Sala: Instant Kalpa(s)

Concept

Instant Kalpa(s) is a co-lateral space/time that emerges in response to the Biennale’s theme of Eternal Kalpa. If kalpa refers to a vast cosmic time span, instant kalpa invites us into a contradiction - an ephemeral eternity, a sachet-sized cosmos, a moment that rots into compost and becomes something else.

Located in a tucked-away, back-of-the-shop structure (real semi-real or imagined), this SALA explores how notions of time in the tropics - fluid, cyclical, relational – are shaped by climate, street popular culture, and time-honored belief systems. Through these lenses, the project embraces heat, decay, rhythm, and improvisation as temporal multi-world making technologies.

This SALA draws inspiration from sachet cultures, tingi-tingi mentalities, sari-sari stores, and bodegas - micro-economies and ecologies (as systems of relationships) that offer compressed, instant units of goods, care, and presence. These spaces are not just transactional but temporal: they sell futures in single servings, store memories in gossip, and serve as hubs where people not only negotiate but bargain the frictions and twists of living al día - day to day.

Time(s) in the Tropics

In the tropics, time re-exists industrial standardization. Without the four seasons as markers, memories often attach to other rhythms: the arrival of the rains, a village "esta, a loved one’s passing. Humidity slows things down. Compost reminds us of cycles. Mangoes fall and feed the ground. A future-oriented mindset is potentially replaced by rubber time (jam karet), where schedules stretch and softness governs.

In this context, an instant can carry the density of a kalpa: An hyper object or unit of multiplicity that we could also refer to as “ahorita”.