UNE PARTIE D'ECHECS : SEIGES AND STANDS

Pedro Lagoa and Claudia Pestana

Une Partie d’Échecs: Sieges and Stands is the product of a match played out between Pedro Lagoa and Claudia Pestana over ten days, with various alternative texts layered as a palimpsest onto found pages from the Ottagono Magazine.  These pages were their contribute to the Roundtable E-Journal #2: Intimacy, Autonomy and Anonymity within the Urban Fabric (pp. 56—71), an electronic format publication ed. by Sunjung Kim, on the occasion of the 9th Gwangju Biennial, 2012.  This print edition is a facsimile of the electronic version printed in 2023.

Reflecting on the themes proposed by the ROUNDTABLE E-Journal #2, the ‘multi-layered reality of history beyond grand political and social narratives’, and ‘the overlooked traces of individual lives within a city’ through notions of ‘Intimacy, Autonomy and Anonymity’, it originated an exchange between Lagoa and Pestana in which they shared with each other an initial set of readings. As the work on the material developed, the exchange and the consideration of the circumstances suggested that this contribution be actualized as a game, where one contributor proposes a quotation and the other responds with another quotation. Without a set number of moves, the match was played out according to the specific fabric of texts it created. This approach enabled the co-contributors to resist the tendency to produce a unified voice while retaining the struggle of a co-production.

In addition, by allowing the text to emerge as a fabric, it posits this struggle as a challenge that relies on trust to establish an act of cooperation that the participants must negotiate amongst themselves and in relation to the emerging production.

Edition of 100

Published by things on a table 2023