The death of Rudolf Diesel: accident, suicide, or murder?

BarcelonaEngineer Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, drowned in the autumn of 1913 while traveling between Antwerp and England aboard the SS Dresden. Diesel disappeared, and his body was found a few days later. He was identified by his personal belongings and returned to the sea. The main hypotheses are that he suffered an accident or that he committed suicide due to the financial problems he was experiencing because he had been ruined by his redemptive projects, such as an engine that ran on vegetable oil. A third hypothesis, in the realm of conspiracy theories, goes further and maintains that oil magnate John Rockefeller was involved in order to acquire his diesel engine patent.

Now, the artist Víctor Ruiz Colomer (Barcelona, ​​1983) invokes Rudolf Diesel in his exhibition at Can Felipa, on view until January 10, entitled I.Bouloum, R.Diesel, P.Kelly, JKRamírez, J.Rockefeller, V. Ruiz Colomer, H. Saefpanah, CJScozzari. And as the title itself suggests, in addition to Diesel and Rockefeller, Ramírez also invokes Petra Kelly, one of the founders of the German Green Party. Furthermore, I.Bouloum is the artist Ikram Bouloum, a close friend of the project; Saefpanah is another friend, an electrician, who has collaborated on the project; and CJScozzari is Cory John Scozzari, the exhibition's curator. All of this stems from Ruiz's exploration of how this "group of living and dead people" can create an energy cooperative within the gallery, and how energy production transforms the space through an intervention that blends architecture and sculpture.

"The question relates to the legal and relational frameworks of energy communities and how there are current conditions governing the production and distribution of energy by people who are already dead, or who are imagined figures of people who are no longer here, but with whom we must continue to connect. It's also part of the process of becoming."

The bulk of the intervention is concentrated on three walls that alter the flow of movement within the room and a series of interventions on the windows, including a generator powered by recycled oil, which activates when there is no sunlight, and a photovoltaic installation. "The project is very much about working with materials, and from there seeing what systems and structures overlap or form these exhibitions," says Ruiz. He also hung the soap sculptures he made for an exhibition a few years ago on the electrical cable that runs through the room. "Those sculptures took the form of necklaces, of jewelry. They were works that dealt with material value, and when Cory suggested I continue exploring the idea of working with recycled oil, I began working with the idea of a motor that also runs on the same oil contained in the soap beads," says Ruiz, who decided to take off. "The word 'recycle' sometimes feels a bit inadequate to me, because it seems that after recycling there's nothing, and it's about not stopping things, about letting them continue," he points out.