If 2017 was the year of ARTNATIONS—the project's first explicit turn toward global aggregation—then 2018 is the year of FLOCK. The series spans an extraordinary 243 nodes (1101–1343), making it the largest single series in the LAPIEZA corpus to date. The scale is not accidental. FLOCK is the culmination of the Expansive Epoch (2013–2019), the moment when the project's nomadic intensity reaches its peak. The title is precise: a flock is not a herd (which moves as a mass under centralized direction) nor a crowd (which is merely an aggregation of individuals). A flock is a distributed collective: each bird moves autonomously, yet together they form a coherent pattern. The pattern is not imposed from above; it emerges from the local decisions of each member. FLOCK is thus a self-portrait of the project in 2018: a network of hundreds of artists, scattered across geographies, each producing work independently, yet together forming a field of remarkable coherence. The series does not curate a group exhibition in any traditional sense. It enacts a flock. The artists are not selected; they are encountered. The nodes are not curated; they are documented. The field is not designed; it emerges.
FLOCK - SERIES 086-113 - 27 SERIES - (1101 1343) 243 WORKS -3X3X3X3X3X3- 2018 https://lapiezalapieza.blogspot.com/2020/01/fog.html
FLOCK (1101–1343)
The Scale of FLOCK: 243 Nodes as Method
The node range 1101–1343 represents a staggering output for a single year. To put it in perspective: the entire Foundational Epoch (2009–2012) produced approximately 650 nodes. FLOCK alone produces more than a third of that total. The density is not merely quantitative; it is structural. The series demonstrates that seriality can absorb almost unlimited heterogeneity without losing coherence. The list of artists in FLOCK—provided in your message—includes over 300 names, ranging from internationally renowned figures (Daniel Buren, Anselm Kiefer, Katharina Grosse, Urs Fischer, Alicja Kwade) to emerging practitioners, from conceptualists to figurative painters, from sculptors to digital artists. The list is deliberately heterogeneous. FLOCK does not have a theme, a medium, or a geography. Its only organizing principle is relation: each artist is connected to the project through some encounter, collaboration, or documentation. The series is the archive of those connections. The scale also serves a performative function. FLOCK is too large to be comprehended in a single viewing. It resists the gaze of the critic, the curator, the historian. It cannot be summarized, reduced, or represented. It can only be experienced—node by node, link by link, encounter by encounter. The series thus models a different mode of attention: not the overview but the immersion, not the map but the traversal. The flock cannot be seen from above; it must be entered from within. The viewer who clicks through the nodes, who follows the links, who spends time with each artist—that viewer becomes part of the flock. The series does not have an outside. It is all inside.
The Artists as Constellation
The artist list provided in your message is extraordinary in its range. A few notable names:
Daniel Buren (b. 1938) – French conceptual artist known for his site-specific striped installations. Buren's work is about context, about the relationship between art and its architectural environment. His presence in FLOCK signals the project's engagement with institutional critique and spatial practice.
Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) – German painter and sculptor whose work confronts German history, myth, and the Holocaust. Kiefer's monumental scale and material intensity are far from LAPIEZA's typically modest productions. His inclusion is a gesture of art-historical humility: the project acknowledges its precursors.
Katharina Grosse (b. 1961) – German painter known for her large-scale, site-specific spray-painted installations. Grosse's work dissolves the boundary between painting and architecture, between artwork and environment. This resonates with LAPIEZA's own dissolution of boundaries.
Urs Fischer (b. 1973) – Swiss artist known for his playful, often monumental sculptures that incorporate everyday objects. Fischer's work is about transformation, about the uncanny potential of the ordinary. The bread bowl, the dinner table, the yellow bag—these are not so different from Fischer's melted candles or oversized furniture.
Alicja Kwade (b. 1979) – Polish artist whose sculptures and installations explore time, space, and perception. Kwade's work often involves mirrors, stones, and astronomical references. She appears again in LOST ROCKS (2024). Her presence in FLOCK is a thread that will continue through the archive.
Senga Nengudi (b. 1943) – American artist associated with the African American avant-garde of the 1970s. Her sculptures made from pantyhose, sand, and other materials explore the body, gender, and labor. Nengudi's work is about materiality and the trace of the body—themes central to LAPIEZA's own practice.
Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971) – American artist known for her rhinestone-encrusted paintings and collages that reimagine the representation of Black women. Thomas's work is about visibility, about who gets to be seen and how. FLOCK includes many artists who challenge dominant narratives.
