español

Dislocacion in Kontinuum
Big Pool

Authors: Nicolás Rupcich in collaboration with Emilio Marín

Big Pool is a video about the largest swimming pool in the world, located on the Chilean coast, in San Alfonso del Mar, Algarrobo. It was inaugurated in December 2006. With over one-thousand meters in length, two-hundred and fifty million liters of water and a size equivalent to six-thousand domestic swimming pools, this milestone has entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the world’s unique constructions.

The video which lasts 6:30 minutes records this vast pool using shots that focus on the obvious artificiality of the location. Through the use of framing, it shows the surrounding buildings, the site and its relationship to the geographical environment.
By reducing the field of vision of the numerous symbolic readings that could be derived from this immense pool, we can focus on the artificial condition of this manufactured landscape.

The experience of a beach paradise that this vast pool pretends to simulate does not refer to a specific real space. Instead, this three-dimensional construction is based on an image of reality that has already been altered.

What this project wishes to express is not the degree of manipulation of reality which has already taken place, but to address the concept of hyperreality according to Baudrillard, namely, the phenomenon in which reality has already been replaced by artifice.
The image of palm trees, crystal-clear water and white sand is a convention used for designating “paradise” that travel agencies, hotel chains and advertising, in general, have used to great advantage. This image of nature has been enhanced through the use of software and post-production techniques to create a photograph of a synthetic place that exaggerates the intensity of colors, the definition of shapes and that gives the idea of a perpetually perfect climate.

This massive pool refers to this collective image used to construct reality and is successful at producing a cinematic experience of said reality. A similar cyclical effect is obtained to that which Lev Manovich described about computer interfaces which in the beginning referred to the “desktop” to introduce it to the screen, but which today extends beyond the screen and into real physical space.

Again, this video alters this pool whose origin was an artificial image by enhancing the location as a sign that in itself adds visual impact to the actual images that construct reality.

Nicolás Rupcich 1981

Nicolás was born in Santiago, Chile in 1981, he studied visual arts in Santiago. He has done solo exhibitions in Chile and has participated in collective exhibitions abroad.
Rupcich mainly works with photography and video, his work questions the technical characteristics of the image. He's focus in the subject of artificiality and on the effects that images production has in the construction of our society.

Selected exhibitions:
- Contaminaciones Contemporáneas, MAC USP, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2010.

- Chili, l'envers du décor, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, 2010.

- 7º Biennale of the Mercosur - Projetáveis, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2009.

- Constellations, Beijing Bienale 798, Beijing, China, 2009.

- Designed Territory, Die Ecke gallery, Chile, 2008.

- Automatic, Die Ecke gallery, Chile, 2006.

www.rupcich.cl

/ Created and curated by Ingrid Wildi Merino in Santiago, Chile and curated by Ingrid Wildi Merino and Kathleen Bühler at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland. wildimerino.curatorial@gmail.com