The installation “Remains in Suspense, Still” proposed by the artist Orkan Telhan, teaming up with elii architects, consists of an approach to other ways of conceiving time from microorganisms. A proposal in several stages began with the invitation to a group of professionals to share a meal at the Museum during their break from work.
During the meal, questions were exchanged about time management and work, and at the end, they were asked to leave their leftover food. These leftovers remains of a meal shared between people from different contexts, professions, social classes, and worldviews, were preserved in a set of refrigerators that keep the remains in a kind of capsules frozen in time.
During the meal, questions were exchanged about time management and work, and at the end, they were asked to leave their leftover food. These leftovers remains of a meal shared between people from different contexts, professions, social classes, and worldviews, were preserved in a set of refrigerators that keep the remains in a kind of capsules frozen in time.
"What do you usually do during this break?", "How do you manage your stress?", "How much coffee do you drink?", "What do you do when you need to concentrate?" or "What is your favorite energy drink?"
On these refrigerated surfaces, diners' microbes become part of these shared and slowed-down food landscapes. They degrade and mutate. They shift into a state of suspended animation that affects their conservation cycles. They become prolonged "conversations" between microorganisms, nutritional supplements, and people, displaying a plural temporality that belongs to no one. Like remains in suspense, still. At least, while the cold lasts.
Still Remains by elii and Orkan Telhan in the Reina Sofía Museum. Courtesy of Reina Sofía Art Center Museum. October 2023. Photographic archive of the Reina Sofía Museum.
Still Remains by elii and Orkan Telhan in the Reina Sofía Museum. Photograph by ImagenSubliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero).
Within the framework of the Notes for a Time Apart program, elii [architecture office] and Orkan Telhan present the installation Still Remains, which proposes, from a position far from anthropocentrism, an investigation into the microbiome: the community of microorganisms that inhabit a specific environment, both inside and outside the human body, and that is governed by its own logic and time scales.
The microbiome of our guts, armpits, genitals, or mouths could be considered one of our most private landscapes. In it reside our interspecies identities, formed by bacteria, fungi, and viruses living parallel lives, resisting and working 24 hours a day in our daily lives. They withstand the hormones and chemicals secreted by our anxious selves, they withstand the stimulants, amphetamines, and cognitive enhancers that we consume to deal with the stress caused by pending tasks. They strive to adapt to our bodies, increasingly designed to work harder and harder, more efficiently, all the time.
