fissura crack
InĂŞs de Melo e Cruz Gaspar
fissura crack How to respond to an irreparable loss? The theme of Collective Memory, Space and Landscape in Aldeia da Luz Portfolio comprising practical explorations and complementary annotations
author
InĂŞs de Melo e Cruz Gaspar
tutor
Helen Pynor Doctor of Philosophy (Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney)
MA Scenography Royal Central School of Speech and Drama University of London 2014
index 01 Introduction
02 Approaching the Territory
03 Displacements
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Framework
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Methodology
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Morphological Studies
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Collective Memory and Landscape: Halbwachs
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Monument and Memorial: Cretto, Burri
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Geo-Referencing Strategy: Sebald
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Materiality: Cracks
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Artefact and Body Scale
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05 Conclusions
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06 Appendices
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07 Bibliography
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From Memorial to Memory Sculpture: Salcedo, Precariousness and Absence
Ruins and Matta-Clark
Appendice 1 Appendice 2
01 Introduction
01. Aerial view [photograph] Old Aldeia da Luz, Portugal at: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/ showthread.php?t=936154m (accessed on 01-04-2014)
01.1 Framework
Aldeia da Luz, Alentejo, 2003. An old village in southern Portugal is relocated due to the construction of a dam, a controversial decision of political nature that resulted in a painful process of loss for the villagers. Ten years have passed and the population claims they were defrauded over expectations of an advantageous economic return. The presence of the lake deeply transformed the landscape, known for its dryness. This controversial case, that involves many layers of complexity, has been chosen as the starting point for a practical exploration based in its territory and narrative, for the sustained independent project (SIP), the final project for the MA Scenography at the RCSSD, University of London. This portfolio compiles documented practices and research within the topic: How to respond to an irreparable loss? The theme of Collective Memory, Space and Landscape in Aldeia da Luz. It aims to critically explore the theme within a scenographic context. Starting with the assumption that a place and its architecture functions as a memory depository, inherent to the inhabitants’ identity, this case is regarded as an irreplaceable loss. The thesis reflects about collective memory and displacement, firstly drawn from Aldeia da Luz’s dual processes of extinction and replacement, with Alentejo as a landscape reference.
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02. Pereira, Benjamim, Mother church, cemetery and bullring on feast day [photograph] Luz, Portugal at: http://etnografica.revues.org/2013 (accessed on 01-04-2014)
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01.2 Methodology
Firstly the need to engage with this territory was identified as a way of approaching the practice – comprising a local visit to new Luz and morphological studies regarding old Luz – which was later identified as a vain attempt at grasping what has gone. Meanwhile, an investigation regarding the theme began. The characteristic writing in Sebald´s The Rings of Saturn, Halbwachs´ pioneering theory On Collective Memory and Burri´s Cretto memorial were taken as primary references for this enquiry, accompanying practice that aimed to address permanence as a counter-response to disappearance. It was not until an accident happened (or an unexpected discovery was made) that the course of this investigation, which is ultimately concerned with preserving the memory of the old village, moved away from this approach and changed dramatically. The idea of materiality – not only soil, schist or concrete, but also cracks – containing the cultural and psychological levels of the issue became the core of the research, while potentially gaining a closer relationship to the body. In the end, it ought to be a piece that talks about people who have been subjected to an extreme rupture, where displacement appears as a key notion. The written form alternates between contextual and reflective, where form and content, practice and references are not perceived as two separate entities, instead here documented and navigated in a very close relationship, in a similar way to the process. Lastly, the impossibility of returning to the old village requires the project to remain in the desirable speculation field, while this portfolio is regarded as a reflection on a longer journey. INÊS CRUZ
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02 Approaching the Territory
03.Resende, Sebasti達o (2010) Sem retorno, No return [photograph] Alqueva dam, Portugal at: http://www.museudaluz.org. pt/204000/1/000028/index.htm (accessed on 21-04-2014)
02.1 Morphological Studies
