{"id":78685,"date":"2026-09-08T07:34:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T05:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/?p=78685"},"modified":"2026-09-06T12:25:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T10:25:40","slug":"subir-escaleras-mecanicas-bajar-escaleras-de-caracol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/subir-escaleras-mecanicas-bajar-escaleras-de-caracol\/","title":{"rendered":"Ascending Escalators, Descending Spiral Staircases"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s August in Barcelona \u200b\u200band the extreme heat overwhelms my senses. I\u2019m in the Vapor Vell library in Sants, where I appreciate the presence of air conditioning in public spaces. I\u2019m facing a window that gives me a direct line-of-sight to the Tibidabo Amusement Park, built on the foothills of the Collserola mountain range, the highest point in the city. Behind me lies Montju\u00efc, another of Barcelona\u2019s hills, where an amusement park once stood whose name also coincided with the mountain it sits on but which has since been transformed into parks and gardens.<\/p>\n

I am in the in-between space<\/em> of these two points in the city, places that once were, or still are, organized by structures and machines in motion and bodies in altered, disoriented states.<\/p>\n

In recent months, I have been investigating precisely these kinds of in-between spaces<\/em>, where planes come together and create creases, intervals, voids. Brazilian artist Lygia Clark<\/strong> called that which emerges from such an intermediate space a Linha Org\u00e2nica<\/em>, a structure that acts as a membrane, a line that instead of separating actually articulates spaces.<\/p>\n

This research project, carried out with the support of the Juncal Ballest\u00edn Grant from the Artium Museum, seeks to analyze how Susana Solano, \u00c1ngeles Marco<\/strong>, and Lygia Clark address transitional states in their sculptural practices, utilizing ideas such as instability, contagion, vertigo, and deformation.<\/p>\n

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Lygia Clark, Caminhando<\/em>, 1963<\/p><\/div>\n

The research also seeks to understand how the materials present in their works, such as iron, rubber, and metal, can be interpreted in relation to the historical and political contexts of the democratic and anti-democratic moments they experienced in both Spain and Brazil.<\/p>\n

I use Clark\u2019s Linha Org\u00e2nica<\/em> as a tool to develop this research, like a flashlight that allows me to reach greater distances in the dark or as a glove that protects me from sharp surfaces and abrasive toxins but which, thanks to the malleability of the material it is made of, still retains its sense of touch.<\/p>\n

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Susana Solano, La linterna I<\/em>, 2002-2003. Collection: Parque del Prado. Vitoria-Gasteiz Town Hall<\/p><\/div>\n

This work is an elastic structure that takes shape but then is deformed, subverting geometric logic and becoming topology, in which the border between inside and outside, self and other, is fluid.<\/p>\n

Linha Org\u00e2nica<\/em> also allows me to invert the usual meaning of art history, shifting my gaze from a trajectory that traditionally starts in Europe and moves to Latin America. I go back and forth, reading Solano and Marco from the perspective of Clark[1]<\/sup><\/a>This research draws on the ideas presented by Irene V. Small in her book The Organic Line: Toward a Topology of Modernism<\/em> (Zone Books, 2024).<\/span><\/span>