Carlo Canún

My work focuses mainly on forms of language, which explore knowledge production methods through content and forms of dissemination. These forms question the veracity of messages and suggest that there is a non-existent line between truth and fiction.
        The primary emphasis of my research related to the generation of knowledge relies on language as a tool for controlling thought and therefore, reality. I am interested in rumours, mythologies, lies, sociolinguistics and semiotics as tools for questioning sources of information and their bias structures.
        With the aim to explore vessels of information, I’ve developed projects such as The Order of Books, which rethinks classifying systems; Fabulations of Exiluity uses lying as a tool to create alternative realities; The Encyclopedia of Creatures, People, Places, Events, Tools and Publications explores the agency of the ‘official media’ to blend reality and fiction; and “Small Town, Big Hell”, an imparted workshop to explore gossip as a form of distribution and legitimisation. These explorations have culminated in “Infected Lexicon of Language”, exploring language as a virus that has the power to remember, record and actualise.
        As a graphic designer, libraries and archives have become one of the main subjects in my practice, mostly in connection to modes of representation of reality. These vessels of ‘official’ knowledge are an example of talking about collective memory as mediated memory. They represent biassed records of the past, but most importantly, the presence of absence, the forgotten, and the avoided; marks that ask for unfolding and refolding new discoveries and interpretations.