Manuel McCarthy Valderrama

TRANSLATING ARTEFACTS: Queering the Being of Things Through Artistic Practice

CHAIRS is a multi-format installation that reflects on artefacts through their function and materiality. The project explores the possibilities of different futures that come with challenging the utilitarianist and capitalist systems, through action, collaborative processes, and interaction. The installation contains three elements: an interactive sculpture, an artist’s book, and a video performance. It is completed with an in-person performance between a human performer and a chair performer. The project is centred on chairs as an object of research which, through useless use, becomes queer, for it is twisted and unaligned from its original purpose. This new possibility of queer objects comes with agency, the ability of forming discourse and being listened to, and ultimately challenging their Being. These new agents broaden the network of actors, relationships, and actions, challenging the anthropocentric relationship between subjects and objects to develop into a more democratic one. As a project undertaken in the context of academia, a written text has been developed with the piece, which has also become part of the practice itself. This aspect aims to explore the boundaries between research and practice in the arts, and whether the object of research can become the thesis itself. Can a thesis be a chair? Can a chair be a thesis?