{"id":46180,"date":"2000-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/archivos\/46180"},"modified":"2026-03-10T08:34:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T08:34:53","slug":"jennifer-allora-guillermo-calzadilla-leer-el-territorio-jennifer-allora-guillermo-calzadilla-reading-the-territory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/jennifer-allora-guillermo-calzadilla-leer-el-territorio-jennifer-allora-guillermo-calzadilla-reading-the-territory\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla. Leer el territorio \/ Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla. Reading the territory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Autor:<\/strong> Manuel Cirauqui<\/p>\n

Revista:<\/strong> L\u00c1PIZ Revista Internacional de Arte n\u00ba 226<\/p>\n\n

Carl Andre afirmaba que el arte, \u201caquello que hacemos\u201d, se opone a la cultura, \u201caquello que se nos hace\u201d, y sus palabras han tenido que ser reconsideradas hist\u00f3ricamente en la medida en que el discurso minimalista se ha convertido no solo en parte de la cultura, sino tambi\u00e9n en un poderoso s\u00edmbolo de la inefable mercanc\u00eda art\u00edstica. El trabajo del citado Andre, as\u00ed como el de sus correligionarios, tomaba como norma el principio de elecci\u00f3n duchampiana, aunque pronto se vio que la operaci\u00f3n invert\u00eda la intenci\u00f3n de Duchamp y la transformaba en discurso afirmativo, es decir, en una defensa del arte. El giro que lleva a un gesto formalmente liberador (negativo) a convertirse en una r\u00edgida norma formalista (afirmativa) es ya un clich\u00e9 de nuestro pasado modernista. A la luz de este esquema hist\u00f3rico, el minimalismo resulta ser un enemigo dif\u00edcil para cualquier discurso art\u00edstico que se enfrente a \u00e9l: todo intento de poner en cuesti\u00f3n una pura objetualidad innombrable para sacar a la superficie los conflictos que estructuran un objeto acaba por influir en tales intentos y transforma sus resultados en obras minimalistas. La obra de Jennifer Allora (Filadelfia, 1974) y Guillermo Calzadilla (La Habana, 1971) se inscribe en ese camino bidireccional que conduce de la cr\u00edtica postminimalista al compromiso social y de \u00e9ste a la producci\u00f3n de un discurso art\u00edstico post- (o anti-) minimalista. El di\u00e1logo con la obra de Andre (autor de c\u00e9lebres suelos met\u00e1licos) se planteaba ya de modo expl\u00edcito en la primera de sus exposiciones, titulada Charcoal Dance Floor <\/em> y realizada en la galer\u00eda Marozzini de San Juan, Puerto Rico, en 1997. Para hacernos una idea del violento contraste entre los distintos estados de la instalaci\u00f3n, cabr\u00eda empezar a describirla por el final. Imaginemos una tard\u00eda visita a la citada muestra, a la hora del cierre de la galer\u00eda: lo que encontramos no es sino un suelo embadurnado de carboncillo y sucio de pisadas negras por todas partes. Por un reflejo hist\u00f3rico no podremos evitar establecer los previsibles v\u00ednculos con las intervenciones pl\u00e1sticas de corte m\u00ednimo, exacerbadas por un material constitutivamente ef\u00edmero y fr\u00e1gil como el carb\u00f3n. En realidad, las pisadas del p\u00fablico hab\u00edan borrado el rostro <\/em> de la instalaci\u00f3n inicial: lo que en un principio aparec\u00eda a ras de suelo eran figuras humanas plenamente realistas, dibujadas delicadamente con carboncillo sobre el parqu\u00e9 y contempladas desde una perspectiva cenital. La falta de cualquier fijaci\u00f3n del material pon\u00eda su destino en manos del p\u00fablico y su aspecto final era una marca de uso, alegor\u00eda del intercambio p\u00fablico por el cual la obra llega a adquirir pleno sentido. Esta adquisici\u00f3n de sentido tomaba la forma, en Charcoal Dance Floor <\/em>, de una desaparici\u00f3n. Una entrega o inmolaci\u00f3n de tipo similar, aunque quiz\u00e1 m\u00e1s violenta, se hizo en 2004 con objeto de la exposici\u00f3n titulada Ciclonismo <\/em>, en la Galer\u00eda Chantal Crousel de Par\u00eds: en este caso una mancha de agua y aceite de motor se extend\u00eda como una alfombra peligrosa a la entrada de la sala. La mancha, que exig\u00eda ser \u201cregada\u201d a diario, fund\u00eda los lenguajes de la amenaza y la fragilidad: a la vez que se evocaba \u2013sin apenas mediaci\u00f3n simb\u00f3lica\u2013 la agresividad ecol\u00f3gica del desarrollo humano, la negra mancha requer\u00eda, como obra <\/em>, los cuidados de una planta de interior. <\/p>\n

