Dear Andreas,

When I visited your studio last year, I had the impression of being in a labyrinth while we talked about the many material and symbolic meanings of your works. Sand, for example, being simultaneously the raw material of silicon - which underpins much of Big Tech’s infrastructure - and of the glass we face on our daily screens, mirrors and windows. That is why I mentioned Jorge Luis Borges’s The Book of Sand: a sacred and diabolical book that, like sand, “has neither beginning nor end.” Its narrator keeps rare volumes of the Bible in his collection -  texts that define the relationship between God and men; you collect the words generated by CAPTCHAs - tests that distinguish computers and humans apart. And just like sand in the wind, these allegories have continued since then to alter the landscape of my impressions.

Borges published this story in the eponymous book in 1975: “a volume of incalculable pages,” he wrote. Upon trying to turn one, the narrator discovers that he will never find the same page twice - cataloging such a thing is a futile task. I think the work Ransom Notes evokes a similar aspect of digital platforms: a scroll with no destination, where content always finds more content to display. The difference is that, in Borges, the book is physical, heavy, tangible; it consumes itself until it is hidden away in a library. Ours fits in our pocket, glows at night, vibrates in silence. And we consume ourselves while trying to consume it - “against my will,” as we read in your work.

As in a modern Faustian pact. In Goethe’s tragedy, Faust wagers his soul for unlimited experience, believing he can master time - until, in his final days, he turns to physical labor, dreaming of free land for free men. His redemption comes not from unrestrained pleasure or limitless knowledge, but from creation rooted in the earth. Ransom Notes becomes essential here: if we are captive to the algorithms’ demand for attention, what ransom must we pay to reclaim our will? I think Emulates Yesterday. materializes this tension at the border between human and machine: written in white silica sand, it depicts a CAPTCHA test - but here questioning our time rather than our identity: what from yesterday could we render today, so that we reinvent tomorrow?

Lost in this labyrinth of sand and glass, what remains is what stays: materials, tangible work, memories. In a song we both love, Caetano Veloso sings: "Água com areia/ brinca na beira do mar/ a água passa, a areia fica no lugar" (Water with sand/plays at the edge of the sea / the water passes, the sand stays in place). Turning off the screen brings back a childhood memory of one of my favorite objects: an hourglass. I remember contemplating the fine blue sand flowing through the small transparent gap in the center. And it is as if I could hear the stranger’s voice from The Book of Sand saying: “Look well. You will never see it again.”

Um abraço, Leandro