The banana, sign of duration. Pattern, variation and extension of a fruit

Abstract

In this paper we propose to study the banana by problematizing the exoticism, mythification, fetishization and scientism of the colonial view. To do this, we approach the work Musa paradisiaca, a video installation by the artist José Alejandro Restrepo, and the dialogue that it holds with the text “Volver a comer del árbol de la ciencia” by Juan Cárdenas. Our main hypothesis is that in the articulation of these works the image of the banana becomes a sign of duration. As an expression of multiplicities, contradictions and heterogeneities of times, the duration is expressed in the modes of presence of a pattern (which in the case of our study is the banana) that is detached from the merely common and static and expresses a multiple, contradictory and heterogeneous presence that configures variations displayed in the extension of time. The inscription of banana as a pattern entails a departure from context, a search for the gaps where the disorder of the dominant and the norm occurs, that is, a variation.