SYMPHONY OF 40 LETTERS OF REQUEST (1984) : Concha Jerez

SYMPHONY OF 40 LETTERS OF REQUEST (1984)

AUTHOR	CONCHA JEREZ
TITLE	SYMPHONY OF 40 LETTERS OF REQUEST
DATE	1984
TECHNIQUE	Mixed piece
EDITION	Unique word
PROPERTY	Museo Jovellanos (Gijón)
DIMENSIONS
MATERIALS	The piece is made up of the following elements: Wooden table painted in black with letters inlaid in gold, on one side of the table with the words that give name to the work “SYMPHONY OF THE 40 LETTERS” 40 cider glasses, each with a polyester sheet representing the words that made up the letters/scores, which were replaced by lines of different thickness depending on the accentuation of each one, converting them into scores At the bottom of the glasses, ashes were placed from a private action carried out by the author burning a continuous 80-metre piece of paper with illegible self-censored writing.
CONCEPT	It is based on forty letters of request for a job in the development of each of the elements of this “Useless Architecture”. One letter is perhaps our most authentic aesthetic and musical work. Elaborated on an empty space, we carefully draw on it margins, phrases with rhythms and cadences, silences, accents, letters, signs… When the letter is a REQUEST letter, the care is even greater since we want to give the image that we want others to see in us.
DESCRIPTION	Work of intervention on 40 letters of request of employment of Asturias, with which it was tried to investigate in several questions of aesthetic character, firstly specifying the internal structure of every bureaucratic document; secondly to notice the interrelation between the empty spaces and the filled ones, which later must be filled by the addressee of the same ones, who creates his own aesthetic dependent on the chance. The 40 job application letters from Asturias, transferred to translucent polyester, were intervened with permanent black ink emphasising the two interrelated aesthetics: the institutional and the personal.
HISTORY	This piece has its origins in the installation made for the Sala Nicanor Piñole in Gijón, which included a processual action. The element that centred the concept of the installation was 40 letters of request for employment in Asturias, which gave rise to all the interventions that made up this installation. The words that composed the letters/scores were replaced by lines of different thickness according to the accentuation of each one of them, turning them into scores. One of them was drawn, to scale, occupying an entire wall of the space, while 40 made of large white paper were presented in large rolls of 40 cylinders. A further 40 scores were made from the cards and placed inside 40 cider glasses made of translucent polyester. At the bottom of these were placed ashes from a private action carried out by the author burning a continuous paper of 80 meters intervened with illegible writings self-censored.
EXHIBITIONS	In 2020 it will be presented at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía MNCARS, as part of Concha Jerez’s solo exhibition entitled “QUE NOS ROBAN LA MEMORIA”.
OTHER INFORMATION