Jorge Otero-Pailos
The Ethics of Dust: July 22, 2011
2014
Latex, dust
The Ethics of Dust: July 22, 2011 forms part of Jorge Otero-Pailos’s decade-long investigation into the cultural meanings of dust—a material frequently regarded as waste in built heritage conservation. It is also one of his most important artistic responses to heritage conservation in a time of social division and growing intolerance to difference.
The title of the work references the date when the right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik attempted to kill the Prime Minister of Norway by detonating a van bomb in front of Regjeringskvartalet (the Government Quarter) in Oslo, resulting in the death of eight people. The bomb sent a motorcycle flying up five stories into the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, exploding it into flames. Otero-Pailos’s installation is comprised of a latex sheet that captured smoke from the ceiling of the bombed ministry building. With the outlines of five individual offices and the corridor in black dust, the latex cast renders the architectural layout of the space. Vertical white lines trace out the partition walls between offices, while lighter areas delineate office walls, electrical conduits, joints between the concrete floor panels and other workspace minutiae.
Text and image: Courtesy of Tai Kwun Contemporary, the artist and Sapar Contemporary