Page 21 - The Future Belongs to No One. Eugenio Ampudia

Ampudia.Sleep.Goya.Martí ManenA few days ago we had a conversation about Descartes at work. This text is intended as an introduction to Eugenio Ampudia’s work. Right, let’s go back to the first sentence. An unknown subject (who were we, the ones having the conversation?), a context (‘work’, as if it were something that still exists, an actual place and not a time) and then Descartes appears. Everything would seem to indicate that we don’t work much at ‘work’, the supposed place. The conversation started with Descartes’s most typical phrase, ‘I think, therefore I am’, and went on to the act of sleeping and existence. The act of sleeping. More doubts about whether what was presented as ‘work’ could really be that. It is, and it’s serious.Playing with logic, we tried to reach an incorrect conclusion: if I exist because I think (this is the first catch), then either I don’t exist when I sleep or I think when I sleep. That we don’texist when we sleep is a very difficult argument to make and keep up for long. That we think when we sleep can be argued from a physiological point of view: our brain is working, though not in the same way as that of a good many birds and other animals that have the ability to shut off half of their brain while the other half remains alert to whatever may arise. Surrealism can also be used to support – and extend – the argument that we think while we sleep, taking us to Freud, Lafarge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, on to hypnosis and, if we go on autopilot with the writing-commentary-waffle typical of artistic texts, arriving triumphantly at Walter Benjamin, who can be quoted for just about everything.Now, work – which although not a place is an exceptional temporary situation – involves preparing exhibitions. And it so happens that when in production mode it is interesting to stop and put to ourselves at least one question about the fact that we no longer sleep, that we’re constantly on the alert, that mobile phones have replaced alarm clocks and, voilà, you can receive emails at ungodly hours, go on the social media in a zombie-like state or take up all those nice addictive options offered by the Net and its mechanisms that encourage continuous consumption. We also talked about the social construct of sleep, about the day-night structure and the establishment of sleeping hours as a system linked to the economy: sleeping for a number of hours means that more flexible lengths of time can be21 | EUGENIO AMPUDIA. THE FUTURE BELONGS TO NO ONE YET21 | EUGENIO AMPUDIA. THE FUTURE BELONGS TO NO ONE YET