MENOS POR MENOS É MAIS/ MINUS TIMES MINUS IS PLUS

At some point in life, we learn that the result of multiplying two negative numbers is positive. This is due to the definition of multiplication as the sum of a number by itself and also to the distributive property of multiplication in relation to addition. We recognize it as one of the sign rules for multiplication: “less for less is more”. Every time I think about this rule, recognizing all the mathematical buildings constructed from this axiomatic and logical-deductive structure, an imaginary landscape refusing positive and negative, left and right, arises and proposing ways of navigating in between them that don’t question the nonhierarchical possibility of nominations and germinations of problematic boundary spaces to this same logic. On th other side, it is a rule that could be a slogan to any product within capitalist markets.

 

I believe in the power and possibility of finding people refusing mainstream despite visibility, refusing power and freeing themselves to doubt, people wanting to exist beyond their curriculums or the ways they could sell themselves. It is hard to show the crack when everyone is searching for smoothness. I decided to assume that I am fissure. Not wanting to belong to a system that naturally excludes me is “minus times minus”, and the courage to scream the silence of pain, felling it shaking my body, “is plus”. It is from this pain and this shaking that “Minus times Minus is Plus” arises, a path around analysis and composition of an almost involuntary body shaking when I am in painful situations – “minus times minus” – as a powerful creation tool – “is plus”.

​

My creation processes are characterised by the production of several objects: texts, documental videos, performances, establishing initially the axiomatic of the project, that is, the specific rules that delineate it. “Minus times Minus is Plus” has a similar process, despite its own specificities: I start by thinking about some concepts and images arising from these sign rules e their relation with my own biographical experiences as an artist and the several questionings in between mathematical concepts, binary thought and their dismantling, video recording several debates with the camera around these concepts and images. On the other side, I propose myself several specific performative contexts inspired in daily life situations and in my imaginary world around the expression “minus times minus is plus” and test them. These performative contexts are no more than spots of change of direction and/or orientation in a walk and that, in its disruption, transform a “minus times minus is plus” situation into another "minus times minus is plus” situation.

​

This project started to be delineated in the beginning of 2023 from one of the questions that I have been asking myself in between mathematics and performance: how to explain the rule “less for less is more”, where multiplication, addition and distributive property of multiplication in relation to addition have its origins and outspreads? How can I play with concepts and expressions and rules, defiling them, transforming them into performative landscapes that put known logics in perspective?