Llevar a cabo una relectura de la obra art\u00edstica que haga emerger sus contradicciones \u2013en tanto que objeto inseparable de una infinidad de conexiones mundanas\u2013 constituye en el caso de Allora y Calzadilla todo un programa de trabajo. Puerto Rican Light <\/em>es un ejemplo de tratamiento deconstructivo de la noci\u00f3n de autonom\u00eda art\u00edstica, que intenta no obstante evitar la facilidad de la cr\u00edtica vulgar a la preeminencia del mercado y a los estereotipos sobre su esencia ideol\u00f3gica. La obra, realizada en 2003 para la Americas Society, se planteaba como un suplemento a la instalaci\u00f3n hom\u00f3nima de Dan Flavin ( Puerto Rican Light [to Jeanie Blake <\/em>]), de 1965. Allora y Calzadilla elaboraron para la ocasi\u00f3n un transformador de energ\u00eda solar en energ\u00eda el\u00e9ctrica capaz de alimentar la instalaci\u00f3n de Flavin, consistente en una combinaci\u00f3n de diversas l\u00e1mparas fluorescentes cuyo resultado ambiental ven\u00eda a evocar la luz del pa\u00eds caribe\u00f1o. Al cargar con luz real de Puerto Rico su generador, Allora y Calzadilla introduc\u00edan en la instalaci\u00f3n de Flavin un conflicto de servidumbre; por un juego de explicitaci\u00f3n ficticia, se pon\u00eda de manifiesto la relaci\u00f3n de dependencia silenciada entre producci\u00f3n cultural y hegemon\u00eda pol\u00edtica, elevaci\u00f3n espiritual de la obra y represi\u00f3n material de su contexto. Adem\u00e1s, la obra introduc\u00eda dentro de la instalaci\u00f3n de Flavin el mismo principio de perturbaci\u00f3n que \u00e9ste hab\u00eda preconizado a prop\u00f3sito del espacio de exposiciones. Insistiendo en el topos de la luz y en la referencia al discurso minimal, Allora y Calzadilla produjeron igualmente en 2003 la instalaci\u00f3n Traffic Patterns <\/em>, tambi\u00e9n como una manipulaci\u00f3n o d\u00e9tournement <\/em>de ambientes luminosos hist\u00f3ricamente connotados, como pueden ser los construidos por James Turrell. La instalaci\u00f3n consist\u00eda en una sala inundada de luz cambiante: ya roja, ya amarilla, ya verde. El sistema de iluminaci\u00f3n no solo evocaba el funcionamiento del sem\u00e1foro callejero: en realidad, segu\u00eda su mismo pulso, ya que el sistema estaba conectado a un aparato real en una calle de Puerto Rico (la exposici\u00f3n ten\u00eda lugar, tambi\u00e9n, en la Americas Society de Nueva York). En realidad la instalaci\u00f3n era <\/em> un sem\u00e1foro, que extra\u00eda todo su potencial est\u00e9tico de la (des-velada) abstracci\u00f3n de un aparato de ordenaci\u00f3n social. El acto de contemplaci\u00f3n de la obra se hac\u00eda sin\u00f3nimo, por medio de este truco, de un acto de obediencia. <\/p>\n

