the border crossing, the change of travelling means (trains, buses, cars), conversations with people, ticket managing, the change of languages. The intention was to create a subjective personal vision to generate a document similar to the aesthetic of touristic reportages and videos. The post-productive editing includes a sound track with the voice of the artist narrating what forces him to travel illegally. |
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El valor de la ausencia - Excusas para ausentarse a su centro laboral (The value of absence - Excuses to be absent from your work center) Video installation, DVD color, stereo, 10’20’’ min, 2009-2010, ed. of 10
In Cuba dissatisfaction, indifference and a lack of motivation toward the socialist system of production has led to the phenomenon of making excuses to stay away from work. This attitude is made easier by the flexibility and tolerance demonstrated by governmental enterprises towards their employees. The artist is interested in recording the creative mental process involved in making excuses to avoid work. He took advantage of the lack of motivation and got in contact with a lot of people who would get paid for not going to work. People use the telephone as privileged mean to explain their absence at work because in this way they feel as having a wider range of fake stories they can concoct. The artist’s aim was to compile as many excuses as possible by purchasing the rights to record the telephone conversations. The price paid for one excuse was the same of the deduction applied to the salary arising from the days of absence from work. Thus, the artist generated a community of people who has received the same amount of money that the State would have paid for their productivity; in this case, however, without having to perform a productive task. An excuse may be effective for the period from one day up to a month, or maybe even longer. Excuses could foster periods of absence in different ways: to obtain a given period of absence (one, three or even more weeks, etc.) a worker could use one single excuse or several. The excuses were paid once the period of absence had ended.
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Elaboración de cuarenta piezas rectangulares para la construcción de un piso (The making of forty rectangular pieces for a floor construction) Video, DVD color, stereo, 5’20’’, 2008, ed. of 10
Due to a shortage of materials necessary to carry out the production process, the workers of a governmental company spend their workday just sitting, doing nothing, waiting for the end of the working hours. Taking advantage of this still, empty time, the artist conceived a kind of “working chorus”, with the intention of giving life to the factory, of generating a new form of movement, of a virtual and fictional nature: each worker did imitate the sound of a machine and, together with all the other workers, they gave the impression that the factory was actively producing bricks. During the whole workday - from 8 am to 5 pm - the workers reproduced using their body (mouth, voice, hands) the usual noises heard during the functioning of the factory, such as concrete makers, mixing machines, shovels, trucks and wheelbarrows. The video plays with the ironic contrast between the immobility of the images and the chaotic noise artificially reproduced.
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¿Cómo se construye un almacén? (How is an storehouse built?) Video, DVD, color, stereo, 4’50’’, 2007, ed. of 10
Stowing material, labeling and controlling the outgoing are some of the rules the staff in charge of a warehouse should accomplish. Following home some employees in charge of storage who control the outgoing of materials, it’s possible to find some scattered objects coming from the warehouse. These pieces lie in domestic places in similar conditions to the original storing place. Once found, they are video-recorded with the aim of virtually reconstructing the original space they come from. The factory workers (the owners of the “fragments”) support this visual reconstruction with a sound description of the storing process at the “central warehouse. It results ironic to listen to the employees explaining how it should be the official storing facilities while the camera records the hidden domestic storage full with stolen raw materials.
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Aquí todo el mundo me cuida (Here everybody takes care of me) Video, DVD color, stereo, 5’20’’, 2006, ed. of 10
This video shows a secretly filmed interview to the director of a company. This director suffers from schizophrenia disorders. Actually these disorders allow him in turn to lead a form of management in which he simulates not to be aware of illicit activities. In reality it becomes a kind of tacit agreement among all.
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Vigilia (Night watch) Video, DVD color, stereo, 4’30’’, 2005-2006, ed. of 10
In Cuba some businesses are constantly victims of resources divert, as the governmental wood storage facilities. Taking advantage of the friendly relationship between the artist and the watchman of one of these workshops, Melis stole a determined quantity of wood to build a surveillance post with the intention of locating it inside the same workshop. This building is the result of a paradoxical useful action: the surveillance post was placed in an area meant to control actions similar to the one the artist illegally undertook to produce the post. This post could be used either by the same watchman involved in the wood theft, or by others carrying out the same surveillance function. |
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