myoo-choo-uh-liz-uhm

In a process of video calls, research and site visits to the rural area of Fundão, Portugal, Lisbon-based sculptor Inês Teles and Porto-based multimedia artist Yota Ayaan developed the collaborative room installation myoo-choo-uh-liz-uhm transforming Espaço Pontes into an arid cyborgian landscape composed of clay and sound. This experimental pairing of artists disembogued into a prosperous interexchange of philosophical discourse on machine intelligence and the interdependence of natural and perceived artificial matter. The title itself, myoo-choo-uh-liz-uhm denotes sound and deconstruction in itself through phonetics and springs from the biological concept of Mutualism describing ecological alliances where two or more different species benefit by simply living together, side-by-side. In the room’s centre is a clay dune from which two towers of metal and electronics arise. Bound to these towers are deconstructed machines, bare and open for maintenance. One can see their intestines, their electronic nervous systems and on and off switches. Beneath them a single speaker lays in the dune with its power source emerging from the sand. Throughout the space, scattered on the ground are various sculptures and interventions by Inês Teles. Clay in its raw and various formless stages, still unpacked or sculpted into semi-dried forms with ponds filled with muddy water. They appear fossil-like, rolled up, dried out or still asleep. Yota Ayaan’s two-channel sound work delivers acoustic dimension through various speakers on the floor and hung from the ceiling which transports this landscape into an unknown realm of time and [outer]space. Numerous electronic cables connect all of these components and bind them together into one united network: a cyborg of earth and machinery taking its first breath. This project was initiated and curated by Dose, a Portugal-based art magazine and curatorial collective. Espaço Pontes hosts the exhibition myoo-choo-uh-liz-uhm in the rural city of Fundão, Portugal. It is a project of ARS – Art, Science and Research – a multidisciplinary research structure with a focus on artistic and scientific emergence, committed to thinking and acting, transversally integrating experiences and proficiencies in knowledge. ARS promotes contemporaneity, fostering artistic and scientific research in an articulated collaboration with the local community, schools and universities, thus establishing an effective connection between art, education, science and culture. Inês Teles Inês Teles (Évora, 1986) lives and works in Lisbon. Teles has exhibited her work internationally. She has a PG-Dip. in Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Arts, CSM and a MA in Painting at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, with a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’ Scholarship. Currently, Teles is doing a PHD funded by FCT to develop research named “Mutable materials, circular experimentation” (reference 2021.05411.BD.), as a collaborator of Vicarte Research Center, at the Sculpture Department at FBAUL. In her work the notion of temporality is understood in the movement of touch between the hand and the materials, in a gesture of transformation of what is given to see. It is the artist’s body that deals with the materials, that manipulates them and “suspends” them in a certain state. This transitory quality of matter is also an axis in Teles’ research constellation, which more recently translates into experiments with reversible materials, which include ephemeral states or reflective surfaces and unstable images that awaken the idea of presence and touch. www.inesteles.pt Yota Ayaan Yota Ayaan (Napier, 1981) is a multimedia artist from New Zealand based in Porto. His practice draws upon sound, installation, research, web hacking and writing. Ayaan recently completed a one year artist-in-residence on Plant Intelligence with PhD Professor of Plant Biology Mariana Sottomayor at the Faculty of Science, FCUP in Porto. The residency led to the exhibition Plant Data at the Museu de História Natural in June 2021. Ayaan is currently producing new works for three forthcoming exhibitions, two of which are in Lisbon in 2022, and 2023. With diverse artistic enquiry spanning the arts, philosophy and sciences, Ayaan’s projects question and reimagine protocols and prototypes for theoretical application into everyday life. His practice explores resistance, problematics and possibility with focus on emerging human and non-human capacities, and natural intelligence beyond the parameters of AI. www.yotaayaan.org Curated by: Dose Funded by: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian