Maura Grimaldi at Utopiana Residency [CH]

Maura Grimaldi [BR] draws inspiration from the field of geology and by observing the life and time of rocks. During her residency at Utopiana [CH], the artist and researcher brought together reflections on natural sciences and the sphere of pseudoscientific and magical investigations.

Basing her research on the Stone-Tape theory – the idea that elements of nature, like rocks, would be able to record emotions and thoughts just as an audio recorder can register sounds –, she sought a polysemic approach to stones, paying attention to the ways in which they were represented in literature and in the visual arts at different times.

Maura delved into ecotheory and environmental studies, new materialisms, posthumanism, and media archaeology (and geology of media) to question the current economic and social models that legitimise the exploitation of certain bodies (being bodies here, a broad understanding).

Collaborating with filmmaker Patrícia Black, Maura borrowed concepts from geology – such as erratic blocks, disconformity, unconformity, sedimentation, bedrock, and metamorphism, among many others – to slowly create, like stones, a fiction that mixes images captured on 16mm film, 135mm photographs, texts, and drawings, where the materiality of each language is relevant to reflect on the narrative.

An audio-visual project was started during the process, leading to the video-essay «saxa loquuntur», which touches on concepts from natural sciences to address migratory movements and the analogies between human and rocky bodies.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Maura Grimaldi [BR] works as an artist and researcher. Her practice can be analysed from three main general points, as she explains: “The image as a magical and revelatory experience; its ontology; and the technical devices and processes that are involved in its conception, production and reproduction”. Maura’s interest lies in subjects like phantasmagoria, the invisible, the already obsolete photographic technologies, and devices related to the immersive experience of images’ contemplation. Through her recent experiments with 16mm films, she is also taking into consideration themes such as telepathy, possession, influence, hypnosis, dispersion, and non-vigilance/non-wakefulness to think about other relations of body and perception.