The act of activating an object across disparate terrains—from the windswept plateaus of Vetón to the high-density urbanity of Lagos—responds to a contemporary urgency for stability in an age of radical displacement. I engage with this piece not as a detached observer, but from within the friction of the "unstable installation," where the domestic is forced into the wild and the private is made public. In a world saturated by fleeting digital signals, the necessity of the blanket emerges as a tactile counterpoint—a low-tech, high-affect device that anchors the body to the site. This work addresses the crisis of belonging by proposing a "portable home," a soft architecture that can be deployed wherever the body finds itself. It is an investigation into how we carry memory through hostile or indifferent systems, using a singular material anchor to negotiate the volatile relationship between skin and territory. The core of this process lies in the repetitive deployment of a checked textile—a signature motif that functions as a "transitional object" across a four-year trajectory. This is not a symbolic gesture but an operational system: the blanket is draped, wrapped, layered, or hung, adapting its geometry to the specific constraints of the environment, whether it be a chair in a Madrid theater or a mountain rock. Its material logic is one of thermal and emotional insulation; it operates as an interface that absorbs the scent, dust, and history of each location. Through a sequence of situated rituals—documented via video diaries and street footage—the blanket accumulates a "thick" narrative. It is a functional archive where the checked pattern serves as a visual grid, a constant against which the variables of light, weather, and social interaction are measured and recorded.
By positioning the blanket as a "device of affect," the work leans on a scaffolding that echoes D.W. Winnicott’s notions of the transitional object, serving as the bridge between the inner self and the external world. However, in this socioplastic context, the object also aligns with what Donna Haraway describes as "staying with the trouble," practicing an ethics of care that refuses to look away from the vulnerability of the present moment. Furthermore, the piece engages with the "infra-ordinary" as explored by Georges Perec, finding profound meaning in the most mundane of fabrics. These references do not overshadow the work but rather illuminate its role as a tool for relational survival. The blanket becomes a site-specific engine that challenges the static nature of traditional sculpture, proposing instead a "soft monumentality" that is fluid, porous, and perpetually in a state of rehearsal. As the project moves, it undergoes a series of media drifts and territorial mutations. In the theater of Madrid, it is a dramatic shroud, heavy with performative tension; in Nigeria, it becomes a social mediator, a surface for collective gathering; in the digital ecosystem of LaPieza, it is a hyperlinked tag, a pixelated memory circulating through 120 online adds. These trajectories show the work as a living organism that refuses to stay fixed within the gallery walls. It mutates from a physical heat-carrier into a digital signal, and back into a ritualized companion for urban dérive. By tracing these drifts, we see the blanket as a vector of "distributed agency"—it is the object that moves the artist, the object that invites the neighbor, and the object that dictates the choreography of the filmic archive. This investigation does not conclude; it operates as a curatorial launchpad for future interventions into the "ethics of circulation." What other modest objects can be weaponized as tools for collective tenderness? By shifting our attention from the monument to the gesture, The Blanket suggests a method for navigating the interstices of the city with heightened sensitivity. It opens a door to new configurations of "soft activism," where the act of covering, protecting, or sharing a space becomes a radical political statement. The future of this work lies in its inevitable disappearances and re-appearances, challenging us to find continuity in the fragments and to recognize that the most powerful archives are those we can carry on our backs.
Mountain plateau, winter landscape. A ritual of seasonal gestures.
Madrid 2023. The blanket as stage device and narrative tension.
Anto Lloveras / Socioplastics
Theory: Device of Affect • Performative Presence • Ethics of Circulation • Transitional Object • Fluid Archive. Tactility: Checked Motif • Seasonal Gestures • Domestic Singularity • Layered Furniture • Winter Landscapes. Network: Unstable Installation Series • Shared Situations • Collective Enunciation • Relational Encounters • Rehearsals of Tenderness. Geographies: Madrid (Teatro Réplika) • Lagos (Nigeria) • Vetón (Mountain Plateau) • Berlin • Mexico City.