After a visit to the site the feeling of emptiness and the abrupt presence of a lake in the landscape remained the strongest impressions . Having myself migrated through different countries over the past years, I was predisposed to the theme of displacement and empathised with the villagers, although a comparison can´t obviously be established. The dialogue with Mayor Dr. Sara Correia, together with time spent locally in April, provided familiarisation with the case. Meanwhile, documentation regarding old Luz was gathered, including cartography, and morphological studies comprising a model scale were made as a first tangible task. This necessity for not only studying but also physically perpetuating the missing object resembles funerary traditions involving the body, such as the custom of death masks or embalming, as compared to Rachel Whiteread´s casting method employed in her work House: ‘He begins by preparing all surfaces and
closing all apertures, just as Whiteread starts by sealing off the windows and doors…’ (Aiden in Breuer, 2001:79). It was a long process preparing the object in the imminence of vanishing: ‘as if we were embalming a body’ (Whiteread in Breuer, 2001: 78) also described as a way of ‘getting to know it intimately’ (Whiteread in Breuer, 2001: 85). Instead, Luz would firstly oblige to a process of reconstruction – once it was already gone – but still a parallel can be established in what concerns the main aim. It was under this delusion that old Luz was reconstructed digitally in a process that was later recognised as an unrealistic attempt at grabbing what is gone, adding documentation rather than conducting a potential artistic exploration. Further experiments opened new avenues in the research, while this initial insistent attempt was later acknowledged as a valid approach to the issue, although it consisted a death end in itself.
04. Witheread, Rachel (1993-1994) House, concrete, London at: http://bessieaustin.wordpress. com/2012/05/06/house/ (accessed on 05-09-2014) INÊS CRUZ
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05 2014 Old Aldeia da Luz [plaster model] scale 1:2500 cm
Above 06-08. 2014 aerial view, street view and view from the church´s porch [digital model] Old Aldeia da Luz. A digital model was part of a series of morphological studies regarding Old Luz Overleaf 09. 1995 Old Aldeia da Luz [orthophotomap] scale 1:5000 ŠEDIA
Maurice Halbwachs’ writings On Collective Memory is a main reference, although the essay doesn´t intend to summarise his complex ideas. Instead it anchors some thoughts in order to better understand a discourse-practical approach. Returning to the SIP journey, this will for continuity was undoubtedly impracticable due to the simple fact that an irreversible rupture, in itself sufficiently contrary to such intention, had already occurred. Accordingly to Halbwachs, memories obey a never-ending process of recall and transformation and ‘are not intact vertebra of fossil animals which would in themselves permit reconstruction of the entities of which they were once part’. (Halbwachs, 1992: 47).
02.2 Collective Memory and Landscape: Halbwachs ‘The city is not a place. It is the frame of a life. The frame looking for portrait that’s what I see when I revisit my place of birth. It´s not streets, nor houses. What I review is a time, what I hear is the speech of that time. A dialect called memory, a nation called childhood.’
upon the other, only accidentally achieving an equilibrium, and the walls of an edifice maintained by a whole armature, supported and reinforced by neighbouring edifices’ (Halbwachs, 1992: 42). This analogy is doubly assertive as we can imagine, in a single comparison, how memory consistency relies on both available social support and spatial framework.
This idea of our place – the place where we grow up – acting as a powerful reminder of ourselves, evoked by Couto´s words and reinforced by Halbwachs´ attribution of importance to space Mia Couto, 2003, free translated in a memory-identity relationship, (Couto in Abreu, 2007: 349) is crucial to understand the severity of such a displacement, particularly because the home they left was irretrievably destroyed.
Assuming that Luz has inherited major societal similarities over centuries and considering it is based in quite an isolated region of a small European country, the notion of social to memory pioneered in Halbwachs´ theory gains special relevance here. Halbwachs develops a number of considerations that authorise him to shift from the individual to the collective, recognising memory as dependent on a social framework in all its levels.This idea is beautifully clarified: ‘Yet between the dream´s row of successive images and a series of recollections there is as much difference as that between a pile of rough-hewn materials with superimposed parts heaped one
Furthermore, the idea of land attached to family and death is intimately related to the ritual of burying our ancestors and the foundation of a place, as if death would root the sacred domestic place, as argued in the chapter ‘The collective memory of the family’, where Fustel de Coulanges is quoted (see appendix 1). It is not surprising that the episode of repatriation of the bodies is described as one of the most striking and painful in the Luz process . This awareness of soil, earth and land (terra in Portuguese) comprising our dead as symbolic of place, marked by the gravestone, would became central to a full understanding of the materiality in the SIP.
