Eu através dos vestígios: subjetividade, memória e fragmento no projeto In dreams, de Luis Alvarez

Abstract

This dissertation aims to reflect on the autobiographical character of In Dreams project, created by the Belgian artist Luis Alvarez. The project consists of black and white photographs, made over two decades of banal and everyday records, which were later organized in a type of timeline. In this process, the artist sets your memories in motion, building a mazy and fragmented narrative. Our intention is to investigate a certain biographical trace present there (De Man, 2012; Arfuch, 2010). And think about how the subject behind the apparatus inscribe himself in the images he produces (Foucault, 2004). Our hypothesis is that Alvarez inhabits these images not through his face reflected on the photographic surface, but as a kind of presence marked in absence. We crossed In dreams as if collecting clues, as if we opened doors, as if we put together a portrait through tracks and traces. Starting from Benjamin (2001) we guide our gaze towards a past that is not ours, but rises before us as constellation, through its debris.To that end, we reflect about the place, or rather the non-place where this work parts from, investigating contemporary thought which understands image not as limited to the visual field, but as a landscape made of crossings and dissonances (Agamben, 2009; Ranciére, 2012). It is in this border space that Didi-Huberman (2010) helps us to understand what posture is that which our gaze lets itself be affected by what we see, where the line between researcher and subject is so thin as to what separates dream from reality. In the search for this autobiographical subject, we investigated these images as bodies in motion, noticing the plurality of views and possible readings. However, we seek to give due attention to aspects of assembly and materiality of these images, not only as In dreams construction process, but as media produces thought.