r:MNAC - Musa paradisiaca

Musa paradisiaca and the Principle of Restoration
by David Santos

Since 2010 the artistic project Musa paradisiaca creates interventions based on a discursive practice and, in their own words, on “temporary, individual and collective partnerships with entities of varying competence”. The main objective is to construct and amplify “a thinking family, revealed by many voices”. Because of this, dialog and the plural verbalization of forms, matters, symbolics or micro-narratives, constitutes the operative axis that affirms a practice based on discovery and thinking, creating conditions for the drawing of singular cosmologies, resulting from discussion and audition of objects, of themes or concepts which enable the process of relation and communication.

As a “practical philosophy” seeking the invention of a cult and a community, the project follows specific procedures and an ethics of observation towards the object in the symbolic space of art, deliberately mixing the artistic practice, its discourse and the energy associated to the production of thought. Thereby, a sensuality is enhanced, defined by a polivocal contribute of the invited narrators which establishes a parallel dialog defined by the stories of those forms and the materials under discussion.

Departing from the idea of a stomach-thought, as the core of the plot, the project presented in the context of the RAUM platform introduces a new dimension in this conversational and experimental process, brought by the opening, through the anonymity of its participants, to the discourse of the unknown narrator. Within the system of a non a priori controllable network of participants, dependent as it is of the natural and concrete temporality of the web reality, another stage of collaboration is opened, challenging RAUM’s visitors to discuss a “thought” that will not only literally, but also in analogy, pass through the “stomach” and the “digestion” process. These “thoughts” accomplish a sort of dissection, revealed in the truth of those “guts”, simultaneously obscure and transparent, especially when observed in the raw analysis of the sediment of a conversation sustained by the statement “if all may be eaten, all may be thought through the stomach”.

The proposal therefore designed as a Principle of Restoration, further assumes the status of a “first supper” while acting as a double magic of attraction, both by the act of eating together and by the challenge of the meanings in the physical and metaphorical exploration of the meal exercise. Bread will be the “object”, the element of circulation, in the real or symbolic realm, between all the participants, performing that partition, that narrative and communitarian interaction. The thought will rise from this concrete digestion seeking the definition of a formative context, within the progressive integration of the primordial food and the diverse discursive contributions it has inspired. The final conclusion is naturally dependent on either, the appetite, or the boredom of those who meet the challenge of this unique table.