Opposite 10-12 2014 New lake, Cemetery and Museum and water reservoir [photographs] New Aldeia da Luz, Portugal, Inês MCG. The submerged trees indicate the lake hasn´t always been there.
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02.3 Monument and Memorial: Cretto, Burri Alberto Burri´s Cretto, a Memorial to the old Gibellina, Italy, preserves the village´s layout in concrete in a work of impressive scale and boldness. This constituted a main reference. . According
‘Monumentality is enigmatic. It cannot be intentionally created. Neither the finest material nor the most advanced technology need enter a work of monumental character...’ Louis Kahn, Monumentality, 1944 (Kahn, 2003: 22)
to
Forty (see appendice 2) its success is partially due to its nonconformity to any specific category of building work (last paragraph). I would risk saying that it was the improbable meeting between the ideal context and the artist´s explorations, long started in widely varying crettos, which resulted in an exceptionally coherent work; it is almost as if he had been waiting for a pretext in which to operate his ideas, or perhaps it’s a fortunate coincidence. Its success is ultimately confirmed by the popularity it has acquired amongst the community, as a place for special occasions (6th paragraph). In this
regard, it can be added: ‘Whereas most memorials merely allow things to be forgotten, this one hides what it commemorates, but retains a presence in people´s everyday lives.’ (Forty, 2013: 103).
For Forty, the obvious comparison is with Eisenman´s Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in a correspondence between urban blocks in Gibellina and raised stelaes in Berlin. He argues that it is due to its irreplaceability and specificity – existing on the same site as the thing it commemorates, Gibellina – that Burri´s memorial is unique in comparison. (9th paragraph). Doubtless by the way it is referenced and attached to the territory, for its sheer scale and silence, for its attractiveness for leisure or for simply being a landmark, it is undeniably a successful memorial.
13.Burri, Alberto (1981) sketch model of the Cretto Gibellina, Museo Civico di Arte Contemporanea, Gibellina [plaster model] In: Forty, 2013: 100. Burri´s Memorial to the old Gibellina city left in ruins after the 1968 earthquake and consequently abandoned by its inhabitants. The lines gouged out provided the form of the work.
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Left 14. Burri, Alberto (1975) Cretto [kaolin and PVA glue (with pigment) fixed on cellotex] One of many Burri´s crettos at: http://oseculoprodigioso.blogspot. co.uk/2007/01/burri-alberto-arte-informal. html (accessed on 08-04-2014) Right 15. Palma, Rino (2008) Gran Cretto, Gibellina, [photograph] At: http:// www.flickr.com/photos/89134433@ N00/2618300202/in/photostream/ (accessed on 08-04-2014)
In this journey there was an early preference for works where mass, scale and geological terms appear as key-concerns, where context is responsible for content. Influenced by Sebald’s pilgrimage The Rings of Saturn – where the recurrent theme of Memory is triggered in a very special way by the landscape, with a predisposition for drosscapes 1 – my own practice started to gain the shape of territorial landmarks, or what was later called a georeferencing strategy.
02.4 Geo-Referencing Strategy: Sebald
While gathering documentation about Luz I came across a clip where a man, navigating the lake in a kind of ‘tourist boat trip’, was pointing in specific directions while explaining: ‘we´re just coming up to the area around the church… (Mourão 2006: 1, 31´´-2, 00´´min)’. He was referencing remarkable places of old Luz, now just imaginary points deep drowned below the water level, yet insistently trying to be accurate. This attempt impressed me so much that
1 ‘Geographers
have coined the term drosscape for the points on the map where nature and culture meet in ruinous disarray.’(Dillon 2011: 18)
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immediately ideas alluding to volumes coming out of water started to appear. These stelaes would allude to the man´s imaginary landmarks, as a past made visible in the present.
