Image by subtraction

The textual contribution conceived for Salgemma is symbolically arranged within two of the words-matrices "alarm/resistance/exhaustion" used by artist Antonio Della Guardia as stencils of the first intervention site-specific realized in 2018 at studioconcreto.  Untitled (general resistance syndrome) is a wall intervention depicting the diagram adopted by Hans Selye to theorise the adaptive reactions of an organism subjected to stress, i.e. to pressures and influences from external factors. 

In the graph, scientific indices and data graphically structure the so-called 'general adaptation syndrome' into three different phases: an initial alarm phase, a second phase of resistance, and finally exhaustion, when the organism cannot maintain the state of resistance any longer. By inverting the curve of the graph in the phase of resistance, Antonio Della Guardia appropriates the diagram as a device to give form to a shift of meaning which, from the individual body, is transferred to the social body in opposition to the political system in force. 

Based on the meaningful expression of this transferred gesture, we thought of acting with the same modus operandi to construct our intervention for rock salt. The result of the contribution enclosed between the two metaphorical terms "alarm" and "resistance", consists of a set of sentences and meaningful words extracted from the room texts of the most significant exhibitions realised by studioconcreto between 2018 and 2020. 

Functioning as descriptive matrices of our practices, the words chosen and highlighted thus lend themselves to a sequence of images based on our personal perception of the context we have chosen to narrate, a perception by subtraction that, as Deleuze would say, subtracts the inessential from the image.