The philosopher Michael Marder describes dust as an element that transgresses the boundaries between temporal modalities, residing in
a non-linear, non-sequential time that collapses the “babel” of past, present, and future. “Eternity is time configured as space, or space indistinguishable from time,” he writes, “and dust is its swirling, rolling, disintegrating, and conglomerating image.” In Talk with Dust, Diaz Morales once again returns to the harsh, arid Patagonian landscape that has significantly shaped his artistic language. Spreading across six-channels, Talk with Dust opens with a vertical projection of road shot from a moving vehicle. With the camera focused entirely on the asphalt, we don’t see any of the surrounding landscape, and with its whirring yellow lines and patchy zig-zags of tar, this view of Patagonia’s route 26 dissolves into something that resembles a Structuralist film more than a scenic drive— thereby setting the tone for a journey without a clear destination. Over the video’s six channels, which un- fold over screens of different sizes and orientation, we encounter a slow-burning candle, a drummer improvising, an explosion, and a car cycling endlessly in the desert. Through the viewers’ own movement through space, these isolated occurrences form their own asynchronic narrative and generate a fragmented world—rich mental and material territories on “the other side of the real” where the fantastic re- sides.