Those structures would stand for the impossibility of the drawn ruin, as anthropomorphic-resembling volumes that potentially organise the now homogeneous landscape and could address locals of public interest, such as the church, the fountains path or the cemetery. Instead of nature possessing ruins, it would be constructed over water, standing for the disappeared village in the vertical axis and affording it an ageing process. Finally, apart from being considered as an ambitious answer to the problematic, it was avoiding a process by presenting a final solution, whereas further explorations should yet take place towards a scenographic translation. Nevertheless, it allowed for important reflections – such as absence and the choice of not using water as a material.
16. 2006 A minha aldeia já não mora aqui, My village doesn´t live here anymore 1, 32´´ Directed by Catarina Mourão [film still] Portugal. He continues: ‘we´re right above the place they used to let off the rockets. Yes, this is the place they used to let off the rockets. Yes, this is where the church was…how deep is it? 16 metres... 16 metres…yes…this is definitely the area around the church. ‘ (1, 30´´-2, 00´´min) INÊS CRUZ
Left 17-18. 2014 Sketch model [plaster, PVA glue and wood] These shapes resemble water-reservoirs, commonly seen in this landscape for its obvious need before the dam was constructed Right 19-20. 2014 watermarks [Digital model and photomontage] First sketch visualizations testing ideas related to landmarks and a geo-referencing strategy. INĂŠS CRUZ
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21-22. 2014 model [board,spray paint, filler and pva glue] InĂŞs MCG. These vertical shapes and continue the idea of intervening on the lake
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23. 2014 watermarks [Digital model and photomontage] InĂŞs MCG. Image displayed on the wall during the exhibition. This was later recognised as an attempt to bring the site into context, more than just building a bridge INĂŠS CRUZ
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02.5 Materiality: cracks
It was during formal studies using the plaster model as a basis to make a negative in concrete – testing ideas about densifying the water volume – that something unpredictable occurred. The plaque accidentally broke because of a miscalculated thickness.
where it becomes something else, where metamorphosis is reached.’ (Salcedo in Princenthal 2000: 21). This critical understanding of materiality became something to pursue.
A broken piece finally revealed the impossibility of perpetuating the lost object, whereas its irreparability and cracks indicated paradoxically the notion of displacement, allowing different venues for experimentation; at the same time, its fissures would address something local, the dryness of the land. Practice comprising concrete and local materials brought from the site began, including soil and schist. The idea of materiality (matter) and materiality (cracks, form and action) linked in such a way that dissociation would no longer be possible became very important. Columbian artist Doris Salcedo said: ‘I work with materials that are already charged with significance…Therefore metaphor becomes unnecessary. I work matter to the point
The choice of concrete is not only related to its aggregating properties, allowing schist and soil to set together, but also to its paradoxical nature. Considered to be the new stone, arguably for its characteristics of durability and resistance, it has also been largely abused for mass construction and the proliferation of the suburbs, consequently linked to dispersion and the erasure of memory: ‘concrete is more commonly associated with the erase of memory than with its preservation.’ (Forty 2013:66) Memory and amnesia can´t be perceived as separate entities. Finally, studies regarding water as a possible material, which included diving and filming in an artificial pond, soon determined that it wouldn´t be suitable, not only for its intangible nature but mainly because it is a disruptive element in the landscape.
24. 2014 Fissures [photograph] Alentejo, Portugal Inês MCG. This was taken on the site from where the schist and soil were collected.
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Above 25-26. 2014, [reddish local soil] Luz, Alentejo, Portugal Bellow 27-28. 2014 [schist]Luz, Alentejo, Portugal These materials were collected and brought to London after a visit to Portugal during Easter. Because this is a very soft stone it could be crushed and added to the concrete dough used for the artefact. INĂŠS CRUZ
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29-34. 2014 Hampstead Heath mixed pound [stills from film] London, Inês MCG. These short clips were shot to experiment capturing sound below water.
