The Trade Secrets of a Long Distance Relationship
Michelle Padeli, Kyriakos Theocharous
Curated by Evagoras Vanezis
5 Kyriakou Matsi Str., Palouriotissa
19 March - 10 April 2022
[...]
Trade secrets are a kind of intellectual property
which include:
formulas, practices, procedures,
designs, instruments, patterns -
(or combinations of information)
which have intrinsic [sic.] economic value,
because:
-they are not generally known or
-they cannot be easily identified by others
(and which the owner takes reasonable steps to keep secret.)
[…]
The exhibition "The Trade Secrets of a Long Distance Relationship" gathers works created using the concept of “liquid bodies" as a starting point. Liquid bodies interact mainly within temporal flows instead of the spaces they happen to occupy. Unexpectedly, the works negotiate the temporal, spatial and emotional textures of the experience of lockdown, where the condition of confinement amplified the perception of space as time that passes, accumulates, and is lost.
The artistic practices focus on process and flow, gesture, the use of new technologies (such as various applications that record how and where we move), and the use of materials that have the function of a filter. The works comment on desire mechanisms in contemporary society, the feeling of uncertainty possessed by financialised subjectivities and the vulnerable body in the face of social and physical events that it does not control.
The term 'trade secrets' is given a poetic tenor and is in turn used as material for practices of resistance within an environment of generalised anxiety disorder.