Theaster Gates (b. 1973) – American artist whose practice combines urban planning, sculpture, performance, and archival preservation. Gates's work is about infrastructure—about how art can rebuild communities. This resonates with LAPIEZA's own infrastructural turn.
The list also includes many artists who are less known, less canonized, less visible. This is deliberate. FLOCK does not discriminate between the famous and the obscure, the established and the emerging, the Western and the non-Western. The series is democratic in its attention: each artist gets a node, a number, a place in the archive. The archive does not rank; it includes. The flock does not have leaders; it has members. The coherence of the series is not hierarchical; it is networked.
FLOCK as Response to ARTNATIONS
FLOCK is the immediate successor to ARTNATIONS (2017), which spanned nodes 1001–1100. The two series are paired: ARTNATIONS established the project's capacity for global aggregation; FLOCK expands and intensifies that capacity. But there is a difference in emphasis. ARTNATIONS (the title suggests "art nations" or "art nations") may have retained a residual attachment to national categories, to the idea that artists could be grouped by geography. FLOCK abandons geography altogether. The flock is not organized by nation, region, or continent. It is organized by relation. The only thing that unites the artists in FLOCK is that they are known to LAPIEZA—through exhibitions, residencies, publications, or simply through the attentive scrolling of the internet. The series is thus a diagram of the project's own relational field. The artists are not subjects; they are nodes. The series is not about them; it is about the connections between them. And those connections are not represented; they are performed. The list is the performance. The pairing of ARTNATIONS and FLOCK also marks the peak of the Expansive Epoch. After 2018, the project will begin to slow down. The Recreo Epoch (2020–2022) will retreat into rural Ávila, and the node count will decrease. FLOCK is the last great accumulation before the pivot. It is the project's declaration that it has seen enough, met enough, documented enough. The archive is full. The flock is complete. Now it is time to rest.
The Fog Post: A Minimalist Manifesto
The blog post titled FOG (January 2020, but documenting 2018) is a remarkable document. It consists of nothing but the node numbers 1101 to 1343, listed vertically, one after another. No titles, no images, no explanations. Just the numbers. The post is a minimalist manifesto for seriality. It asserts that the nodes are sufficient. They do not need to be described, interpreted, or contextualized. They exist. They are numbered. That is enough. The fog is the condition of the archive: dense, opaque, but traversable. You cannot see the whole flock at once; the fog obscures it. But you can enter the fog, node by node, and find your way. The fog is not an obstacle; it is the medium. The archive is not transparent; it is atmospheric. To be in the archive is to be in the fog.
The fog also evokes the unknown. The list of artists in your message is not provided in the blog post; it is a separate document. The casual viewer of the FOG post sees only numbers. They do not know that 1101 corresponds to a specific artist, a specific work, a specific encounter. The fog withholds as much as it reveals. This is a deliberate strategy. The archive is not a database to be queried; it is a labyrinth to be explored. The viewer must click, must follow links, must invest time and attention. The archive does not give up its secrets easily. The fog protects the archive from the gaze of the distracted, the impatient, the merely curious. To see the flock, you must enter the fog.
The Number 3X3X3X3X3: A Mathematical Signature
Your message includes the phrase "3X3X3X3X3 ARTNATION ///////// FLOCK ARTISTS." The repetition of 3 (three times five) suggests a mathematical structure underlying the series. 3 to the power of 5 is 243—the exact number of nodes in FLOCK (1343 − 1101 + 1 = 243). The series is thus self-consciously structured by the number 3. The flock is not a random aggregation; it is a combinatorial system. The artists are not arbitrarily assembled; they are the 243 permutations of some underlying logic. What that logic is remains opaque. But the mathematical signature is a signature of intentionality. The series is not chaotic; it is ordered. The order is not narrative or thematic; it is numerical. The number 3 is the smallest number that can generate complexity through repetition. Three times three is nine. Three times nine is twenty-seven. Three times twenty-seven is eighty-one. Three times eighty-one is two hundred and forty-three. The flock grows exponentially, each iteration multiplying the possibilities. The series is a demonstration that a simple rule (add a node, number it, link it) can generate immense complexity. The complexity is not designed; it emerges. The flock is not planned; it grows.
