The Fantasmatic oasis is an installation looking to encapsulate and isolate its internal components.
It aims to immerse the audience in the idea of the fantasmatic.
The Fantasmatic oasis is a mechanism of which the components serve as a focus point on aspects of the fantasmatic dimension and object.
Fantasmatic object: Is the object of fantasies
Fantasmatic dimension: is the dimension in which the fantasmatic object resides.
The act of looking in the fantasmatic dimension is aiming in using it as a mediator in understanding the rather inaccessible reality.
The Fanatasmatic oasis served as an exercise to discover new practices and methodologies of producing the artistic object.
The idea of the component emerged as a way to deal with the awkwardness of the objects in themselves and a strategy to connect multiple -otherwise fragmented- approaches. The installation comprises of 4 major components all enclosed in the room with each component exploring a different aspect of the fantasmatic as well as minor -semiological or not- details enchasing the experience.
On each door there is an inscription hand written in pencil reading “Let’s say there is a doorknob inside on the right. Despite its apparent malfunction, it does work. If not you can always look through the keyhole!”. The door has no doorknob from the outside but has a hole in the middle with a glove attached to it.
Resembling a scientific glove box where experiments are conducted in a controlled environment; as if it is a different dimension where one is immersing and interacting only partly.
After the user inserts their hand, they are able to find –through touching– a doorknob on the inside, as in fact mentioned by the inscription. After operating the doorknob, the operator’s door doesn’t open but, through a mechanism connecting the doorknob just used to the next door on the left, the other door does open. There is no way to know that this just happened unless one is inside witnessing the process.
Just like one is not always aware of the extends of one’s actions, the operator of the door might walk away in disappointment or continue walking around until coming upon the door that was just opened.
In this way the action of opening and entering never appears immediately as something real and hence interpretable, but rather seesaws between the real and the nonexistent.
4.Fantasmatic dimension: is the dimension in which the fantasmatic object resides.
Just like one is not always aware of the extends of one’s actions, the operator of the door might walk away in disappointment or continue walking around until coming upon the door that was just opened.
In this way the action of opening and entering never appears immediately as something real and hence interpretable, but rather seesaws between the real and the nonexistent.