Mollusca: Substrate for Creation and Research

Mollusca is a substrate for creation and research on contemporary sensibility. A digital platform that will house singular quests by artists and researchers questioned by their experience of the world. A heterogenous publication space in its forms and approaches: experimental and conventional formats, essays and non-textual languages, works in progress, particular searches, unfolded bodies. A place for learning, oriented by online workshops and seminars, and offline gatherings and dialogue experiences. A showcase for curious and genuine works.

Mollusca comes to life in Venezuela at a time of deep obscurantism and material and sensitive precariousness—a situation that finds an echo in the contemporary world—spreading across different locations on the planet (Barcelona, New York, Caracas, Maracaibo, Mexico City, Santiago de Chile), portraying its peculiarities in a global era. We promote a substrate where distinct, littoral searches, diverse in their forms and mechanisms, may germinate. We offer a bond from singularity.

Mollusca wants to contribute to the world. We promote a platform where distinct, diverse, non-binary voices may converge; a space where a community based on difference may exist. We are interested in intersubjective and intercultural connections (the richness of a language for saying, feeling, and thinking), this is why our editorial contents will be translated into a common language. It's a bet on the meeting of local and specific discourses on a global environment—it's our way of attempting a record of this time.

Mollusca has principles. We defend the autonomy of words (the liberty to publish contents from personal and diverse angles), the value of creative work (the proper compensation for the intellectual and sensitive efforts), and pleasure as a methodology and framework for thinking (the stimulated approach to a question). The plasticity of our contents is ruled by these principles.

Mollusca has limits. We oppose the word that holds villainy, that which touches for us the boundaries of what is acceptable. It is a decision that also draws the edges of our reserve. We want to be a protected, caring, intimate space, where the subjectivities exposed won't feel attacked by censorship, intolerance, and monolithic thinking. This intimate place that we are creating is the only thing we can answer for.

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THE TEAM

Marianela Díaz Cardozo is an artist, editor, and translator. She is engaged in an exploration of the tactile perception, natural matter, and registering experience through art. In Mollusca, she will direct the Editorial Substrate and explore questions anchored to the erotic body and its pleasure.

Jordi Santiago Flores is an educator, writer, and researcher. His research areas link psychoanalisys, aesthetics and politics. In Mollusca, he will address questions exploring the relationship between body and music. He will direct the Studies Substrate.

Jeanne Jiménez is an artist, painter, and designer. As a visual artist, she approaches painting as an archaism for thinking about contemporary issues. In Mollusca, she takes care of our visual identity as art director.

Florencia Alvarado is a visual artist and designer. Her current interests of visual reflection question the links between photography, printing, and digital/analogue conversions. In Mollusca, she will immerse in an exploration of contemporary non-binary discourses and identities from New York City.

Eleonora Cróquer Pedrón is a professor and researcher at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas. She is a PhD in Hispanic Literature from the Universitat de Valencia. Her lines of research revolve around Latin American cultural and critical theory, eccentric authors in art and literature, and the relations between jouissance and politics. In Mollusca, she will delve into cases who show some displacement of cultural criticism towards other territories of meaning.

Elvira Blanco is a researcher currently living in New York City, where she is a PhD student in the Latin American Cultural Studies programme at Columbia University. Her main topic of nterest is imagination in contemporary Venezuela. In Mollusca, she will look into affections and notions circulating in and through precariousness.

Valentina Alvarado is a visual artist and designer currently based in Barcelona, Spain, where she is a PhD student in the Production and Artistic Research Programme at the Universitat de Barcelona. Her work spans collage, web, ceramics, and film. She is responsible for Mollusca's logo and visual identity and will be engaged in the substrate as a creative.

Pepe Molero is a graphic designer and web programmer based in Maracaibo, Venezuela. His practice is focused on assessment and development of web, motion and multimedia projects. He will build Mollusca’s digital platform.

Jeanniffer Pimentel is a graphic designer based in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where she runs Disidencia Photo Lab, a space for photographic reflection and experimentation. Her design practice is mainly oriented towards digital and audiovisual media. In Mollusca, she will work in the Graphic Substrate.