Pese a las definiciones de corte \u201cmaterialista\u201d (Andre) con que algunos artistas minimalistas presentaban su trabajo, la pretensi\u00f3n de sus obras de permanecer fuera de lo conceptualizable <\/em> expresaban, como un efecto colateral, una visi\u00f3n esencialista y escindida de la presencia <\/em>. Podemos entender los primeros trabajos de Allora y Calzadilla como un intento de dialectizar <\/em> esta visi\u00f3n y revelar desde su propio interior todos sus silencios; tambi\u00e9n de quebrar la tautolog\u00eda minimalista basada en el principio stelliano seg\u00fan el cual \u201cwhat you see is what you see\u201d (lo que ves es lo que ves) . Esto equivale tambi\u00e9n a interrumpir lo que Pierre Bourdieu llamaba illusio <\/em>, es decir, \u201cla relaci\u00f3n encantada con un juego que es producto de la complicidad ontol\u00f3gica entre estructuras mentales y estructuras objetivas del espacio social\u201d. Tal y como Bourdieu apuntara en Raisons pratiques <\/em>(Par\u00eds, Seuil, 1994), la realidad no es sino un sistema de mutuas exterioridades conectadas, y todo objeto debe ser le\u00eddo dentro de ella como la expresi\u00f3n de un cruce de antagonismos. Frente a la idea de un \u201carte puro, simb\u00f3licamente dominante pero econ\u00f3micamente dominado\u201d, la obra de Allora y Calzadilla tiende no ya a acentuar la pureza del \u201ccapital cultural\u201d, sino a manifestar los conflictos ligados al contradictorio estatuto de la obra de arte y, m\u00e1s all\u00e1 de ella, del sistema de los objetos en general, a un mismo tiempo relacional y corp\u00f3reo. El car\u00e1cter abierto de su reflexi\u00f3n se hace tangible en la obra callejera Chalks <\/em> (Tizas), llevada a cabo entre 1998 y 2006 en las ciudades de Lima, Nueva York y Par\u00eds. El esquema de Chalks <\/em> es sencillo: se trata de depositar grandes cilindros de tiza (la referencia al discurso del arte m\u00ednimo es obvia) en la plaza de una ciudad; la fragmentaci\u00f3n progresiva de los bloques de tiza invita a los transe\u00fantes a usar este material para dibujar o escribir en el suelo todo tipo de mensajes. Ahora bien, cada ciudad impone un contexto y un sentido a la obra, tambi\u00e9n un destino: en Nueva York, las im\u00e1genes de turistas asi\u00e1ticos frente al Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum nos muestran un lado vagamente espectacular y l\u00fadico; en Par\u00eds, ni\u00f1os y ejecutivos se abandonan a las delicias de la expresi\u00f3n y la autocensura, bajo invitaci\u00f3n oficial. El caso de Lima es m\u00e1s novelesco y pol\u00edtico, y da buena prueba de que el potencial cr\u00edtico de una obra depende esencialmente del receptor y su contexto. Las tizas, que fueron depositadas en la plaza de Armas de la ciudad por la ma\u00f1ana, suscitaron un remolino de intervenciones espont\u00e1neas y se a\u00f1adieron al despliegue de una manifestaci\u00f3n de funcionarios, que se organizaron para hacer del suelo una gran pizarra sobre la que exponer sus quejas. Las tizas acabaron siendo retiradas por el ej\u00e9rcito, y las inscripciones borradas por los servicios de limpieza municipal, una puesta en orden que dio paso, por la tarde, a la inauguraci\u00f3n de la III Bienal Iberoamericana. Chalks <\/em> tiene un sentido pol\u00edtico evidente pero contradictorio, relacionado con un medio \u2013el espacio p\u00fablico\u2013 en que, como afirma Michel Gaillot, no es posible otra voz com\u00fan que la que se expresa a trav\u00e9s de la singularidad. El mismo principio de perturbaci\u00f3n que evoc\u00e1bamos a prop\u00f3sito de Flavin interviene en este caso respecto a la noci\u00f3n de monumento, en su confrontaci\u00f3n, como objeto, al espacio p\u00fablico en el que se inscribe como una suerte de eco del principio de autoridad. As\u00ed, la \u201cvoz\u201d autoritaria del monumento urbano pasa a descomponerse en voces reales y se pone al servicio de la expresi\u00f3n de aquellos que en principio estaban destinados a rodearlo. La horizontalidad misma de la obra contradice la l\u00f3gica monumental de la comunicaci\u00f3n, en la que el mensaje se asocia mec\u00e1nicamente a un lugar de poder y a un prop\u00f3sito de influencia. Chalk <\/em> es, dependiendo del contexto en que aparezca, un juguete o un caballo de Troya, un instrumento de reactivaci\u00f3n comunicativa o una m\u00e1s entre tantas curiosidades fotografiables. <\/p>\n

