Pollution is one of our most important product. If pollution could be preserved what would it tell us about our social, cultural and industrial past? what sort of ethical questions would a history of pollution raise? [Jorge Otero Pailos]
My interest in pollution is to discover architectural material that questions the notion of intentionality in the work of art and architecture. Pollution is a material that doesn't have an intention, it is a kind of left over and I'm interested in architecture in that way - as is not purely the work of an intentional drive - so to discover anintentional architecture which is beyond one authoreship and one person’s thinking”. [Jorge Otero Pailos]
Jorge Otero Pailos is an artist and theorist of contemporary preservation and architecture.
The Ethics of Dust, the installation he is presenting in Bolzano, for Manifesta 7, displays the pollution that was saved from a wall inside the ex-Alumix factory. In two weeks' time, with the collaboration of a team of architectural conservators, he has transferred the pollution onto latex casts, that are now displayed on a scaffolding set before the wall.
Jorge Otero Pailos, The Ethic of Dust, Manifesta7, Bozen, 2008.
Here you will listen to a conversation with Lorenzo Fusi, chief curator of SMS Contemporanea. He explains us the actual meaning and value of dust and pollution and his interest in them as art materials.