Identifier
16/02/2005 [IDENTIFIER]
The space of routine is the one that needs more care. When the perception of the other’s routine becomes your own research routine, coincidences and exchanges begin to trace a complex spatial system. In this system, where one and the other end up finding each other, the duality of reality and fiction becomes a transit, a mutual dynamic transposition, necessary to the survival of the real.
In Cemig’s headquarters, for six months, every day of intrusive visit is unique, despite promising the opposite: the signs, rules, schedules, identification codes, repetition. A 28-floor building with 10,271 employees and 6,009,987 consumers. Some employees may never have met in this vertical place; architecture of insurmountable numbers, obsessive stacking of placement charts.
10/03/2005 [LITTLE KITCHEN]
Up close, the building is a system of generation, transmission and distribution of human energy. 24 of the 28 floors have a small snack bar in the hallway. As a backbone, these snack places and their respective counters were placed over each other, floor over floor, in the tall building. All of the snack bars have an internal phone and three thermos bottles – sweetened coffee, black coffee, and hot water – available and sell lots of calories. On every counter there is a fruit bowl with apples and bananas wrapped in aseptic plastic: a mirage image of a still life.
In an unexpected encounter in the little coffee break corner on the 19th floor, I hear that the building was built on a ground water table exploited from a well and is accessible through the garden level: underground drinking water suspended until the hanging garden, on the 5th floor. Water and food are sources of energy: I start writing a numerical scale of ENERGY and CALORIES, a menu prototype.
04/04/2005 [EGGSCOPE]
A displacement: at Belo Horizonte Central Market, an electrical experience. The farm fresh egg, unlike the industrially produced egg, is fertilized. From a switch, in a box, let there be light, and eggscopy takes place. The eggscope is used to scan the eggs, discovering its internal defects and selecting those that were not fertilized.
09/05/2005 [HAPPY BIRTHDAY]
The monthly celebration of birthdays, by sectors, is common practice at the Utility’s headquarters: August 22, happy birthday to Antônio, 5th floor. August 23, happy birthday to Fátima, 6th floor. August 31, happy birthday to Maria Lúcia, 13th floor. I managed to get the birthday list, of the employees, for September 18. Routines that suddenly might coincide with mine: Nydia, born in Lima, Peru, on the 18th of September, 1965. In 2005, at CEMIG Art Gallery, I will become 40 years old.
Tuesday is open-air market day in the surroundings of Cemig. But what goes on out there? It is just one more way to write the calendar of the week. A graphic code. Today is Tuesday: a live drawing, a movie in the landscape seen through the glasses. Snacks are on the desk, bought at the floor little kitchen. The sight from the 20th floor is exclusively vertical, “bird’s eyesight”, a mere wink at the short-sighted urban totality.
12/05/2005 [LITTLE KITCHEN HELPERS]
Visiting the little kitchen helpers in a ascending vertical tour, beginning from the underground floor: Maria das Graças and Daniela, Maria de Lourdes and Ana Maria, Lourdes Maria and Alexandra, Fátima, Maristela, Sueli, Viviane, Andréia, Adriane, Rosilene, Janaína, Rozilene, Patrícia, Amanda, Cristiane, Bárbara, Terezinha, Mariana, Danielle, Enilce, Luciana, Eloísa, Helenice and Natália, the latter catering CEMIG’s CEO.
One Maria: on the ground floor, I visit Dona Maria, an old employee, the only one that makes the sandwiches she sells. The others come from the same place: the kitchen on the 21st floor. I want to photograph her, but need an authorization from the nutritionist, and need to wear a hairnet.
13/05/2005 [LITTLE KITCHEN]
The Três Marias Dam is 2,700 meters long and generates 396,000 kW. The municipality of Três Marias has an estimated population of 27,000 inhabitants. Geomorphologically, 10% level, 70% rolling and 20% strongly corrugated. A new hydraulic geography, a new hydroelectric power system and electric comfort. We will listen to Fred Pessoa’s Little Coffee Break Corner RADIO STATION, on September 16, 2005, starting at 4 o’clock, at the CEMIG Art Gallery.
19/08/2005 [HAPPY BIRTHDAY]
Eduardo José, Gabriela, José Cleber, Luciano, Maria Lúcia, Vanilza, Maria and Dilamar, as myself, were born on September 18. 8 birthday people, each one allowed 4 guests. (8 x 4) + 8 = 40. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! A happening for 40 people, beginning at 4PM, at CEMIG Art Gallery, celebrating Nydia Negromonte’s 40th birthday. A renovating action of the space: 6 floors with people who had never seen one another are transposed to the ground floor. 1 chocolate pie, 8 candles. Intermingling of gifts that cost up to R$20.00. Several routines momentarily transformed into one. Identity and unidentification. New routines offered to everyone.
02/06/2005 [RIVER DIVERSION]
At CEMIG library, several displacements without leaving the place, within the photograph collection: the celebration of the diversion of the Rio Preto River for the construction of the Queimado Power Station in 2001. The shutting down of the city, the power generation and the release of the emus, the redesigns of several territories.
