Alexandra Pirici - Terraform

Terraform (2021) is a performative environment, inhabited by six performers and the audience. Alexandra Pirici demarcates another space within the exhibition space with a large carpet/duvet blanket, reminiscent of “Eastern” home design and the satin blankets that were ubiquitous to pre-90s Romania. Yet, this cover is perforated, distorted and spreading unevenly, like an alien landscape, something between flesh and earth, holding and hosting live bodies, on it, within it and around it.

In this small world, with its own imaginary forms of life and activity (as if another evolutionary path had been taken, or is yet to be taken), the borders between human, (other) animal and plant life are porous and leaky. Individuals become elements that form larger organisms or structures by coming together in temporary relations; human bodies incorporate other animal or vegetal behaviors (both real and fictional) alongside various historical and cultural references, making new configurations and associations emerge. In a playful, interactive way, live bodies also reflect on present-day technological processes that they are being influenced by, and could influence in return. 

Rather than referring to the shaping of the earth by a fixed definition of the “human,” the title of the work should be understood as a shaping of a common world, which we are part of while constantly changing it, and changing together with it. In this sense, Terraform is a forming of both: the human and the earth from within.