Smack Mellon presents did not feel low, was sleeping, premiering Itziar Barrio’s multidisciplinary trilogy Material (2016-2023) as a site specific installation in the main gallery space. The exhibition comprises film based projects A Demon that Slips into Your Telescope While You’re Dead Tired and Blocks the Light; ROBOTA MML; and Particle Matter alongside a new series of sculptures, some of which are robotic. The exhibition unfolds across multiple screens and objects through speculative narratives and non-linear timelines to investigate the intersections between technology, labor, identity, and matter. Barrio poetically interlaces discourses between a wide array of experts, including: scientists, technologists, fiction writers, actors, a bodybuilder, a robotics engineer, and a composer, as well as non-human agents such as celestial bodies, robots, matter, telescopes, and data. The trilogy is further bound by material elements that exist at the edge of human perception. Brown dwarfs (A Demon), smoke (ROBOTA MML), and gaseous particles (Particle Matter), appear as both specters and substances to demarcate the potentials and limits of human sensing.
A Demon (2019), the first project in this series, shifts between interviews with scientists, aerial footage from NASA’s archive, and dramatized speculative fiction by Janani Balasubramanian, illuminating how those working in science and technology shape common understandings of “objective” information. The film explores the importance of the indeterminate and non-visible, via gaps and fissures in the construction of scientific knowledge. ROBOTA MML (2023) looks at the many valences of work and traces the etymological origins of “robot.” Coined by Czech writer Karel Capek in his science fiction play R.U.R. (1920), the term derives from the word robota, meaning work or forced labor. Barrio relocates R.U.R.’s characters into an indeterminate future-present sensitive to biopower, class consciousness, identity, and gender fluidity. In Barrio’s interpretation, the agent capable of affecting the human psyche appears in physical form as smoke. Particle Matter (2020), made in collaboration with composer Seth Cluett, uses the filmic language of montage to approach its subject rhizomatically. For this film, sound recordings of dust particles were created at the historic anechoic chamber at Nokia Bell Labs, which is considered one of the quietest places on Earth.
Barrio draws the exhibition’s title from one of the robotic sculptures, made with data from her collaborator Dr. Laura Forlano, a social scientist and design researcher. Some of the sculptures are programmed and inscribed with text that Forlano, a Type 1 diabetic, transcribed from the alert and alarm history from her “smart” insulin pump and then annotated with field notes. Composed of the artist’s disused spandex pants and concrete molded from packaging of products that she has consumed, the sculptures invoke desire and an uncanny sense of bodily intimacy through their subtle mimicry of human forms and movements. The title further divulges the exhaustive toll of capitalist labor systems on the body by machines that are increasingly essential for human survival. Following a blurring of boundaries between humans and machines, mechanistic behaviors are internalized into bodily functions as we continuously adapt to technological upgrades. did not feel low, was sleeping poignantly elucidates humanity’s current relationship to technology, which continues to rely on human labor.
Bio:
Itziar Barrio is a multimedia artist based in NYC. She is internationally recognized for her contributions to the intersections of art, film, and technology. Her interdisciplinary, boundary breaking work has been exhibited at art institutions across the United States, Latin America, and Europe including: PARTICIPANT INC (NYC), MACRO Museum (Rome), MACBA Museum (Barcelona), Belgrade’s Contemporary Art Museum, Museo del Banco de la República (Bogotá), Salzburger Kunstverein, and the Havana Biennial. Her monographic exhibition, BY ALL MEANS (2018), was curated by Johanna Burton, and her forthcoming monograph will be published by SKIRA in 2023. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts (NYC) and Sarah Lawrence College (NY), and has lectured internationally. Barrio’s work has been written about in ARTFORUM, Art in America, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, ART PAPERS, and BOMB. Barrio has received awards by NYSCA, the Brooklyn Art Council, Ministry of Culture of Spain, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Spanish Academy in Rome. She is currently a member of the New Museum’s NEW INC incubator, where she began developing the robotics works that will be on display at Smack Mellon.
Image: Installation view of Itziar Barrio, did not feel low, was sleeping. 2023. Image courtesy of Smack Mellon. Photo by Etienne Frossard.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Lincoln Restler, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
did not feel low, was sleeping is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and Brooklyn Arts Fund (BAF) / Charlene Victor and Ella J. Weiss Cultural Entrepreneur Fund sponsored in part by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs(DCLA). Since 2020, Barrio has been developing ROBOTA MML and Particle Matter as a member at the New Museum’s incubator NEW INC.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
The artist would like to thank: Eric Alba, Dr. Lori Allen, Sarah Anderson, Bayyina Black, Benny (La Caverna), Georgina Berrozpe, David Brooks, Dr. Jacky Faherty, Mateo Feijóo, Joanne Flores, Laura Forlano, Lia Gangitano, Steve B. Howell, Chelsea Knight, Tora López, Lisa Messeri, Julia Morandeira, New Museum’s NEW INC incubator, Carolina Olivares, Dr. Stephen M. Pompea, Jessica Rose, Robert Sparks, La TEA Theater, Javier Vaquero Ollero, Rachel Vera Steinberg, Tatiana Tarragó and Alexis Wilkinson.