06/07/2005 [TOPONYM]
Hydraulic geography: the one that moves by means of liquid under pressure. In the map of Minas Gerais, there are 40 names: Pedra Negra, Macaia, Ponte do Funil, Nova Ponte, Itueta, Resplendor, Chaveslândia, Paranaíguara, Peixe Cru, Três Ranchos, Braúnas, Conceição das Alagoas, Piranguçu, Ijaci, Leme do Prado, Itumirim, Ibituruna, Cristália, Botumirim, Capim Branco, São Simão, Gouvelândia, Sacramento, Itutinga, Piau, Gafanhoto, Porto Estrela, Queimado, Pai Joaquim, Emborcação, Salto Grande, Volta Grande, Sá Carvalho, Piranguçu, Sacramento, Igarapava, Rifânia, Açucena, Cabeceira Grande, Baixo Guandu.
12/07/2005 [FISH STOCKING]
The fingerlings at 45 days of free living go to the stocking tanks. In the tank they are concentrated in one corner, while the tank is emptied. After that, the fingerlings are trawled and removed with the aid of a dip net, and immediately selected for the stocking. The ones selected have to be properly packed for the trip, whether a short or a long route. Care must be taken so as to verify if the temperature of the new water is equal to the temperature in the tank from which they were removed.
11/08/2005 [FISH STOCKING]
The plan was to stock in the Utility’s headquarters’ pond. 50 plastic bags filled with water and oxygen for the transference of the fingerlings: their capture, transportation, acclimation and release. The pond as an architectural element open to serving as fish stocking and therefore open to being seen as in a subjective vertical expanded placement chart, a builder of daily connections.
24/08/2005 [FLOODGATE]
During two days, Marcelo Drummond captured the visual inventory of entrances and exits through the turnstiles of ward B, material for the video FLOODGATE. In the meantime, I get to know Deborah. She answers to denomination SA09B2: SA (headquarters), 09th floor, block B2. Territory of numerical codes, each employee is a number, divided into sectors and floors. Each employee-number is daily recorded at the entrance hall turnstile. The video FLOODGATE turns this order around: played in the reverse mode, the new image sends employees off at their arrival time and brings them back to the building at their departure time. The identity erasures identification, and such superposition bestows imprecision and inaccuracy to the numbers, transforming them into a blurred image.
30/08/2005 [LITTLE KITCHEN]
The LITTLE KITCHEN opened daily, from 11 to 3pm. At that time, the previous daily observation of the stacking of the coffee break areas in the building gave way to a physical transposition that juxtaposes 24 little coffee break corners into the dynamics of a new place, finally institutionalized. It was built in wood, in the Gallery, from the architectural design by Renata Marquez and Wellington Cançado. And then several actions were initiated and executed, with the LITTLE KITCHEN playing the role of distributor of edible energy.
Energy expenditure of 25 kcal on typing 40 words per minute for 10 minutes.
Energy expenditure of 49 kcal on gardening for 10 minutes.
Energy expenditure of 10 kcal on sleeping for 10 minutes.
I kept the supplies and portions in the fridge at my house, to carry them to the exhibition area.
13/09/2005 [LITTLE KITCHEN]
The menu of the LITTLE KITCHEN set at CEMIG Art Gallery offered visitors a list of calories. Gisele, the helper at the migrating little coffee break corner, received a total of 450 units of PORTION, which had to be distributed into all the 7 days her activities had been planned to last. Menu, helper, uniform, signaling, the TRIPTYCH sweetened coffee, black coffee, and hot water: identities among the 25 little coffee break corner.
14/09/2005 [LITTLE KITCHEN]
In the surroundings of the energy system of the LITTLE KITCHEN stood what was referred to as the TRES MARIAS: sealed containers with 10 ml of water, capable of generating 4 watts of power. We need at least 3 units of TRES MARIAS to run the DVD player, placed in the LITTLE KITCHEN, playing the video FLOODGATE.
The PORTION displayed numbers embossed on the cover of the aseptic and opaque takeaway containers. Here, the communication cod is not the taste neither the form nor the consistency of the food, but the specification of its energy value. And the orders should be made following this code, without the possibility of knowing their internal correspondence, which is only one of the forms of embodiment of the kilocalorie.
15/09/2005 [TOPONYM]
In the lobby of the Utility’s headquarters, the TOPONYM intervention: 40 plates hanging from the ceiling complete the existing signs, pointing to an extrinsic geography. A flying parade of names of 40 cities in the state of Minas Gerais that had to be relocated for the construction of dams. An ancient geography, an accumulation in the same place of decades of stories of disorientation and dis-identification is thus re-territorialized.
16/09/2005 [HAPPY BIRTHDAY]
I would like to draw the spatiality of the number 40. For us, numbers are, rather than mere abstractions, generators of space. This aspect of the experienced landscape is certainly not documented in the vertical placement chart. Placement chart of the number 40: ground floor, 6th floor, 7th floor, 8th floor, 9th floor, 12th floor, 14th floor, the dis-location itself. And me: the outside, the huge out there. I am recognized by Cemig through identifier 2876959-4.
17/09/2005 [LITTLE KITCHEN]
The SUPPLY, paper package stamped with the amount of calories it contains, was dissipated by the energy system of the LITTLE KITCHEN for consumption in 5 versions: 83, 100, 115, 152, and 228 Kcal. From sweet cornmeal muffins to peanut cookies, and through regretful words, the kilocalories received, lost or used are not always intentional.