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Above and Overleaf 35-37. 2014 broken model [concrete] InĂŞs MCG. We can see the negative shape of the houses split by the fissures; the plaster model was used as a positive. INĂŠS CRUZ
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03 Displacement
38 2014 failed artefact, workshops [concrete, soil and schist]
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03.1 Artefact and Body Scale
This mesh of thoughts finally originated in a series of ‘creatures’ 2 made for the purpose of the final exhibition, aiming to register the audience´s passage in a performative act. A cast block thick enough to unmould without breaking and simultaneously thin enough that would break immediately when stepped on was manufactured and tested; it would eventually crack, analogous to the accidental model but this time intentionally caused by human action. There is obviously an implicit criticism considering the object provocation, being the human action responsible for the village disappearance; however, it is the experience of ‘floorlessness’ and instability that potentially addresses each individual that interests me the most, while relating to burial (being in the horizontal plan), soil excavation (when broke it created a depression) and the grave. Together with these artefacts a model was exhibited, still following the aforementioned ‘geo-referencing’ strategy, which can also be said to address anthropomorphic presence. In this regard, the work of polish artist Miroslaw Balka served as a main reference and introduced the notion of body-memory: ‘The various measurements of his own body determine the scale and the titles of his work, as if to say in the most neutral yet precise terms, what is known in the body is not forgotten.’ (Bradley 1998: 26)
The experience of the exhibition was surprising in the way the pieces evolved differently from previously tested moulds. Due to the amount of soil mixed in and its clayey properties it didn´t cure in time, resulting in unpredictable shapes and rapidly becoming dust. In the end, after dismantling the exhibition, there were no more than two big garbage bags full of sand; it prompted a mournful feeling and a realisation of our own impermanence: we will be covered and become dust, it is a loss and it is a return. At least this was my feeling of the three-day exhibition. The exhibition didn´t intend to illustrate the terrible event, and much less aimed to constitute a miniature of any kind. Instead, its ephemeral nature would rather be a kind of time-lapse event, losing shape as memories, perhaps allowing identification and, more importantly, comprising human scale. These imperfect structures, doomed to crack, would ideally address a feeling of gravity-loss. Rather than aiming to re-enact a feeling of displacement, it would incorporate displacement itself. Lastly, the wish to multiply these tiles in a very long line or an entire floor remained – the formal reference would be Hans Haacke´s Germania; it was felt that the number of bricks composed a very circumscribed and uninviting set, which would have required a different context and scale.
This choice of word is a reference to Salcedo: I´ve always liked using the word ‘creatures’ to describe the sculptures - I learned that from Paul Celan. As creatures we all deteriorate and go into decline… (Salcedo in Princenthal 2000: 32) 2
39 2014 sketches cracked creature [pen] INÊS CRUZ
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40-42 2014 first prototype and details [concrete and soil] The feet were too large to break and the upper part too thin.
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43-48 2014 artefact [concrete, soil and schist, mdf mould and shellac] Various images showing the progress of the exhibition INĂŠS CRUZ
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49-50. Mizutani, Ken (2014) [photography] artefacts on MA Scenography exhibition, RCSSD, Inês MCG. These images were chosen because of their landscape appearance. INÊS CRUZ
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51-55. 2014 artefact [concrete, soil and schist] In Two pages 56-57. 2014 model [board,spray paint, filler and pva glue] These vertical shapes could be said to resemble the grave (or the vertical tombstone)
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Previous page 58. 2014 complete piece on the fourth day The artefact dimensions - 43cm per 3x60cm, 180 cm in triptych - would address my own body (shoulders width and height) 59-61. 2014 dust on bags (after the exhibition) [photography] RCSSD, Inês MCG. Despite its intended ephemeral nature, throwing the exhibition remnants away was a very sad experience – at he end they were no more than dust again, spread on the floor when the bags burst while being dragged due to its weight. This drew attention to the performative potential of all the setting up involved in the installation process, an event in itself.
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62. Haacke, Hans (1993) Germania [marble slabs] at the Venice Biennale’s German Pavilion This very powerful work departed from the context both materially, historically and spatially. at:http://farticulate.wordpress. com/2011/01/24/24-january-2011-posthans-haacke-selected-works-interview/ (accessed on 15-08-2014) INÊS CRUZ
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63. Salcedo, Doris (1993) Atrabilliarios [wall niches, shoes, animal fibre, surgical thread] In: Princenthal, 2000: 50. This piece was based upon the experience of people who went missing.