El proyecto m\u00e1s amplio realizado hasta la fecha por Allora y Calzadilla lleva como t\u00edtulo Land Mark <\/em> (de \u00e9l se han podido ver extractos en la Tate Modern y, \u00faltimamente, una compilaci\u00f3n en el Palais de Tokyo) y se inscribe en la perspectiva, ya descrita, de romper la autorreferencialidad del arte por medio de la creaci\u00f3n de conexiones entre esferas pr\u00e1cticas y art\u00edsticas. Land Mark <\/em> toma como punto de partida un hecho geopol\u00edtico grave y concreto: la ocupaci\u00f3n y explotaci\u00f3n militar, por parte de la marina norteamericana, de la peque\u00f1a isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico. Desde los a\u00f1os cuarenta, los marines estadounidenses han venido realizando pruebas militares dentro de un territorio que ha sido paulatinamente seccionado, agujereado, hundido y contaminado; tambi\u00e9n despoblado y arruinado hist\u00f3ricamente. Una larga y desigual lucha de los viequenses propici\u00f3, en 2003, el abandono de las actividades militares estadounidenses y la reapropiaci\u00f3n de la isla por parte de aqu\u00e9llos, dando paso a un nuevo per\u00edodo de reorganizaci\u00f3n del lugar. El trabajo de Allora y Calzadilla ha documentado cada una de las fases de este desarrollo, inscribi\u00e9ndose en el interior mismo de estas luchas; su obra ha intervenido en ellas como una suerte de suplemento comunicativo all\u00ed donde la precariedad de los medios de protesta se abr\u00eda como una llamada de socorro a la imaginaci\u00f3n. La primera de las obras de la serie, titulada tambi\u00e9n Land Mark <\/em>, reproduce a escala 1:1 un pedazo de superficie terrestre seg\u00fan el lenguaje de los simuladores inform\u00e1ticos de 3D, frecuentemente usados en los sistemas de planificaci\u00f3n y estrategia militar. Esta gran cuadr\u00edcula negra de caucho, que las pisadas de los visitantes pueden descomponer o rehacer, reproduce los cr\u00e1teres dejados por los ensayos militares mediante un efecto \u00f3ptico que evoca los enga\u00f1os y lagunas de la memoria hist\u00f3rica. La progresiva exteriorizaci\u00f3n electr\u00f3nica de la memoria colectiva (Michel Gaillot), que hoy vivimos, implica asimismo un aumento de las posibilidades de manipulaci\u00f3n y montaje de nuestra propia conciencia. En el caso del suelo, esta memoria es literalmente impalpable y, al mismo tiempo, materialmente presente. La instalaci\u00f3n hace visible una suerte de ilusionismo inherente al suelo material. Pero Land Mark <\/em> se apoya tan pronto en objetos espec\u00edficos como en alteraciones del orden objetivo cotidiano de corte m\u00e1s bien performativo <\/em>. Es el caso de dos obras correspondientes a la fase de resoluci\u00f3n del conflicto viequense: cuando la reapertura p\u00fablica de las zonas antes militarizadas fue decretada, un activista recorri\u00f3 la isla con una trompeta unida al tubo de escape de su moto, difundiendo por la isla un himno atonal, propio de una etapa nueva y a\u00fan por construir. De esta acci\u00f3n da cuenta el v\u00eddeo titulado Returning a sound <\/em>(2004). Cuando la autoridad sobre la zona fue transferida al Departamento de Interior y la isla fue declarada \u201creserva natural\u201d tras una serie de reuniones, Allora y Calzadilla produjeron el v\u00eddeo Under discussion <\/em>(2005), que muestra a otro activista rodeando la costa de Vieques a bordo de una mesa invertida a modo de barca fuera borda. Este gesto evocaba una reapropiaci\u00f3n del espacio mar\u00edtimo de la isla por parte de la poblaci\u00f3n m\u00e1s all\u00e1 de cualquier componenda pol\u00edtica, al mismo tiempo que preconizaba el debate como \u00fanico espacio de soluci\u00f3n pol\u00edtica. En momentos m\u00e1s duros de la confrontaci\u00f3n, los artistas produjeron suelas con las cuales los activistas viequenses pod\u00edan imprimir, durante sus incursiones furtivas, sus reivindicaciones y lemas sobre la arena del territorio ocupado. <\/p>\n

