05/08

Barbara Prada - ‘Virtual Khipu & Human Data’ (lecture performance, ca. 60’)

Virtual Khipu & Human Data is a performance that encodes contemporary human histories: the good ones, the bad ones, histories from the past and for the future into a different register, without words but with knots. ‘Khipu’ or ‘Quipu’ is a three-dimensional writing system used by the ancient Incas. The oldest Quipu dates from 2,500 B.C. and was used until the colonization of the Spanish Empire. Barbara Prada, as a preserver of collective memory today, wants to summon the gesture of building a communal Khipu out of food. Spaghetti is a heterogeneous and abstract material, long and handmade. One knot that ties you to your own being, it ropes you to the universe, to your mother, and at the same time, it possesses nothing. Visitors will be invited to come and knot their stories on the silent Khipus, those stories that they want to preserve for the future, real and human stories that will hang on a thread, which in turn will hang on a circle. These organic and geometric lines are in appearance soft and flexible but they can break down at any time, fall and become nothing, only to be reborn again.

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