Page 83 - PIP

sand, it always escapes our grasp. Every time we think we understand the situation, new elements emerge. This, however, does not mean that we should just give up thinking about reality. Instead, it implies that we should reframe our thinking, shifting the focus from understanding to creating. We should not try to reduce the world to a simple set of rules, but produce new worlds, new planes of reality that cannot be accounted for in terms of general axioms or universal principles.
Layes’ works bear resemblance to the operational logic of Borges’ Book of Sand. In some of his works, such as Things that surrounds us and Dreamed apparatus, this resemblance is clearly palpable. In these pieces, sand takes the leading role, being used to create spherical figures in Things that surrounds us or as the fleeting material for the choreographic score of Dreamed apparatus. In both pieces sand functions as an agent of transformation, constantly enabling the development of new landscapes that completely transform the stage. Even when this direct link is absent, however, there is still a clear resonance with Borges’ short story. In his works with objects, such as Allege and Title, Layes is constantly developing frames that allow the things to exercise their “thing-power”, thus creating new unexpected relations between objects or between objects and subjects and allowing for new constellations to emerge. Similarly, Layes’ constant experiments with mechanisms of appearance/dis- appearance and repetition can be understood as sustained attempts to destabilize the dominant linear ways of reading the world. Instead of conflating the different parts into one smooth narrative, his works expose, enlarge and play with the intervals or gaps that emerge in between the different parts, showing the potential that resides in the betwixt and between. In doing so, he draws attention to the proverbial new ‘
‘pages’ that sprout up from the cracks of our everyday life.
In conclusion, we could say that Layes is a logician who celebrates the capacity of the human mind to rise above the utilitarian; who does not attempt to master the universe through knowledge, but speculates on the development of new universes. His logics are an ode to the ludic joys of useless knowledge; a dedication to the ‘patalogical’ systems that create new parallel worlds, rather than trying to define or judge the one at hand.
83