Gira-Sol with a hyphen con­nects two cap­i­tal­ized words: “gira”, a con­ju­gat­ed form of the Span­ish verb “girar”, a verb used to describe the action of turn­ing around an axis, and the Span­ish noun “sol”, which means “sun”, the sun being THE axis.“Girasol”, as one word, is the pho­net­ic equal of “Gira-Sol”(except for the slight pause between syl­la­bles imposed by the hyphen), and means “sun­flower”. Clear­ly, the name “gira­sol” is a con­trac­tion of “gira-sol”, a name derived from the heliotrop­ic motion of young sun­flow­ers, as they turn their faces toward the sun and fol­low its path from east to west through­out the day. But, if a fig­u­ra­tive rela­tion­ship can be drawn between the work and the sun­flower, it is hid­den in the flo­rets, and their pat­tern of two-way inter­sect­ing spi­rals.

In Gira-Sol, Iván’s elec­tri­fied neon fence guards a cir­cum­scribed rhom­bic space sur­round­ing a cen­tral col­umn, acces­si­ble only through four gate­ways abut­ting each cor­ner of the rhom­bus. The enclosed, inner space con­tains a geo­met­ric floor paint­ing, which func­tions as a man­dala-map of paths wind­ing around one cen­ter. Par­tic­i­pants simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fol­low these traced paths in indi­vid­ual tra­jec­to­ries that loop and cross each oth­er as they col­lec­tive­ly cir­cum­am­bu­late the cen­tral col­umn, pro­pelled by the drum­beat of a sole drum­mer sta­tioned out­side the enclosed area. The paint­ed floor map that indi­cates the indi­vid­ual paths con­sists of a series of per­pen­dic­u­lar lines that togeth­er com­pose the con­verg­ing geome­tries of four inter­sect­ing forms: a square (quad­ra­tum, drawn in the sol­id black line), a larg­er square cross (crux quadra­ta, or Greek cross, drawn in the sol­id red line), a small­er square cross (crux quadra­ta, drawn in the bro­ken black line) and a chakana (cruz and­i­na, or Inca cross, the exte­ri­or perime­ter of which is drawn in the bro­ken red line), though it should be men­tioned that the cruz and­i­na - a stepped cross, com­posed of a square cross indi­cat­ing the four car­di­nal points of the com­pass, and a super­im­posed square with a hole through the cen­ter as the axis that con­nects the cos­mic vault to the oth­er planes of exis­tence, encom­pass­es all the forms out­lined on our move­ment map, except for the snakes of the dou­ble-dou­ble ouroboros, who birth and con­sume them­selves end­less­ly.

Seek­ing to design a sys­tem of sym­met­ri­cal, orthog­o­nal paths with­in the con­tours of the rhom­bus, the work nat­u­ral­ly lands on an inter­sec­tion of cos­molo­gies and their cor­re­spond­ing sacred geome­tries. The con­stant­ly recur­ring laps of the sun that ris­es in the east and sets in the west, our fun­da­men­tal human expe­ri­ence of the all-encom­pass­ing order of our uni­verse, ensure the under­ly­ing com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of our sys­tems; and these shapes and pat­terns that chart the rela­tion­ships between the human and meta­phys­i­cal worlds, for one peo­ple, are nev­er entire­ly unrec­og­niz­able to anoth­er. In that sense, the cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion of a cen­tral axis, vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble, is, in some form, famil­iar to all. Step­ping into the illu­mi­nat­ed are­na and mov­ing in cir­cles among oth­ers, seems, at the very least, to acti­vate a recog­ni­tion of some­thing intrin­sic, if not a sense of ecsta­t­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Like­wise, what appears to be a seem­ing­ly arbi­trary com­bi­na­tion of sym­bol­ic geome­tries is noth­ing oth­er than the pure result of our direct inspi­ra­tion. Our results will always coin­cide with what already exists; the forms will always be repeat­ed. The explic­it iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the forms, and the detec­tion of their exist­ing asso­ci­a­tions, is part of a sub­se­quent effort to con­nect our results to a uni­ver­sal log­ic; to observe the anal­o­gous designs and pat­terns, and rejoice in the har­mo­ny.

In each 5‑minute cycle, 4 walk­ers enter the rhom­bic space, 1 from each of the 4 sides. Each walk­er fol­lows their indi­vid­ual, pre­de­ter­mined path in cir­cu­lar rep­e­ti­tions for the dura­tion of the cycle. Indi­vid­ual paths are ran­dom­ly assigned to each walk­er at the begin­ning of each cycle, by select­ing 1 of 4 let­ters (A,B,C,D) cor­re­spond­ing to the 4 entrance points (A is north, B is east, C is south, D is west). Each cycle has its unique com­bi­na­tion of indi­vid­ual paths, so that each time, walk­ers expe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent path involv­ing new encoun­ters. The cycles are designed to become increas­ing­ly con­vo­lut­ed, pre­sent­ing more pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­plex, mul­ti-direc­tion­al encoun­ters. Walk­ers are set on their own tra­jec­to­ries, free to move at their own pace, and in some cycles, they incor­po­rate indi­vid­ual spins (the direc­tions des­ig­nat­ed by the snakes eat­ing their tails); their bod­ies are ful­fill­ing the path they know to fol­low, but they have no pre­de­ter­mined strat­e­gy for encoun­ters, which, in turn, can nev­er be accu­rate­ly pre­dict­ed due to the indi­vid­ual free-style per­mit­ted each walk­er. The result is spon­ta­neous and coop­er­a­tive; encoun­ters are nego­ti­at­ed intu­itive­ly and even­tu­al­ly inte­grat­ed, and ulti­mate­ly, empha­sized.

In the script for Samuel Beckett’s work Quad, a work whose for­mal design is delight­ful­ly akin to our con­struc­tions (how­ev­er, its premise of being a the­atri­cal pre­sen­ta­tion is exact­ly the oppo­site of ours), he includes some notes at the end, con­tem­plat­ing the unplanned pos­si­ble out­comes of the encoun­ters he sets up between his walk­ers. His walk­ers are also 4, walk­ing on a des­ig­nat­ed (but not rep­re­sent­ed), indi­vid­ual path tra­vers­ing a square. Though his walk­ers’ direc­tion and pace are care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed, Beck­ett, in his notes pro­ject­ing the work, real­izes that he has not ful­ly account­ed for the moment of inter­sec­tion between the walk­ers when, per­form­ing their simul­ta­ne­ous diag­o­nal cross­ings, they inter­sect at the cen­tral point of the square, called “E”. He writes: “Prob­lem: “Nego­ti­a­tion of E with­out rup­ture of rhythm when three or four play­ers cross paths at this point. Or, if rup­ture accept­ed, how best exploit?” Since it is impos­si­ble for bod­ies to pass through each oth­er, there will inevitably be a rup­ture of rhythm, even a devi­a­tion of course. The ques­tion “how best exploit?”, he pos­es from a director’s per­spec­tive: how best to make use of the rup­ture by delib­er­ate­ly inte­grat­ing it as a device. But, in our case, with­out any direc­to­r­i­al vision, or any intend­ed out­come, we can observe that the ques­tion – and the answer – already exist in the body of the walker.