“Planetarium I”

Collective performance by Jorge Restrepo,

With sound-art by Walter Suazo

Jorge Antonio Espinosa, documentation

How did Atlas, the mythological being upon whom the cruel joke of having to bear the Earth's weight upon his shoulders, feel about his burden?  The Earth's rotation on its axis and its trajectory around the sun are things we generally do not give much thought to, much less feel responsible for.

In an environment of strict academic rigor, what could a professor at Zamorano University possibly be aiming for in pulling an auditorium full of students out of their dress code and routine, to keep a bunch of little black pingpong balls in the air?

Planetarium puts in the hands of each student of the Human Resources class three of these little balls.  Throughout the following week, they familiarize themselves with the spheres, their weight and form, and become adept at juggling them and keeping them in midair, throwing them up and catching them over and over again.  At the end of the week the work culminates in the classroom where, during the four minutes of sound composed specifically for this piece by Suazo, the students, attired in black, keep their spheres in orbit, thus recreating a complex planetary system in which everyone embodies for a few brief, yet seemingly eternal moments, the mythical Atlas.

Restrepo's art has the habit of altering the order of things.  They are not simple paintings that one can observe from a safe distance; from here to the wall.  These are works that leave us asking ourselves where the line that divides the piece from the audience has gone (if such a line even exists.)  The participants along with their emotions, gestures, and expressions disappear into the black happening hole and are dissolved, set free from all preoccupation, fully embodying the experience of collective art  in which the audience and the artwork are one.

From the vantage point of the documenter (questionably the only one in a spectator's position) I can clearly see how each individual effort at keeping the ball in the air gets woven into a choreography of organized chaos and joins the pulsing of Suazo's composition, which emanates the syncopated beat of this miniverse's heart.

It is common knowledge that when it comes to conceptual art, the idea is what matters most, and the execution (in this case particularly ephemeral) serves as an impermanent vessel for the concept.  Professor Restrepo, playing the twofold role of teacher and artist, arms himself with this under utilized tool commonly reserved for a small (and in the case of Honduras, tiny) elite, to teach his students.  One learns concepts, memorizes them, occasionally even applies them, but this kind of experience leads to a complete internalization of the idea, in such a way that it becomes part of one's being, like bones, or skin.  But what idea is being incarnated here?  And to what end?

We (humanity) have walked irresponsibly and without conscience on the face of the Earth, and we are changing the planet to the point of making it uninhabitable even for ourselves.

The photographic document bears witness to the hope, expectation and wonder with which the student releases the ball, gazing upwards following it along its orbit, waiting for its homecoming, only to launch it back into the air, over and over again.  Despite the exhaustion, neck pain, redundancy, fumbling, in that moment, the responsibility and concern for that ball's destiny are fully experienced by each and every one.

When it’s over the student, by now exhausted, expressing a renewed respect for nature and the universe, with words we all know, but with a sparkle in the eyes that indicates a profound understanding of this ancestral thought, says, "the fate of the planet is in the hands of its youth."

Zamorano, San Antonio de Oriente,

Honduras,October 27, 2008