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03.2 From Memorial to Memory Sculpture: Salcedo, Precariousness and Absence The exhibition is regarded as a moment of transition between anticipations, within a planned scale, and an approximation to the body. If, in one way, this seems a more assertive approach, I have wondered if it could be deemed offensive, and although it doesn´t intend to recreate destruction, I must clarify. To discern this tangency – between a serious approach and something perhaps disrespectful, considering the sensible nature of this case – would oblige a deeper investigation that I do not claim to answer here. Instead, it led to the study of contemporary practitioners who address disruption in sculptural form with an ephemeral nature. Salcedo said that it’s exactly the possibility of linking the victim´s intimate experience with the viewer, through silence and contemplation, which is the most important: ‘The sculpture presents the experience of the victim as something present – a reality that resounds within the silence of each human being that gazes upon it.’ (Salcedo in Princenthal 2000: 137). It is as if the work was incomplete until experienced. Ultimately, it can be argued that concern about ‘respecting a memory’ doesn´t even make sense in the way that in extreme cases of rupture all that’s left is absence: ‘When you are caught up in a conflict, in precarious conditions, you can´t even remember things, never mind produce history.’ (Salcedo in Princenthal 2000: 25). Based in this precariousness outlined by Salcedo, Basualdo opportunely adds:
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‘memory sculpture: a kind of sculpture that is not centered on spatial configuration alone, but that powerfully inscribes a dimension of localizable, even corporeal memory into the work. This is an artistic practice that remains clearly distinct from the monument or the memorial… ‘ ‘Sculpture, Materiality and Memory in an Age of Amnesia’ (Huyssen, 1998: 31) ‘This means that instead of monumentalizing a tragic event the artwork is merely a means of coming into contact with nothing... Some critics interpret your work in terms of commemoration, as if it involved the recollection of a tragic event in the traditional sense of a monument. I think you operate on a far more complex level. (Basualdo 2000:25) It is important to establish this transition from memorial and monument, as a reference, to memory-sculpture, precisely because the Luz case is about vanishing. Artists such as Salcedo pursue what was later considered a more suitable approach regarding the path I´ve ultimately chosen. I realised that the soil brought from Alentejo was all I had suitable for a practical employment – considering the impossibility of visiting the site, not only because of its distance but because in fact it no longer exists – so I worked with it. It was like a surrender to my own incapacity, or lack of means. I wondered at length about the fact that there isn´t an accurate appellative for someone who loses her/his place. Words such as expatriate, dislocated or exile
comprise very different meanings. Even displaced, the most appropriate term, is imprecise because it does not comprise loss, the impossibility of return, therefore being limited to movement. This very elementary thought accompanied the process and made clear the presence of precariousness, even of language. Displacement then can be perceived as relevant on various levels: firstly, the obvious displacement of lands, houses, parts of the fifteenth century church, the death and the living; secondly, my own displacement, as a foreigner, to this village, as a foreigner in general; and there is also a material displacement. Besides spatiality, it could be argued that there is a temporal displacement too. Bradley, referring to the work of Balka, Salcedo and Whiteread explains: ‘displacement is taken to refer to dislocation or substitution in several senses, most evidently that of a material re-ordering. But displacement may also describe the sense that these works convey of things being out of order…’ (Bradley, 1998: 19), presenting an idea of displacement from the point of view of the observer, or the nonconformist. Lastly, absence was also considered. As Salcedo accounts: ‘When a beloved person disappears, every single object but also every space is a reminder of his or her absence, as if absence were stronger than presence.’ (Salcedo in Princenthal 2000: 18) This idea is strongly embedded in Atrabiliarios where physical remnants of the disappeared strongly reinforce their presence.
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04 Projective
Above 64-65. 2014 Ruin [photographs] Monte Estoril, Cascais, Portugal. Inês MCG. These ruins, in the capital surroundings close to the ocean, comprise two different levels – on the upper level sits the old mansory house, half taken by brambles. Opposite 66. rhinoceros beetle exoskeletons, Portugal, These species, characteristic of Alentejo, leave their exoskeletons behind while suffering metamorphosis. Commonly found on fields, they were collected more than 10 years ago and borrowed for casting purpose to be used in future experiments in the SIP.
