sintaxe
In sintaxe, the gesture of writing is displaced from the page onto matter. The video records, in 2012, the making of Meu Tempo é Quando: steel chain links are broken apart, reorganised and joined again by solder until they form letters, words and a sentence. The footage is from 2012; the work is from 2026.
- medium
- steel chain links, brass solder
- dimensions
- variable
- year
- 2026
- venue
- —
The video preserves the process as an event: the body that performs, the metal that resists, the fire that transforms, and the sentence that emerges progressively from the work.
The sound is the studio’s own — the cut, the torch and the bench.
The work starts from syntax as a structure of relation. There is a subject, an action, and a matter submitted to that action:
- subject
- Andrea Sandtfoss
- object
- chain
- verb
- to write
- tense
- past
- sentence
- meu tempo é quando
The chain stops working merely as a bond or a restraint and begins to constitute language. Each letter results from a physical sequence of rupture, displacement, heat and joining. Writing thus becomes an action on matter.
The chain writes.
Fire inscribes.