EXCERPT OF BRUNO MARQUE'S Prospective Memory for an artist studio in Brooklyn. Bringing these two vectors of research – memory and atelier - Alexandra do Carmo converts them in a researching field on issues of contemporary socio-political consciousness. In “Office/Commercial”, presenting herself as a “commercially” successful fine artist, with the company of a false assistant, and a previously contacted real estate agent, different each time, she initiates a path through Brooklyn, New York, pretending to rent an “art studio”. The starting point are encounters in different parts of the city, bringing a camera man with her, she collets video images and conversations with the excuse of being the subject of a documentary for her gallery in Lisbon, a documentary on her “arrival” in New York.
The artist mentions that “her intention is to create a social memory of the spaces that are being designated to the work of artists in the city (studio spaces), in order to confront this memory with the past of these buildings exposing it’s transformation”. Basically, Alexandra do Carmo positions herself in a transitional temporal site, precisely in the transitory space between the still functional place of the factory/warehouse and the beginning of its renovation. This way, “the presence of the artist in the old manufacturing spaces and future artist studios is the reality that allows connecting the present and the past of the buildings”, in other words and continuing to quote the artist
“ it is a proposal for a future utopic occupation, building the memory of the site”.