La obra ligaba de este modo el \u00e1mbito performativo del activismo pol\u00edtico a tradiciones art\u00edsticas tales como el grabado. Land Mark <\/em> se explica sem\u00e1nticamente como un instrumento de lectura de marcas territoriales ( land marks <\/em>) m\u00e1s que como un simple punto de orientaci\u00f3n espacial (en ingl\u00e9s, landmark <\/em>). Al desencantamiento de la obra minimalista, la ruptura de su tautolog\u00eda, le acompa\u00f1a un reencantamiento del espacio cotidiano. Leer el territorio significa tambi\u00e9n rearticularlo. Una forma profunda de comprenderlo es hablar a trav\u00e9s de \u00e9l. <\/p>\n

jennifer allora & guillermo calzadilla <\/strong><\/p>\n

Reading the territory <\/h1>\n

Manuel Cirauqui <\/p>\n

Carl Andre asserted that art, \u201cwhat we do,\u201d is opposed to culture, \u201cwhat is done to us.\u201d His words have had to be reconsidered historically to the extent that the minimalist discourse has not only become part of culture, but also a powerful symbol of the ineffable artistic merchandise. The works created by the afo reme ntioned Andre, and his fellows, considered Duchamp’s principle of selection as the norm, although it was soon discovered that the operation inverted Duchamp’s intention and turned it into an affirmative discourse, that is, into a defence of art. The change that takes a formally liberating gesture (negative) to become a rigid formalist norm (affirmative) is now a clich\u00e9 of our modernist past. In view of this historical scheme, minimalism is a difficult enemy for any artistic discourse to battle: any attempt to question a pure unnameable objectuality to bring to light the conflicts that structure an object ends up influencing said attempts and transforms the results into minimalist works. Art by Jennifer Allora (Philadelphia, 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (Havana, 1971) can be inscribed in this two-directional path that leads from post-minimalist criticism to social commitment and from there to the production of a post- (or anti-) minimalist artistic discourse. The dialogue with Andre’s work (author of famous metallic floors) was already approached explicitly in the first of his exhibitions, entitled Charcoal Dance Floor <\/em>at the Marozzini gallery in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1997. In order for us to grasp the idea of the violent contrast between the different states of the installation, we could start describing it from the end. Imagine a late visit to the show, at the gallery’s closing time: what we find is nothing but a floor smeared with charcoal and dirty black footsteps all over the place. A historical reflection forces us to establish the predictable connections with plastic interventions with a minimal air, aggravated by materials that are constituently ephemeral and fragile like charcoal. Actually, the audience’s footsteps had deleted the face <\/em> of the initial installation: what appeared originally on the floor were t reme ndously realistic human figures, drawn delicately with charcoal on the wooden flooring, to be contemplated from a zenithal perspective. Since the material was not fixed to the surface, its fate was in hands of the audience and the final aspect denoted its use, an allegory of the public exchange whereby the work acquires full meaning. This acquisition of meaning was formed, in Charcoal Dance Floor <\/em>, by disappearance. A similar abandonment or immolation, although perhaps somewhat more violent, took place in 2004 with the exhibition entitled Ciclonismo <\/em>, at the Chantal Crousel Gallery in Paris: in this case, a pool of water and engine oil spread like a dangerous carpet at the entrance to the hall. The pool, which had to be \u201cwatered\u201d everyday, merged the languages of threat and fragility: at the same time as it evoked \u2013barely without symbolic mediation\u2013 the ecologic aggressiveness of human development, as a work, the black pool required the same care as a household plant. <\/p>\n

