Victor Hugo, in the book The Man Who Laughs, describes a strange episode of sea storm in which the ocean is assaulted by sudden outbursts of phenomenological creativity. Victor Hugo calls this occurrence Magnetic Effluvium. It is a meteorological phenomenon that, as a possibility, manifests itself as a multiplicity irremediably inscribed beyond human knowledge: the very title of the storm chapter, The Laws That Are Outside of Man, poses this epistemological problem. We must also consider that this fiction proposes a limit, a categorical interdiction when the same phenomenon coincides with the suppression of the characters who are helplessly watching the storm. Here there remains an unequivocal and fundamental relationship between multiplicity, say, totally heterogeneous (where human understanding can only conceive of the inconceivable) and the thought of Being as Being, ontology.
First of all, we must have a clear perception that the occurrence of an unexplained phenomenon like the Effluent, requires hypothetical thinking. In a fiction of this kind, we verify the following: it is not the questions of scientific approval raised that need an answer, but above all, the important thing is to give an answer (make the subject available) to the question of the essence of the problematic and to pass the question: how can the Effluent exist? For: what are the implications of the existence of a phenomenon inappropriate to knowledge when this interdiction is the essence of the enigma?
Thus, it is expected to find the way in which a fictitious scientific proposition will constitute a genuine movement towards the foundation of a certain scientificity.
Eflúvio Magnético
— by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva
ZDB presented the second part of the Eflúvio Magnético project, which included new works by the duo João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva in media as diverse as photography, 16mm films and installation. Within the scope of the exhibition, the second issue of the magazine O Eflúvio Magnético was launched and the Efluvian Cinema Cycle was programmed, which provided the possibility to review classic references of the work of this duo.
João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva
João Maria Gusmão (1979, Lisbon) and Pedro Paiva (1977, Lisbon) have graduated in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon and exhibited together since 2001. They were awarded the 2004 EDP New Artists Award, and represented Portugal at the 2009 Venice Biennale, curated by Natxo Checa. They held individual exhibitions at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham; at the Mercer Union Center for Contemporary Visual Art in Toronto; no Kunstverein Hannover; at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco; in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León, in Leon; at the Chiado Museum in Lisbon; at the Graça Brandão Gallery in Lisbon; among others. They also participated in several collective exhibitions, in Portugal and abroad, in which the 8th Gwangju Biennial in South Korea stand out; and the XXVII Biennial of São Paulo. His works are represented in the collections Tate Modern, MUDAM (Luxembourg), MUSAC, GAM (Bergamo), Serralves Foundation, Chiado Museum, among others.