Vanessa Leal Soto is a cultural journalist with a Master’s degree in Print Journalism from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Among her main areas of journalistic interest are the visual arts, cinema, literature, and music. She will be Mollusca’s social media editor.

Camilo Barboza-Soto is an artist and cultural manager currently based in Mexico City. His artistic work crosses diverse means in a constant dialogue with materials and their luck. He will direct Mollusca’s Services Substrate.⁣

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THE PLATFORM

Mollusca will function with an 'Editorial Substrate' and a 'Studies Substrate'. The former will work with 'Search Lines' conducted by our editors, as well as open contents that connect us. The latter will feature workshops and seminars taught on a virtual learning environment. A third 'Services Substrate' will serve as a showcase for interesting and sensible works. All contents will be translated, aiming at intercultural reflection and the circulation of thought.

Editorial Substrate

So, what will we publish? We are interested in contemporary sensibility. We plan to explore it through singular researches conducted by our editors, ‘Search Lines’ that will extend over time and across geography. We will also invite artists and researchers to create contents, with carte blanche, in a section we have called ‘Arena.’

‘Search Lines’

Researches conducted by our editors, woven as open indexes that will extend over time. The contents will emerge from their quests, inviting artists and researchers working on the same problematic axis to participate—thus, prompting the constitution of a field along the way.

Conducted by Elvira Blanco

An exploration of affections circulating in and through precariousness, addressing notions such as uncertainty, vulnerability, pleasure, resistance, and violence from diverse disciplinary perspectives, within the framework of the regime of precariousness we call “the crisis”, both in Venezuela and in the rest of the world.

Conducted by Eleonora Cróquer Pedrón

In which obviously plural senses can we traverse the heterogenity of approaches to Latin American litrature and culture identified as cultural criticism? A series of interviews with authors who show a certain displacement of critique towards other territories of meaning will feed this Line.

Conducted by Jordi Santiago Flores

If we understand music as a language, what marks does it imprint on the body that speaks it? Sound, listening and repetition are proposed as a line that crosses the question for the link between body and music.

Conducted by Marianela Díaz Cardozo

What is so unbearable about the nakedness of a body in the spectrum of the public? What is uncomfortable in accepting its pleasure? This research will look into discourses that question the dimensions of eroticism and pleasure in the body, in a context of massified de-eroticization, hypersexualization and censorship.

Conducted by Florencia Alvarado

Framed in the backdrop of differences and diversities in New York City, this Line proposes a series of photographic essays that will plunge into the expansion of contemporary non-binary discourses and identities. The search will be conducted among notions of gender, tradition, fashion, and a window to mixed, mestizo, and elastic postures.

‘Arena’

Invitations extended to artists and researchers to create content in open fields (different from those of the Search Lines), granting them carte blanche to create in written, non-written, conventional or experimental formats.

Studies Substrate

By open call or invitation of Mollusca, tutors will offer workshops and seminars on virtual learning environment whose themes, approaches, methodologies, textures, tne in with the platform’s fields of reflection, promoting spaces for discussion and learning that stem from curious and singular research. Tutors will be able to generate methodologies and propose specific, detailed, particular, experimental or liminal discourses from works developed in their various habitats of culture and knowledge.

Services Substrate

We will host a space called 'Wunderkammer' and an e-shop. The former is aimed at offering a service of creation and publication of sponsored contents to entrepreneurs, enterprises, creators, and initiatives, addressed from Mollusca's point of view. The latter gives access to an online store of art pieces and items from creators related to our community, as well as Mollusca's own productions. Both spaces will provide a showcase for curious and sensible works that bring something interesting to the world.

Graphic Substrate

From the ' Graphic Substrate' emanates all of Mollusca's visuality. It translates the substrate's concepts and ideas into a visual language, giving form to our visual identity through various means of graphic and audiovisual communication. It also proposes and develops Mollusca's own productions. Its stroke caresses the entire platform.

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THE FUNDS

Mollusca can be real. With your help we will be able to build our digital platform (this includes the editorial environment, the virtual learning environment, and the e-shop) and secure the first three months of publications (this includes salaries for editors and creatives, as well as payment for the authors and translators involved).