Carrying out a reinterpretation of the artistic work to elicit its contradictions \u2013as an object that is inseparable from infinite mundane connections\u2013 is, in the case of Allora and Calzadilla, a whole work programme. Puerto Rican Light <\/em>is an example of the deconstructive treatment of the notion of artistic autonomy, that nevertheless attempts to avoid the easy vulgar criticism of the pre-eminence of the market and of stereotypes about its ideological essence. The work, created in 2003 for the Americas Society, was conceived as a complement to Dan Flavin’s homonymous installation ( Puerto Rican Light [to Jeanie Blake] <\/em>), from 1965. For the occasion, Allora and Calzadilla created a transformer that turned solar energy into electric energy capable of powering Flavin’s installation, consisting in a combination of different fluorescent lamps that created an atmospheric result that evoked the light of the Caribbean country. By loading their generator with real Puerto Rican light, Allora and Calzadilla introduced a conflict of servitude in Flavin’s installation. A trick using fictional clarification revealed the silenced relation of dependence between cultural production and political hegemony, between the spiritual elevation of the work and the material repression of its context. Furthermore, the work inserted in Flavin’s installation the actual principle of disruption that he had advocated on the subject of exhibition spaces. Insisting on the topos <\/em>of the light and the reference to the minimal discourse, in 2003 Allora and Calzadilla produced the installation Traffic Patterns <\/em>, also as a manipulation or d\u00e9tournement <\/em> of luminous atmospheres with historical connotations, like those constructed by James Turrell. The installation consisted of a room flooded with changing light: now red, now yellow, now green. The light system did not only evoke the operation of a traffic light: it actually followed its pulse, since the system was connected to a genuine device located in a street in Puerto Rico (the exhibition was also staged at the Americas Society in New York). The installation actually was <\/em> a traffic light, that extracted all its aesthetic potential from the (un-covered) abstraction of a device that governed social order. This trick made contemplating the work synonymous with an act of obedience. <\/p>\n

Despite the \u201cmaterialist\u201d definitions (Andre) with which some minimalist artists presented their work, the aspiration of their works to remain outside what was conceptualizable <\/em> expressed, like a collateral effect, an essentialist and divided vision of their presence <\/em>. We can understand Allora and Calzadilla’s first works as an attempt to dialectise <\/em> this vision and reveal all their silences from the inside; also to break the minimalist tautology based on Stella’s principle of \u201cwhat you see is what you see.\u201d This also corresponds to interrupting what Pierre Bourdieu calls illusio <\/em>, that is \u201cthe enchanted relation to a game that is the product of the ontological complicity between mental structures and the objective structures of social space.\u201d As Bourdieu noted in Raisons pratiques <\/em>(Paris, Seuil, 1994), reality is but a system of mutual connected externalities, and all objects should be interpreted within as the expression of a cross of antagonisms. As opposed to the idea of a \u201cpure art, that is symbolically dominant but economically dominated,\u201d Allora and Calzadilla’s work tends not to accentuate the purity of the \u201ccultural capital,\u201d but to manifest the conflicts linked to the contradictory rule of the work of art and, beyond it, of the system of objects in general, both relational and corporeal. The open nature of their reflection becomes tangible in the street piece Chalks <\/em>, carried out between 1998 and 2006 in the cities of Lima, New York and Paris. Chalks <\/em> is based on a simple notion: depositing large cylinders of chalk (the reference to the discourse of minimal art is obvious) in a square in a city; the progressive fragmentation of the blocks of chalk invites passers-by to use the material to draw or write all types of messages on the ground. However, each city imposes a context and a meaning to the work, as well as a destiny: in New York, the images of Asian tourists in front of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum have a vaguely spectacular and leisurely air; in Paris, children and business people give in to the delights of expression and self-censorship, under official invitation. In Lima the case is like something out of a novel and has a political side to it, giving notice of the fact that a work’s critical potential depends essentially on the recipient and the context. The chalks, that were left in the city’s plaza de Armas in the morning, aroused a whirlwind of spontaneous interventions and were added to the elements used during a demonstration of civil servants, who got together to turn the pavement into a large blackboard where they wrote their complaints. The chalks ended up being removed by the army, and the inscriptions were deleted by the municipal cleaning services, a tidying up that gave way, in the afternoon, to the inauguration of the III Latin American Biennial. Chalks <\/em> has an evident, albeit contradictory, political meaning, related to a medium \u2013the public space\u2013 where, as Michel Gaillot noted, there is no other possible common voice but the voice expressed through singularity. The same principle of disruption we mentioned in reference to Flavin appears in this case with respect to the notion of monument, in its confrontation, as an object, with the public space in which it appears as a sort of echo of the principle of authority. Consequently, the authoritarian \u201cvoice\u201d of the urban monument is broken down into real voices and is placed at the service of the expression of those who, in principle, were destined to surround it. The very horizontality of the work contradicts the monumental logic of communication, where the message is associated mechanically to a place of power and a purpose of influence. Chalk <\/em> is, depending on its context, a toy or a Trojan horse, an instrument for communicative reactivation or just another curio to be photographed. <\/p>\n

