The Chameleon is a visual archive that presents a series of poetic documents related to some of the tricks we experience in our contemporary lives within semiocapitalism. These tricks express, on equivocal modes, the aim of camouflaging the tracks and marks left on our bodies and in our daily lives by the dominant machinery and its agents, not only from an economic perspective (extractivism and warfare) but also in political and cultural terms (mass media monopolies, jeopardized educational systems and artistic infantilism). These conjuring tricks attempt to make us forget the historicity of our lives, that is, our singular and collective capacity to imagine and build history, not only to remember it. Four “sleights of hand” structure the constellation of poetic documents found in The Chameleon, according to their actions and aims:
- The first trick is Turning Invisible, the possibility of making someone or something disappear.
- The second is Levitation, the capacity to keep events and processes suspended for an undetermined lapse of time.
- The third is Camouflage, the faculty of someone or something of mimicking the dominant part of their context to pass unnoticed and hide from potential enemies or dangers.
- The fourth and last trick is Disguise, particularly the clown costume, a supposedly “well-meaning” version of the previous trick.
We’re not referring here to those who know the art of making others laugh, of making people really happy, but to those who – by means of socially valued roles – pretend to encourage participation but contribute to the proliferation of “non-ideological” discourse, that is, a recombinant, ambiguous and depoliticizing rhetoric which is always sold to the highest bidder. It is possible, of course, to raise the curtain. Come in and see for yourself, welcome to The Chameleon!
Eduardo Molinari / Archivo Caminante, 2014.
Photos: DocAC/2014
