SOLIS | SANGUINIS is a reflection on the concept of HOMELAND, based on the two principles that determine the right to nationality: place of birth (Jus Soli) or blood (Jus Sanguinis).
These principles are applied differently around the world, and may form the legal basis for statelessness – as was the case of the Jews during the Second World War, or of various ethnic minorities not recognised by the states in which they live.
The concept of HOMELAND can thus arouse passionate fervours of attachment or rejection, and the whole range of feelings between those two extremes.
The installation questions this duality by systematically presenting an affirmation and a negation, in random combinations, as points between which HOMELAND can be thought, leaving viewers to reflect on their own position, as well as on that of those forced to leave their HOMELANDS because of war, hunger, or in search of a better life for themselves and their families.
The installation was developed entirely in p5.js.
The plane in which the generative animation unfolds identifies the territory (SOLIS) as lying within the border formed by the letters of the word PÁTRIA (homeland). In the background, random images appear, collected from the Internet and processed to obtain symmetry effects and make them harder to recognise, while keeping elements that point to the identification of a territory: domestic, local, regional, universal.
On the territory we find the inhabitants, represented by particles alluding to blood cells (SANGUINIS). They move across the screen and are "anonymous" (grey) migrants outside the HOMELAND, but within its borders (even though each letter is an island) they gain expression and visibility. Their colours represent all possible flags, through a sweep of combinations.
On crossing the borders, out of the HOMELAND, the migrants return to anonymity, to the indistinct mass of "others", seen sometimes as a potential source of diversity and cultural wealth, sometimes as invaders of a privileged space, or as the unloved who dared to leave the HOMELAND in search of new lives, taking their BLOOD to other SOILS. These "others" swiftly go their way, far from the borders, many even forgetting they exist.
The non-territory, everything outside the HOMELAND, is, curiously, the HOMELAND of those who live in it – it only takes a change of perspective...