Jennifer Allora (1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (1971, Cuba) are a collaborative duo of visual artists who live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Through a research-based approach, their works trace intersections of history, material culture, ecology, and politics, using a multiplicity of artistic media that include performance, sculpture, sound, video, and photography.

Entelechy highlights a series of sculpture-performance based works that are central to Allora & Calzadilla’s trajectory, such as Hope Hippo (2005), Stop, Repair, prepare: Variations on ‘Ode to Joy’ for a Prepared Piano (2008), Lifespan (2014) and Entelechy (2020), which will be regularly staged throughout the course of the exhibition in collaboration with local musicians and performers.

In Lifespan, three vocalists interpret a composition by David Lang by whistling and blowing air towards a 4-billion-year-old rock sample from the Hadean period. The rock, suspended from the ceiling, floats at the performers’ shoulder height as if it were a microphone or another vocal instrument. Subtly pushing the rock like a pendulum, the singers’ breaths can be regarded as a poetic form of wind erosion as well as a primal chant. Bringing humans into contact with this rock sample for the first time, the performance connects the present moment with that of the Earth’s origins—a time when there were no living witnesses to the planet’s geological transformation.