I Collective. Once Upon Unfolding Times

About

In 1851, French physicist Leon Foucault presented the Foucault´s pendulum at the Paris Observatory, a simple experiment to demonstrate and visualize the rotation of the Earth. In order to make the slow change visible, Foucault spread sand on the floor. The tip of the pendulum traced out its current path on the sand. As time passes, an observer would have the impression that the pendulum changes the direction of its swing, while in fact it is the Earth below the pendulum’s plane that rotates. Foucault pendulum is an artifice based on the supposition that, while the world around us is rotating, a single point in the universe–the one from which the pendulum is hanging–is still. As in Foucault’s experiment, societies create a fiction called reality that seems to be immovable.

The steady writing on the sand produced by time is the starting point for a hypnotic tour through a fictional city, in which the individual and the collective merge in order to imagine the possible, enjoy the unpredictable, and write history. With the help of a hypnotist, on weekends throughout Once Upon Unfolding Times i Collective will invite visitors to submerge into parallel universes and take pleasure in envision a city that is constantly being re-shaped by the forces of each community member. Casualties, causalities, futures and pasts compound a history that is not based on the fear of the Other but on the joy of sharing with the others.

Once Upon Unfolding Times has being conceived by Valeria Schwarz and is produced by i Collective. i Collective is an organic, collaborative platform of artists, curators and scientists working in the intersection of art, urban interventions and socially-engaged projects. The group explores the concepts of public realm and communities, experimenting with new models of participation, self-management, creative uses of new technologies and cross-disciplinary methodology. i Collective operates around the world and has main offices in Europe and Latin America. They have realized projects at Manifesta 8 Biennial (Spain), Manifesta 9 (Belgium), 48-Hours Neukölln Festival (Germany), OpenArt Örebro (Sweden), Buenos Aires Museums Night (Argentina), Schmiede (Austria), School of Intermedia Art, and Hangzhou (China) among others.