The vastest project carried out to date by Allora and Calzadilla was entitled Land Mark <\/em> (extracts have been displayed at the Tate Modern and, recently, a compilation has been on show at the Palais de Tokyo) and is inscribed in the, afo reme ntioned, perspective of breaking the self-referentiality of art by means of the creation of connections between practical and artistic spheres. Land Mark <\/em>‘s point of departure is a serious and specific geopolitical event: the occupation and military exploitation by the us Marines of the small island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Since the 1940s, the US Marines had been carrying out military tests in a territory that has been gradually sectioned, bored, sunken and contaminated; and also depopulated and ruined historically. The population of Vieques embarked on a long and unequal fight that ended up, in 2003, with Americans dropping military activities and the population taking back the island, giving way to a new period of reorganisation of the land. Allora and Calzadilla’s work has documented each of the stages of this development, in the very essence of these fights. Their work has been involved in them as a sort of communicative supplement where the precariousness of forms of protest appeared as a cry for help to imagination. The first of the works in the series, also entitled Land Mark, <\/em> is a 1:1 scale reproduction of a piece of the land using the language of 3D computer simulators, frequently implemented by planning and military strategy systems. This large black rubber grid, which the visitors’ footsteps can collapse or reconfigure, reproduces the craters caused by the military tests using an optical effect that evokes the deceptions and gaps of historical memory. The progressive electronic externalisation of the collective memory (Michel Gaillot), that we experience at present, also involves an increase of the possibilities of manipulation and deception of our own conscience. In the case of the land, this memory is literally impalpable and, at the same time, materially present. The installation shows a sort of illusionism <\/em> inherent to the material land. Yet Land Mark <\/em> uses both specific objects and alterations of the objective routine order with a more performance-like <\/em> nature. This is the case of two works corresponding to the stage when the Vieques conflict was solved: when the public reopening of the areas formerly used by the military was decreed, an activist travelled around the island with a trumpet connected to his motorbike’s exhaust pipe, sending an atonal hymn around the island, typical of a new stage, yet to be constructed. This action was recorded in the video Returning a sound <\/em>(2004). When the authority over the area was transferred to the Home Department and the island was declared a \u201cnature reserve\u201d after a series of meetings, Allora and Calzadilla produced the video Under discussion <\/em>(2005), that shows another activist surrounding Vieques’ coast on board an inverted table used as an outboard launch. This gesture evoked the fact that the islanders had taken back the island’s maritime space beyond any political shady deal, and at the same time advocated discussions as the only method to reach political solutions. At harsher times, the artists created soles with which the activists from Vieques could print, during their furtive incursions, their claims and slogans on the sand of the occupied territory. <\/p>\n

Consequently, the work connected performances typical of political activism to artistic traditions like engraving. Land Mark <\/em>is explained semantically as an instrument for reading marks left on the territory ( land marks <\/em>) instead of as a simple point of spatial orientation ( landmark <\/em>). The disillusion of the minimalist work, the rupture of its tautology, is accompanied by a re-enchantment of the common space. Reading the territory also means rearticulating it. Talking through it is a deep form of understanding. <\/p>\n

Translation: Laura F. Farhall <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Autor: Manuel Cirauqui Revista: L\u00c1PIZ Revista Internacional de Arte n\u00ba 226 Carl Andre afirmaba que el arte, \u201caquello que hacemos\u201d, se opone a la cultura, \u201caquello que se nos hace\u201d, y sus palabras han tenido que ser reconsideradas hist\u00f3ricamente en la medida en que el discurso minimalista se ha convertido no solo en parte de […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[444,351,400],"class_list":["post-46180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articulos","tag-arte","tag-articulo-html","tag-lapiz-revista-internacional-de-arte"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48405,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46180\/revisions\/48405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/formacionsimple.com\/revistasculturales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}