FLOCK as Relational Infrastructure
The scale of FLOCK—243 nodes, over 300 artists—transforms the series from an art project into an infrastructure. The archive is no longer a record of the project's activities; it is a platform for future activities. The artists in FLOCK are not just subjects of documentation; they are potential collaborators, potential nodes in future series. The flock is a resource. It can be drawn upon, reactivated, recombined. The series is thus a form of social capital: the project has invested time and attention in building relationships, and those relationships can be mobilized for future work. This is the logic that will eventually lead to LAPIEZA-LAB (2026). The lab is not a new invention; it is the formalization of what FLOCK already is: a relational infrastructure, a network of artists and nodes, a system for producing connections. FLOCK also demonstrates that the project has moved beyond the authorial model of art. The series is not a collection of works by Anto Lloveras; it is a collection of works by hundreds of artists, curated (if that is the word) into a relational field. The author is not the artist; the author is the system. Lloveras is the system architect, the one who numbers the nodes, who maintains the archive, who ensures the connections hold. But the content of the archive is supplied by the flock. The project is thus a form of distributed authorship: the artists produce the works; the system produces the relations. FLOCK is the proof of concept.
The Threshold of 1343
FLOCK ends at node 1343. The next series, THE LIGHT IN ATHENS (2019), begins at node 1344. The boundary is precise. The flock does not spill over; it ends. This is significant. The series is not infinite; it is finite. It has a beginning (1101) and an end (1343). The finitude is what makes the series a work rather than a process. FLOCK can be completed, reviewed, archived. It is not an endless accumulation; it is a discrete entity. The number 243 is not arbitrary; it is the product of a combinatorial logic (3x3x3x3x3). The series is thus a closed system. It does not need to continue; it is already whole. This is the opposite of the open-ended accumulation that characterizes much of the LAPIEZA corpus. FLOCK is a pause within the accumulation: a moment when the project steps back, surveys what it has built, and declares it complete. The next year, the project will turn to Athens, to light, to smaller gestures. The flock will scatter. But it will not disappear. The nodes remain. The connections remain. The infrastructure remains. FLOCK is the peak, but it is also the foundation. Everything that comes after—the light, the road, the sleep, the basal, the confetti—rests on the flock. The flock is the ground.
FLOCK in the Fifteen-Year Arc
In retrospect, FLOCK can be seen as the hinge of the LAPIEZA project. Before FLOCK, the project was building outward, accumulating nodes, expanding its network, testing its limits. After FLOCK, the project turns inward, toward light, toward sleep, toward restoration. FLOCK is the moment of maximum extension. It is the point at which the project has met as many artists as it can, documented as many encounters as possible, numbered as many nodes as the system can hold. The flock is full. There is no room for more. The only way forward is to stop adding and start deepening. The Recreo Epoch (2020–2022) is the deepening. The Biennials Epoch (2023–2024) is the application. The Ruralist Epoch (2025) is the settlement. And LAPIEZA-LAB (2026) is the formalization. But none of these would be possible without the flock. The flock is the raw material, the social capital, the relational field. The project spent eleven years (2009–2019) building the flock. It will spend the next seven years (2020–2026) learning what to do with it. The fog post, with its stark list of numbers, is a reminder that the flock is not a story. It is not a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. It is a condition. The fog is the condition of being in relation. You cannot see the whole; you can only navigate the parts. The numbers are the coordinates. The artists are the destinations. The clicks are the movements. The archive is the space. And the flock is the population. In 2018, the population reached 243. It will grow again, later, in other series. But FLOCK remains the largest single aggregation. It is the project's declaration that relation is not a metaphor; it is a number. And the number is 243. The fog obscures; the numbers reveal. Enter the fog. Click the links. Meet the artists. Join the flock. The archive is waiting.
