Installation
Title: Hypothetical reconstruction of the map of the city, which is the world
Hypothesis 1, digital:
A map, a mannequin, some canvases, a screen and a projector, two tv sets, two tablets. wooden structure and fabric hanging in a more open set up.
Hypothesis 2, digital:
The same elements, placed inside a big wooden framebox - only the structure posts-with some division along the borders, where the TV sets are placed in a parallel plane to the whole structure, so the rectangular shape is not distorted.
(Both version have instructions for assembling and dissasembling, pieces are numbered over a general diagram.)
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The overall aspect, like a clock stripped of l its ornaments, bring to our mind the idea that the map is also a machine and a statement.
Inside there is the mannequin. Also inside the frame there is plastic films painted with black acrylic and tablets hanging from the upper beams. Probably there have been pillows in the floors with another material, like cardboard, but that is not probed, because that implies people can go inside the structure and that is not given for certain, because the structure probably is not that strong.
The mannequin obviously represents the city, as well as the relation of the habitants with the architecture (antropomorfisized city). The structure represent the city as a space where the things happens, and also mimics the skeleton of a clockwork or a machine and also the intent of delimitation of the space, which makes our conception of the world more safe.
The mannequin is masked, and that is important because a mask is a face superimposed in yourself as a definition and not by chance, you mean it, is an intent to define the inner reality as well as the map is a way of define the outer world.
So there is a map. most possibly in the floor. This map delineates a shape of the city ressembling also a brain. Therefore, the city is divided in two halves, at one of which stands a mannequin, dressed with a fabric that depicts a landscape and houses, being this a representation of the city-man, city-woman.
In the map of the city are displayed the options and permutation possible among its elements, giving as much as possible meaning. Is an open work, a opera aperta, that estimulates, or try to, generate diverse readings. It plays with time and space.
So this is the spatial representation. This space is surrounded by big canvas that depict group scenes where all the characters of the city appear. Some of them are place at the side planes, others in the upper plane.
The city as a person feed itself from the pantheism and the concept of the apus, or mountain goods in the ancient precolombine Peru, which under the spanish rule mixed with religius and barroque imagery like in Our Lady of Copacabana. The mountains come back again to represent the new nation in the contemporary days; the capital is surrounded by lively suburbs built in the mountains that circel the original valley of Lima. Also as we can see, here appears the question of gender, because mostly the males are represented as animal headed as well as sometimes the women are depicted with human faces. This subverts the narrative of anonymity of women in historic accounts.
This duality of box /mannequin also remind us of the cartesian pair of mind/body or the
“ghost in the machine”(but for us more than a body /mind duality it is more about the individual and the artifacts -mental or physical - used to get grips of this world which seems to the individual basically understandable; we learn to play in the world , but not necessarily know why or how the world works) this machine is the city, and every construct we use to interact with the world. Both the dress of the mannequin and the structure has areas that represent the people alive and the dead.
The work tries to be beautiful in some sort of way.
The tv sets represent different aspects of the dictionary and the main actans(power, beauty, etc). A plastic painted with black paint is extended inside the framebox, and then another one, forming screen that although painted, let the people see trough them. This alludes to the different layers of meaning in the communication. A message in the form of a plane belt comes out of the mouth of the mannequin, representing its attempt to comunnicate-which probably are doomed-, and from the mouth it expands to float around. It is a black belt, with some words written in it. The tables allow certain type of interaction; those can be touched by the public.
In this sense the relationship with the paintings works as a reference; the reality that is strug-gling to be built in reality is totally realised in the canvas, where there are no constrictions. So the paintings bring to life a narrative that only is evocated by the installation, also a kind of metaphor of communication, in two ways, in the Sausurean way: the installation is something like the “langue” , meanwhile the paintings are most likely something like the “parole”, or put in another terms,a general concept with its different avatars, because the installation comprise the general idess of which the paintings are just partial glances.
Other way of seeing it, is in the terms of media or material, where an physical inanimated object, namely the installation, evoques a lively narrative (the paintings), as this are full of dynamic characters depicting some kind of actions, that are recalled trough the memorabilia of the installation. Like the diorams or display windows in museums, there is a little plate where the position of the objects are numbered and labeled, as a key in a map or graphic, recalling the mechanic of a museum, which works in similar way, objects that evoque a certain knowledge.
The paintings have a thematic, as we just said, lively and somehow spontaneous in the scenes depicted; characters (animals and women) depicted in daily life scens, such as a restaurant
in the nigth, contrasting the darknes sof the exterior to the light environment of the inside trough the window glsses, or seated in the benches of a mall, or just walking trough the mall (that also represent the city). Characters are most necessarily centered, but can be cut by the margins, in noto so classcial fashion, bringing somehow to mind, photographic approach.
Not all the paintings depict environments as background. Some depict patterned walls as it, rep-licating pattern pace over the paintings, by the plastic sheets. And because also, when we talk about structures ythat aloow us to interact with the exterior world, we also can say that of our clothes, thta therefore are a kind of architecture of the self.
The images are surrounded by belts that float in the air.z
But most importantly, many aspects of the subject in each of the painting do not have, should not have, or must not have, according to each one’s point of view, a specific, determined symbol-ism linked to the overall scheme that goes further than the ones we just talked about; that does not mean the interpretatiuon is constrained to what is written here, but on the contrary, that they are part of the general scheme, but they are also more than that, in the same sense that any communication attempt, has meanings or interpretations that escape the general structure of the intention for which it has been made.
The whole structure is divided in as many aprts as entries are in the dictionary, even more, each entrie in the dictionary has a corresponding section in the wooden structure. Actually there is a diagram, kind of map or board game that can be distributed during the show to play permutations and game.
The women, however have the faces covered by a pair of hands, so they probably still have no voice. The women are taken as a representation of many sectors that are considered in the society of a lesser grade, subconsciously or consciously, by any criteria; they appear at the sides. Sometimes we make the women warriors, subverting these narratives, and other mere spectators, just asserting that very same way of seeing.
Some tablets are attached to the clothes of the mannequins, and are interconnected so when one is touched all of them change.
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