Alexandre Estrela
north hallway
RedSkyFalls: Réplica
A seismic transmission network
For centuries, unusual animal behavior, from frogs abandoning ponds, snakes and worms fleeing their holes, to cicadas falling silent, has been read as an early warning of earthquakes.
Inheriting this pre-digital sensibility, the Réplicas are chimeric sentinels that respond with animal-like behavior to real-time seismic signals from across the globe, near and far. Each luminous sentinel is an abstract figure embedded in the surface of an aluminum plate, animated by a patchwork of animal movements — the pulse of a fly’s leg, the wave of a fish larva’s tail, the contraction of an earthworm’s segments — that lends it a lifelike quality.
The Réplicas perceive an approaching earthquake before it is felt, becoming increasingly agitated. At the onset of the tremor, like other animal species, they freeze in fear, retreating into their shelters. When the earth stops shaking, they slowly resume their quiet routines. The magnitude of the earthquake determines the duration of this change in their behavior. Their apparent prescience is not predictive but perceptive: the Réplicas respond to signals beyond human perception.
The behavior of the Réplicas reflects the infra-signals of underground movements that unexpectedly disturb their rhythms and those of their distant digital ecosystem, RedSkyFalls, whenever the Earth trembles somewhere in the world — a piercing call that, there as elsewhere, forces everything into synchronicity.
This presentation extends RedSkyFalls, Alexandre Estrela’s installation for Portugal’s official representation at the 61st Venice Biennale, and is part of a network of Réplicas installed in seismically active regions, where they are more likely to respond in sync with the physical experience of a tremor.
In collaboration with the Portuguese Pavilion, partner institutions—Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, REDCAT–Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater, Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), UNAM, and Galeria Zé dos Bois—each host a Réplica.
Artist: Alexandre Estrela (Lisbon, 1971)
Curatorship: Ana Baliza