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THE REWARDS

We are fortunate to have initial support from a generous group of Venezuelan artists who are contributing to our campaign with original artworks available as rewards for our backers. Follow our campaign on GoGetFunding and social media to learn more about them, donate or get involved by sharing our project. Please, help us set it in motion!

Aquiles Hadjis

Crisantemo en paños menores

(2019)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Scan - Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 5

Camilo Barboza Soto

Untitled

(2018)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Collage - Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 10

Eduardo Molea

Busto

(2016)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Digital illustration – Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 10

El Gaba

Despierta de una vez (from the series ‘The Way’)

(2018)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Hand-drawn illustration – Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 10

Elizabeth Cemborain

PC9 (from the series “PC Parque Central / Procesos”)

(2015-2018)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 5

Érika Ordosgoitti

Soñamos con una estabilidad supuesta a priori

(2011)

80 x 120 cm

Inkjet print on Luster paper

Edition of 5 + 2AP

Documentation collaboration: Nancy Urosa

Gabriela Mesones Rojo

Paisaje Ulterior (series)

(2018)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Digital photography / videogame –

Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 5

Héctor Silva Núñez

Anfibio

(2015)

Length: 12’30” - Aspect ratio: 16:9

Digital cinema HD4K

Hugo Palmar

Untitled (from the series ‘QUE TENGAS UN CUERPO, Superpolítico y Apátrida’)

(2016)

30 x 22 cm

Collage on paper

Javier León

Ciudad Museo

(2013)

38 x 56 cm

Linocut on Guarro paper

Edition #6 of 12

Jean Nouel

Niño con Pandereta en Playa Cazón, Adícora. Falcón.

(2016)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Mobile photography – Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 5

Jeanne Jiménez

Werther

(2014)

30 x 35 cm

Oil on canvas

José Rafael Perozo

Pelucón Lechero

(2015)

15.6x6.9 cm

Mixed media on paper money

Manuela Zárate

Bellas Artes (from the series ‘Ver de Caracas’)

(2018)

24 x 30 cm

Acrylic on glazed paper

Marianela Díaz Cardozo

Historias posibles (series)

(2009)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 5

Martín Castillo Morales

Webcam (series)

(2018)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Videochat / screenshot -

Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 10

Max Provenzano

Ostracismo

(2018)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 5 + 2AP

MECA Programa

MECA (Música electrónica en Caracas) 2017

(2018)

Print audio disc

Melissa Peña

Give It Up

(2012)

20 x 20 cm

Mixed media on wood panel

Michael Labarca

The Guilt, Probably

(2016)

Length: 14'

HD digital cinema

(English subtitles)

Oscar Abraham Pabón

Rational Geography M (I, II)

(2019)

29 x 21 cm (each)

Collage diptych

Pedro Medina

Lago de Maracaibo

(2018)

50 x 65 cm

Serigraphy, etching, watercolour on paper

Valentina Alvarado Matos

Notas del retorno (postal #2)

(2016)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Digital-analogue collage – Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 5

Florencia Alvarado

Hands (Mimetic Touch) (series)

(2018)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Photography. Digital collage – Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 10

Iván Candeo

Cálculo del valor de una performance según la economía de equivalencia

(2008)

Lenght: 5’01”

Audio/Performance

Eliseo Solís Mora

Personaje Conejo en el Horizonte Gormley

(from the series ‘Personajes transeúntes’)

(2012)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Photoperformance – Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 10

David Molina Molina

Orto y Ocaso (serie)

(2018)

Polychrome terracotta sculpture

Dimensions variable

STOCK MOLLUSCA

We have also created a series of items inspired by the concepts and ideas of Mollusca, designed in our Graphic Substrate with our community in mind.

Jeanne Jiménez for Mollusca

Inspiración molluscum

(2019)

21.6 x 27.9 cm

Print on Photo Rag paper

Edition of 50

Arte, placer y pensamiento / Art, pleasure, and thought

Offset poster

28 x 43 cm

Trazo-Arena

Tote bag #1

100% cotton canvas

34 x 35 x 6 cm – handle height: 28 cm

Arte, placer y pensamiento / Art, pleasure, and thought

Tote bag #2

100% cotton canvas

34 x 35 x 6 cm – handle height: 28 cm

Trazo-Arena

T-shirt

100% comfort cotton

(S, M, L)