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04.1 Ruins and Matta-Clark
Finally we reach the point in the journey at the completion of the present portfolio, where paths for future research and practice can be indicated. In a reflective mode regarding the artefact, I would pragmatically consider that its scale and context deserve re-consideration. The installation, placed against a wall and carefully lit, didn´t allow for a full engagement, perhaps due to its untouchable aura. The same didn´t apply to its proportions, which seemed correct in relation to the individual body. Also, I noticed that the pieces evolved and disintegrated in a very particular way, becoming dust and resembling an archaeological site – these are ideas that can be taken further in future practice. I have started to look for places in Lisbon where I could perhaps intervene, but this responsibility, with the weight of the word ‘exhibit’, soon started to feel precipitated. I was roaming around with these thoughts when I found by chance an old masonry ruin which triggered me, maybe because the bricks resembled the texture and colour of the broken artefact pieces. My immediate thought was that this couldn´t be a place for an intervention. A brownfield site, unoccupied and volatile, in a very wealthy neighbourhood; I always thought that these ruined sites in residential areas interestingly worked as gaps in between private properties, challenging boundaries. These thoughts evoked American artist Matta-Clark as a reference: ‘What I basically wanted to do was to designate spaces that wouldn´t be seen and certainly not occupied. Buying them was my own take on the strangeness of existing property demarcation lines. Property is so all-pervasive. Everyone´s notion of INÊS CRUZ
ownership is determined by the use factor.’ (Matta-Clark in Diserens, 2003: 164) This voyeuristic approach made me realise that in lower levels there was a rough unfinished concrete construction, clearly very recent and somehow already ruining. This led to a new speculation about occupying this place, perhaps taking displacement to another extreme while comprising past achievements. I have questioned if this apparently illogical idea would be suitable for a SIP. Somehow, the idea of Ruin was already in place through early references such as Sebald and Burri (appendix 2, paragraph 2) and comprised in the very nature of the main theme. Considering ‘a vision of the ruin as essentially an accommodation between nature and culture, the artificial object sliding imperceptibly towards an organic state, until in the end nature has its way and we can no longer legitimately speak of a ‘ruin’ at all. In 1911, (Simmel in Dillon, 2011: 13), it can be said that this dimension had already started in the work. An intervention on site is dependent on a deeper research, certainly having Matta-Clark as a reference and others that intervene locally, perhaps comprising performance, as explained in his words: ‘it´s not a performance for people to watch, but it´s obviously an event, the result of an activity... the whole place and its constituent actions form the record…’ (Matta-Clark in Diserens, 2003:168) Nevertheless, it is regarded as a potential form of addressing detected problems around the work and for future action, perhaps allowing a more holistic realisation. 49
67-68. 2014 Ruin [photographs] Monte Estoril, Cascais, Portugal. Inês MCG. On the lower level, there is what’s thought to be an abandoned working site for a future car park, where soil can be seen in piles or infiltrated on the concrete walls.
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05 Conclusions
Although the SIP had a very circumscribed temporal duration, it can be said that it has been a great opportunity to reflect and explore complex themes – such as loss, precariousness and displacement – in spatial and bodily terms. Starting with morphological studies comprising Luz, with a more analytical approach, and having Cretto Memorial and Halbwachs as major background led to a practical intention that foresaw the placing of territorial landmarks. This utopian strategy, behind my practical possibilities, ultimately would aspire to trigger Memory by Landscape, masterfully achieved in Sebald´s writings. Despite its potential, these delusional intentions were leading to a death route in the sense that practically it couldn´t produce anything more than images, eventually avoiding a deeper corporeal involvement. It was truly due to an accident, while modeling in a stage between these ideas and a primary analytical study, that the course of the investigation progressed to a different approach: the cracked concrete surface revealed the very unreachable as being the true
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character of the Luz case and made me realize that what I can’t apprehend, my own failure, is perhaps more suitable as an approach. The involvement of local materials, brought to London after a visit to Portugal during Easter, allowed for the theme of displacement – having Whiteread, Balka and Salcedo as main references as practitioners – to be taken further in the shape of artefacts that directly addressed a body-scale, while parallel spatial configurations alluding to a geo-referencing strategy continued. By the end of the exhibition, the meeting between artefact and spatial translation was identified as the remaining gap, in need of further consideration and perhaps allowing a different spatial context to serve what is intended to be a more performative act. The enormity of the thematic subject of this investigation didn´t allow for deeper considerations, while other concerns such as the aural dimension of the issue had to be excluded from this text. In conclusion, it has been a very challenging journey, ultimately confirming Scenography as an inter-disciplinary and highly complex field.