3X3X3X3X3 ARTNATION ///////// FLOCK ARTISTS
avis Birks, E. B. Itso, Miren Doiz, Wolfgang Laib, Ann Hamilton, David Hammons, Li Wei, Vera Kox, Magali Reus, Pascal Broccolichi, Benjamin Sabatier, Ryan Gander, Elena Damiani, Nicole Wermers, Lucas Blalock, Daniel Buren, Ava Bernardine, Jimmy Robert, Jason Dodge, Vincent Fecteau, Hecdwin Carreño, Haegue Yang, Megan Rooney, Grace Schwindt, Maya Otsoko, Bad Bunny, Carol Bove, Li Songsong, Paolo Icaro, Ken Kelleher, G_RRR, Hectruso, Rubén Bonet, Thomas Vanlinge, Richard Hughes, Sean Scully, Elias Hansen, Gedi Sibony, Nadia Rose, Stéphane Thidet, David Hominal, Erica Mahinay, Laurence Carroll, Kieran Leach, Ashley Olah, Marcin Dudek, Mell, Ciro Duclos, Ben Quilty, Wayne Thiebaud, Katy Luise, Sasponella, Noah Verrier, Polina Osipova, 01SS1, Zhiyong Jing, Layana, Thundergirl, Alex Israel, Sterling Ruby, Liz Markus, Casey Richardson, Sam3, Yngve Holen, Alexandra January, Jeremy Everett, Anastasia Kolesnichenko, Hannah Levy, Kaari Upson, Mia Buckton, Nina Canell, John Gelper, Joël Andrianomearisoa, Erika Lee Sears, Charlotte Thrane, Wilhelm Sasnal, Sherman, Michael Zelehoski, Phib, Daniel Boccato, Davide Allieri, Gabriela Pelczarska, Nitsan Raiter, Mei Yue, Poppy Janelee, Leyla Aydoslu, Violet Dennison, Kallen Mikel, Adam Cruces, Floguan, Millie Steele, Jonny Paul Gillette, Lena Henke, Oso Parado, David Deweerdt, Park Hyunki, Tony Matelli, Richie Culver, Blair Thurman, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ben Duggan, Katharina Grosse, Charles Harlan, Andre Komatsu, Umut Yasat, Rutger de Vries, Robert Therrien, Prem Sahib, Michael Sailstorfer, Sara Tagaloa, Michael Johansson, Ad Minoliti, Gabriel Rico, Matt Calderwood, David Lamelas, Francesco Arena, Denim Destroyer, Louis Rubi, Ugo Rondinone, Sirous Namazi, Cyprien Gaillard, Alicja Kwade, Gertrude Platscheck, Ava Bernardine, Zhang Xiaogang, Mark Tennant, Urs Fischer, Eva Stenram, Shalvan Ikvashvili, Lynda Benglis, Salman Toor, Anselm Kiefer, Michael Sailstorfer, Shan Hur, Bashir Sultani, Misko, Quentin Deronzier, Aerika Bergstrom, Elle Britz, Anna Bazsik, Howard Schwartzberg, Françoise Vanneraud, Gohar Dashti, Mike Ballard, Anna Betbeze, JM Oliveira, Balam Bartolomé, Greta Ilieva, Wayne Horse, Julia Soboleva, Adriana Varejão, Kennedy Yanko, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Chantal Convertini, Chris Rhodes, Xavier Veilhan, Chen Fei, Senga Nengudi, Julian Charrière, Corey Klampp, John McKie, Mike Nelson, Nicola Matear, Francesco Arena, Zhanna Kadyrova, Moni Haworth, Jonathan Jones, Saskia de Brauw, Ben Zank, Martine Gutierrez, Carlos Darder, Nicolás Lamas, John Armleder, Melanie Arnold, Veronika Moos, Sin Sing, Nathaniel Robinson, Ophelia Finke, Julia Gault, Túlio Pinto, Delfina Carmona, Mari Katayama, Jill Mulleady, Matias Faldbakken, Charlotte Posenenske, Daniel Turner, Andra Ursuța, Annette Messager, Alexis Zambrano, Tyreek Winston, Sandra Sauceda, Cheri, Quentin Monge, Valerio Olgiati, Raphaela Vogel, Michael Weisskoeppel, Laurence de Leersnyder, Jens Wortmann, Paul Lee, John Divola, Megan Rooney, Jeff Muhs, Krista VanDerNiet, Li Hui, Chiharu Shiota, Maly Bretislav, Todd Robinson, Spike Dennis, Vincent Namatjira, Kajde Ojo, Koji Ryui, Donald Martiny, Brina Novara, Ruth Campau, Cyril Lancelin, Sofia Lenag, Raffi Kalenderian, Mickalene Thomas, Lisa Brice, Jen Aitken, Derrick Adams, Deborah Anzinger, Amy Sherald, David Kennedy Cutler, David Nash, Gabriel Sierra, Kim Inbae, Pablo Accinelli, Peter Anton, Joanna Piotrowska, Gina Beavers, Alex Farrar, Veit Stratmann, Richie Culver, Ann Green Kelly, Theaster Gates, Roeland Tweelinckx, Anuel Cornelius, Kathy Temin, Michele Mathison, Tom Putnam, Malte Bartsch, Rose Nestler
