Alexandre Estrela: RedSkyFalls @ The Wattis Institute

RedSkyFalls is a multi-part installation by Lisbon-based artist, Alexandre Estrela, for the Portugal Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The work on view in Venice comprises multiple video projections that are reactive to seismic activity, from tremors to earthquakes. Every time seismic activity is registered in locations around the world, 24 hours a day, the tectonic movements are made visually and aurally manifest. A loud sound erupts and the movements within the projections temporarily freeze, mimicking the ways in which organisms become perfectly still during seismic shifts. RedSkyFalls is meant to be an “amplifier of empathy,” drawing our attention to even the smallest seismic movements happening around the world rather than simply large-scale earthquakes. Thus, the jittery movements and amplified noises remind us that the plates just below us are always in constant motion, impacting the lives of all living things on Earth.

In partnership with the project at the Venice Biennale, institutions in seismically active sites around the world will display one of the Réplicas (larva) — an aluminum plate containing an image of an artificial creature engraved into its surface — from RedSkyFalls. The Wattis Institute is one of these collaborators, along with MALI in Lima, Peru; MUAC/UNAM in Mexico City; REDCAT in Los Angeles; and Galeria Zé dos Bois in Lisbon, Portugal. Seismic activity affects the behaviors of the animated beings depicted on each of the aluminum plates. When a seismic event occurs, they react like other living things, and become completely still.

RedSkyFalls is curated by Ana Baliza and Ricardo Nicolau for the Portugal Pavilion at Fondaco Marcello for the 61st Venice Biennale. The presentation at the Wattis is organized by Daisy Nam, director and chief curator and MacKenzie Stevens, deputy director.