MALFICTIONS -- the title is a conflation of the words “malfunction” and “fiction” -- presents a series of works that explore the intersection of facticity, fiction and error in contemporary forms of representational experience. As El Ultimo Grito states:

In our digital age, we have all become accustomed to the growing proliferation of “glitches” — transitory malfunctions within the different systems that support our daily existence. But in reality, these glitches are intrinsic to how the system works — they are not real malfunctions but just ‘deficiencies’ of the system that we have not managed or do not really want to change or improve. The notion of ‘malfunction’ aims at perpetuating the representation / fiction of the system itself -- hence our “Malfictions.” The capturing of the “glitch” is a sudden window opening onto the reality of the system, and when understood in this way we can start examining “glitches” in other systems in the same light -- systems that are not limited to technology, but also politico-socio-economic systems, or systems of representation and communication.

MALFICTIONS consists of three formally independent but conceptually interwoven sections.

TRIGGERED GLITCHES MADRID offers a series of triptychs developed from glitches in digital mapping devices: these photographic works are not manipulated or collaged but rather a real depiction of digital reality that records and reveals mapping applications as covert operations aimed at maintaining the ‘fictional’ status of the system itself. THE FALLACY OF THE CLOSED SYSTEM is a diorama-like installation that incorporates a large glass model, landscape tables and a kinetic lighting system in order to explore ingrained representations of cities as perfectly closed systems and as physical manifestations of the organization of society as a whole: the fallacy of these closed systems is at the core of current-day entropic models such as Brexit, America First and other manifestations of the intent to preserve or recover systems of idealised pasts that in fact never worked in the first place. LA REALITÉ SOIT COMPLEXE POUR LA TRANSMISSION ORALE consists of a series of real-time, pre-cinematic camerae obscurae that at first glance resemble looped films but which in fact are neither celluloid nor digital, leading the viewer to a paradoxical, oscillatory understanding of that which is being directly experienced.

Catalogue EN

Catálogo ES

Press
ABC Cultural 
Disegno
Metalocus
Goldsmiths Design Blog
La Ventana del Arte
ExpoArteMadrid

MALFICTIONS

Galería Elba Benítez, Madrid
22 April – 3 June 2017

Photography
Luis Asín

Films
Quique Corrales/Zaunka
Luis Asín

Thanks
Ori Gersht
Andrew Hunt
Massimo Lunardon
George Stolz
Brian Voce
Nick Williamson
Yarza Twins