Destellos súper-atmosféricos y
aproximación de los espectros
Rosa García and Adrián Porcel, 2025.
Performance and installation. Audio, 11 min 11 sec. 7 mirrors, portable radio, hammer, flashlight, and curtain.
Photographs of the installation and performance.
Audio recording.
People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons.
From within.
Ursula
K. Le Guin, 2004 [1]
Destellos súper-atmosféricos y aproximación de los espectros is a performance and installation that delves into the spectral dimension of a systemic power which, from its dematerialized, decentralized, and macro-scale configuration, exerts control and violence over society. At its core, the work constructs a dystopian scenario—a post-collapse reality in which the available media, of an analog nature, refer to subsistence technologies, operational remnants of a declining era. The piece imagines a quantum nature for these structures of power, inspired by Thomas Young’s double-slit experiment. Just as in that experiment, where measurement or observation alters the behavior of the particle, here it is proposed that forms of systemic domination operate at the threshold of the perceptible, and that subjects are incapable of precisely delimiting the effects of their action. The performance, then, takes place within this problematic field of indeterminacy.
The action unfolds in darkness. A single beam of light from a flashlight activates the space, guiding the gaze toward a series of mirrors. One visible mirror faces a hidden one; the others remain offstage, as latent reserves. The flashlight—an object liminal between search and revelation—acts as an agent of visibility, while the mirrors multiply the possibilities of appearance. In this minimal scenography, close to illusionism, a form of critical sleight-of-hand is rehearsed: a system fracturing without leaving evidence of its break. At a key moment, the performer destroys one of the hidden mirrors. The action, however, has no direct witnesses. Only through the illumination is it revealed that the exposed mirror remains intact, surrounded by the fragments of those that were broken. This operation simulates a non-linear logic of collapse, where damage does not register on the expected surface and traces of the violent act cannot be clearly traced. The irony lies in the explicit witness of destruction, yet the absence of evidence to assign blame. In this way, the work reflects on the elusive nature of power, which hides while exerting violence.
A second axis of the work is articulated through sound. The text is not spoken live, but broadcast via a pirate radio station that the performer tunes into with a pocket radio. This intermittent transmission—a kind of interference storm—serves as a lightning rod for the discourse, invoking a voice that struggles to be heard through the static. The audio track has been manipulated—by increasing gain and applying a fuzz filter—to distort the voice and adapt it to the format of the portable device, as well as to simulate adverse broadcasting conditions for the speech. The radio, together with the flashlight, forms part of a survivalist imagery against environmental or military threats, resonating with recent warnings issued by the European Union regarding the need for preparedness in the face of future conflicts and challenges.
The use of a pirate radio station is a political device, a way of appropriating the channels through which power itself manifests. The intervention reproduces the logic of a news broadcast, displacing the chronicle of events into an uncertain present, where what is happening always seems about to occur. The title of the work alludes to the electrical flashes that occur beyond the visible horizon, in atmospheric layers that cannot be seen from solid ground. These anomalous and elusive phenomena operate as a metaphor for the forces explored in the piece: diffuse presences that, although never fully visible, inscribe their effects on bodies and history.
The stage device—composed of mirrors, a portable radio, hammer, flashlight, and curtain—occupies a space between the threshold of the residual and the operational, a point of contact with what appears “eerie”; a form of presence without a clear origin, hinting at its existence without materializing. In this intermediate zone between what is seen and what cannot be fixed, the performance proposes a minimal choreography of appearance and absence, of impact without a palpable cause, reproducing the dislocated functioning of power in late capitalism. In this regard, Mark Fisher helps us think through the logic of a system that does not require recognizable symbols to operate, manifesting itself through its effects rather than its form, producing subjects paralyzed before what cannot be located. The intact mirror after the act of destruction—surrounded by fragments not originating from it—is the image of that systemic violence that leaves no traces where expected, yet still determines the landscape.
We could consider these objects—the flashlight as an instrument of search, the radio as a transmitter and receiver of decentralized information—as devices activated in moments of crisis, not as technological solutions, but as fictional practices for reading and inhabiting collapse. The work relies precisely on this approach. It does not explain the disaster; it embodies it. It does not represent power; it interrupts and resists it. Paul Virilio positions the accident as the inevitable flip side of every innovation, for wherever there is technology, there is potential catastrophe. The work situates itself within this logic as a staging of the hidden condition of collapse inherent in every system. Collapse becomes a cadence, a presence that, like a radio tuned amid interference, reminds us that the message can still be heard even when the transmitter has disappeared.
The text broadcast during the performance occasionally employs imagery drawn from paranormal folklore to describe the dematerialized condition of power. These imaginaries correspond to terminologies used to designate atmospheric phenomena that are difficult to observe. The discourse suggests a collapsed yet operational system, which correlates with the multiplicity of broken mirrors under the perceptible appearance of wholeness, revealing the macroscopic nature of its forces. What we perceive of the system is only an echo, just as the images we see of celestial bodies carry a colossal distance that represents the past of those objects. Looking at the stars is looking into the past; similarly, the system has collapsed yet continues to function. The emphasis on looking to the sky, as referenced in the script, draws from this analogy. The work does not aim to provide closure or document what occurred; instead, it multiplies levels of perception regarding what may—or may not—have happened. The piece conjures a collapsed world, invokes the fragility of its systems, the persistence of its ghosts, and the possibility of discovering, among the ruins, new forms of attention, listening, and resistance.
[1] Le Guin, Ursula K.: The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2004, p. 269.
Photographs: Rosa García