8A4

“”The Project arose from a conversation between two friends and artists, one living in São Paulo and the other in London. The two women speak to each other every day and, on this particular occasion, they were discussing the lack of a loved one. As the conversation progressed, they moved on to the lack of Genuine Love between people and then, as it progressed further, to the creation of a diary – a group project in contemporary art with the participation of other people.

The first phase of the Project got underway on 20 September 2014 with daily photographic records, necessarily linked to another medium – words – in the form of texts, sentences, poetry, literature, grammar and music. The idea was to make the languages speak to each other in an effort to bring together shared meanings.

As one might expect from the name – “30 days without HIM” – this phase had a scheduled end date from the very outset. It was to be an applied, dated art form, involving eight participants, working with a specific proposal and support: every day had to fit on one A4 sheet, which in turn gave rise to the group’s name – “8A4″. One of the participants left half-way through the process and it was at this point that we realised this emptiness or incapacity was part of this choice; comparing the results, we could see the similarities between each other and what belongs to each other, directly related to the dramatic nature of various days of the week. The choice was made: we put a date to a feeling and publicly owned it as an art form. A record was made of each day, and each participant interacted in their own way to loss, absence, waiting and searching. The result of this record set the second phase of the Project in motion: an exhibition in an unconventional space, inviting the audience to participate in this group project and instigating a third phase on yet another platform: the Internet and social media, thus opening the project up to other participants and on another support, transforming the notion of self, uniqueness and particularity into one of collective, universal and infinite truth.”

Lucrécia Couso
Expo “30 dias em 8A4”