Claudia Pagès’ (1990, Barcelona) Gerundi circular hypnotic video installation revolves around global maritime routes, legal jargon, and the relentless flow of commerce and people that has characterized capitalism. Filmed in a seamless 360-degree loop, the footage blends the rhythmic gestures of three performers and layers of handwritten texts into a series of music-video sequences.
The panoramic narrative is set in three distinctive and interconnected sites related to the past and present of Barcelona’s commercial port: the ship-shaped business hub of the World Trade Center, the 19th-century customs building, and the harbor breakwater. Gerundi Circular bears witness to the logistical intricacies of the city as a seemingly frictionless interface between the open space of the sea and manmade infrastructures, behaviors, and languages.
The work of the artist Claudia Pagès unfolds and contracts in different ways. In her process, word, body and movement circulate in multiple directions, tracing a tangled linguistic web of micro-narratives that are listened to critically in their immediate environment and then recorded in writing. In her latest works, Pagès has focused on the delivery system and its link with jurisdictional language, a sphere where both operate in a constant and violent gerund: a verb that dehumanizes and objectifies the subject.
Gerundi circular has been co-produced by MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and ELAMOR.
