SYNCHRONIZED PROJECTION AT NAUTICAL SUNSET 

During the confinement, Esther Rodríguez-Barbero generated a series of messages that emerged as a response to the fear of contagion, to other bodies, to the pain of those who were unable to say goodbye to their loved ones and to what it means to go through an illness without one of the basic tools of care, touch. In addition, she projected these messages from home onto the street, with the idea of bringing the bodies out into the public space and making visible what was happening in the meeting spaces, which had suddenly been annulled. To take it outside. The images resulting from these actions are published on Esther Rodríguez-Barbero's Instagram.

​

As a result, she proposed a synchronised collective action, in which several people projected these messages simultaneously on the outside of their homes for a total of 20 to 30 minutes. The date chosen was 21 June, at the time of the Nautical Sunset, which starts at 22:20h. A day of a new moon with a solar eclipse and which heralded the arrival of summer.

​

The nautical sunset is the interval when the sun passes from 18 degrees to 12 degrees below the horizon. It marks the limit at which we can distinguish the maritime horizon. This is the moment when the nautical stars that formerly allowed us to know the location in the middle of the sea start to be seen. The moment when they could know where they were in the middle of the cosmos. To say: we are here. It is still day and at the same time it is night. A moment of a blurred border. A moment of synchronicity in which two events happen at the same time. As is an eclipse. Syn-chronos. The time of things happening at the same time. For several events to happen at the same time they must be located at different points in space, each occupying a place. There is a slight distance. Since not all of these points can be observed simultaneously, knowing that the same event is happening elsewhere in the world is in some way an act of faith. There is no immediate response. What is beyond is a kind of confidence that somewhere else something else is happening.

​

On the day of the eclipse I started by projecting a sentence Blanca had sent me: ENTRAS ENTRAS EN BARRIZAL DE LUZ A LAS VEINTIDÓS VEINTE. At the same time the beam of light from the projector was coming through the window of a house in the centre of Madrid that has been empty all this time. On the façade of another empty building, a hotel that has been for sale for more than 20 years in a small French town 1250 km away (a 258-hour walk), Olga projected OS DESPLAZO EL PENSAMIENTO, OS HUELO EL FUTURO. The hotel was called “le lion d'or”, le lieu où on dors, the place where one sleeps. That same phrase on the façade of Oscar's neighbours in Barcelona. This was about time, about opening a temporary gap to enter a suspended state where the hours pass without warning. Before the world stopped. After having read that book that moved everything. I MOVE THE PRESENT. Something must have moved, yes. When in the river of Madrid Lara took out all the sentences, put them in the centre and together with Sergio and Cecilia read them out loud one after the other. The little bodies rumbled, she says. An incantation for the eclipsian movements of the solstice. To conjure is to invoke the presence of the absent. Those who are no longer here. JE T'ACCOMPAGNE SUR LE SEUIL. It moves from one surface to another, Francis moves it along the walls of the house, the leaves of the tree, the garden, until it reaches the wall that protects the Cistercian abbey of Auberive. JE VOUS ECOUTE EN SILENCE. I LISTEN TO YOU IN SILENCE.

It travels to Barcelona, to the wall of María's terrace, to the terrace of her neighbours across the street, to the wall of Cristina's house across the street. I'll take a shower later, says the neighbour, and Cristina gives her another sentence. On the rooftops of Madrid I WOULD PIGMENT ALL THE PICTURES IN YOUR EYES, Elena said. And all the rooftops have been dyed in other colours that still have no name. So then I put Lucia's phrase in front of the girls who were looking out of the first one and they started to clap their hands. MY LITTLE FINGER TINGLED. In the meantime, Adaline made a fire with some friends on a terrace in Brussels. In front of the solstice fire and in the pouring rain, imagine how the particles of the fire carry that connection much further. I GO THROUGH THE RING OF FIRE. From somewhere Angela projects onto some surface. Somewhere, where it catches her. The girls on the first floor clap again, I GIVE YOU ALL THE DIRT, says Blanca from the front balcony. That's what it's going to be in the end. That the cycles close. That the wonders of the world open up. That without us even realising it, thousands of events happen at the same time. That the particles of the cosmos filter tiny from one window to another, from one retina to another. I don't know where the future will find us. Wherever it is, at the moment you are reading this, I will be thinking of you.

​

2022. Research  Diálogos entre pandemias. Rut Martin

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Rodriguez-Barbero-Esther-Mensajes-Corporales-2020_fig1_365263058

​

2022. Mensajes corporales aparece citado en 'De Paseo por los  limbos'  de Anna Adell:

https://www.wunderkammer.es/libros/de-paseo-por-los-limbos-anna-adell/

​

2021. Publication:

https://www.lacaldera.info/es/publicaciones/mensajes-corporales

​

2020. Art & research UCM Congress:

https://www.ucm.es/arteinvestigacion/esther-rodriguez-barbero-mensajes-corporales-