• Light Installation for the National Museum of Decorative Arts. Madrid
• Bulbs, timers and electronic circuit

This piece is an illuminated intervention that occupies the openings of the museum’s facade using a series of LEDs that send the international distress signal in Morse code. Three dots, three dashes and another three dots. S.O.S.

This mayday message, sent by a cultural – and public – institution, is transformed into a sign that represents contemporaneity. An unstable sign and an intermittent signal – intermittent like the content of the museum itself – a container for art that has, itself, become accustomed to living in a state of permanent inconstancy.

The artist, as an intermediary agent of the collective, sends a cry for help regarding a culture in its death throes, using a language as basic as Morse code, a universal language, like the language that art aims to be. In reality, art has always sent signals, but in emergency situations it is necessary to find something more direct, maybe even allowing for the possibility of returning to literality. At the same time, he appeals to a gesture of impotence, to that call for help which, in reality, has already been being sent for a long time, and the reply is always the answer of a boat that knows it is going to be shipwrecked, that knows there are no lights on at the lighthouse, and that no rescue will be forthcoming; that the only possible answer is the one offered by the system, whose reply will only result in indifference and personal profit.

This is the portent of an end fast approaching, or worse still, an endemic swansong that takes the form of an intermittent requiem.

Blanca de la Torre