Be a Pattern for the World

Be a Pattern for the World is a think tank collaboration between Piscine and the artist duo Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas. The collaboration takes the form of nine banners, a video and a clothing line. The project was first presented at Alt_Cph18, Copenhagen’s Alternative Art Fair, in Denmark. After the fair, the collaboration was shown at the Institute for New Connotative Action in Portland, United States, as well as at The Poor Farm, in Wisconsin, United States, as a part of The Great Poor Farm Experiment 2018.

Be a Pattern for the World circulates around the concept of the chameleon. The chameleon as an abstract machine: “The chameleon, maybe. It hovers, as a turbine. An object can be monitored better by the turbine. These days anything can be imitated.” The chameleon most of all stands for shape-shifting and adaptability. Adapting patterns of a given environment, while at the same time creating new patterns in the given space. The ability of changing one’s appearance as a response to one’s surroundings. What can be seen and what cannot; blending in and standing out; becoming distinct while also becoming part of the given space. The chameleon is the abstract machine which initiates a production of subjectivity in the relation between the individual and the surroundings, the figure and the background, the shape and the pattern, as well as the singular and the univocal. And what then?

“Conversely, the Venetian nobles are said to have set no fashion, for according to law they had to dress in black in order not to call the attention of the lower classes to the smallness of their number. Here there were no fashions because the other element essential for their creation was lacking, a visible differentiation from the lower classes being purposely avoided.” – Georg Simmel

Read a conversation between Piscine, Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas about the project at IDoArt here: https://www.idoart.dk/blog/be-a-pattern-for-the-world.

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Exhibition views, Alt_Cph18

Be A Pattern For The World. Video. Piscine, Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas. 2018. Presented at Alt_Cph18.

They Stood High Under The Handkerchief. Banners. Piscine, Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas. 2018. Presented at Alt_Cph18.

Clothing presented at Alt_Cph18.

Exhibiton views, Institite for New Connotative Action

Be A Pattern For The World. Piscine, Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas. Presented at Institute for New Connotative Action in Portland, Oregon.

Be A Pattern For The World. Presented at Institute for New Connotative Action in Portland, Oregon.

Be a Pattern for the World. Presented at Institute for New Connotative Action in Portland, Oregon.

Clothes line presented at Institute for New Connotative Action, Portland, Oregon.

Examples of Collaboration in Nature (and Culture), print, Bergman & Salinas, 2018, presented at Institute for New Connotative Action.

Exhibition views, The Poor Farm

They Stood High Under The Handkercief, banners, Piscine and Bergman & Salinas, 2018. Presented at The Poor Farm, Wisconsin.

Installation view, Be a Pattern for the World, Piscine and Bergman & Salinas, 2018. Presented at The Poor Farm, Wisconsin.

Be a Pattern for the World, video, Piscine and Bergman & Salinas, 2018. Presented at The Poor Farm, Wisconsin.

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Copyright and courtesy of Piscine.

Photos by Rine Rodin, Alejandra Salinas & Aeron Bergman.

Supported by Københavns Kommune & Snabslanten.