Labyrinth
A chalk marker was used to trace a line along the left-hand rail of a descending electric escalator. From a stationary vantage point, the tracing continued until the length of the line folded back upon itself, ultimately joining at the terminal points to form a closed loop.
Performed at the Aquiles Serdán Metro station in Mexico City—named after a revolutionary figure whose death marked an early rupture in the established order—and leading toward Barranca del Muerto, a terminal station whose name evokes death and disappearance, the gesture resonates beyond its immediate visual logic. The distinction between line and loop underscores a shift from action to occupation, movement to enclosure. In this context, the loop becomes a quiet assertion—a spatial and temporal intervention that neither declares permanence nor seeks monumental form.
The gesture may be further contextualized within the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when public space ceased to be neutral or incidental. It became increasingly monitored, restricted, and saturated with the codes of risk. Touch was rendered suspect; visibility, tightly regulated. To inscribe a mark within such a landscape was to enact a form of agency within a system of constraint.
Year: 2020
Medium: Single-channel video, color, sound
Resolution: 16:9 Full HD, 1920 x 1080 px
Duration: 00:01:57, 30 fps
Dimensions: Variable
Editions: 3 + A/P
Performed on May 17, 2020
Metro Station Aquiles Serdán in the direction of Barranca del Muerto, Mexico City, Mexico.