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06 Appendices Appendice 01 «Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique» Maurice Halbwachs On Collective Memory « […] It has been observed belong to their own families, and that, within certain ancient and (excerpt of the chapter “The Collective the family alone has the right to Memory of the Family”) modern societies, on the one hand invoke them. These dead have Chicago and London, The University the family was not distinguished taken possession of the soil. They of Chicago Press, 1992; pp.63-64. from the religious group, and on live under this small knoll and the other hand, being rooted in nobody who is not of the family the soil, it was fused with house can think of contacting them. No and land. The Ancient Greeks and Romans did not one moreover has the right to dislodge them from distinguish the family from the hearth where the the soil they occupy. Among the ancients, a tomb cult of the household gods was celebrated. The could never be destroyed or displaced.”5 hearth “is the symbol of sedentary life….It should Each field was surrounded, just like the house, be anchored in the land. Once anchored, one must not change its place….And the family is anchored in by an enclosure. This was not a stone wall, but “a the soil like the altar itself….The idea of a domestic strip of land several feet wide which had to remain abode naturally arises. The family is attached to the uncultivated, and which the plow was never supposed hearth and the hearth is attached to the soil. Hence to touch. This space was sacred; Roman law declared there arises a close relation between the soil and the it indefensible. It belonged to religion….On this line, at family. This must be its permanent abode which it various distances, people placed heavy stones or tree could not dream of leaving.”4 But various hearths stumps, which were called termes (boundary stones) must be clearly separated from each other, just like … the boundary stone fixed in the earth became, so to the cults of different families. “There must be an speak, the domestic religion rooted in the soil which enclosure around the hearth, at a certain distance. announced that this soil was forever the property of It does not matter whether it is formed by a hedge, the family….Once it was fixed according to the ritual, by a wooden fence, or by a stone wall: whatever it there was no power on earth that could displace it.” consists of, it marks the limit separating one hearth There was a time when the house and the land were from another. This border is accounted sacred.” The so “incorporated in the family that it could neither same is the case in regard to tombs. “Just as houses lose them nor part with them.” Looking at the house could not be contiguous, tombs were not supposed and the land naturally renewed the memory of all to touch upon each other…. The dead are gods who events, be they profane or religious, that had taken place there. […]» Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique, pp. 64f. 4.
Ibid.,p.68 “Roman law demands that, if a family sells the field where its tomb is located, the family retains the ownership at least of 5.
this tomb and preserves in perpetuity the right of crossing the field so as to perform the ceremonies of its cult. The ancient custom was to bury the dead, not in cemeteries or along the sides of a road, but in the field of each family.”
6.
Ibid., p.73
« […] Burri went back to his hometown of Città di Castello after visiting Gibellina, but three days later phoned Zanmatti saying ‘I have an idea’. This idea was to compact the masonry of the ruins within retaining walls, leaving the lines of the streets, and to cover the whole thing with white cement, making a giant cretto which would become a last record of the tragic event – with, as Burri himself pointed out, the double advantage of solving the commune´s problem of what to do about the dangerous site. On a relief model of the hillside, Burri laid out flat a rectangular cretto, the lines of the cracks following the old street patern (a cretto is a cleft or a crack, a resonant image for an earthquake site). A subsequent plaster model, with the lines of the cretti gouged out, provided the form of the work, which it was Zanmatti´s task to scale up and make structurally stable while retaining as far as possible the roughness of the model. … But the roughness of finish the contractors did manage to achieve ironically contributed to the rapid deterioration of the cretto, encouraging plants and lichen to attach themselves to the surface. By the early 2000s, the still incomplete work was in a state of decay, with grass growing on it, shrubs sprouting from cracks, signs of corrosion of the metal reinforcement, and spalling of the concrete. The original whiteness that Burri had wanted had also been lost. The cretto, a memorial to a ruin, was itself turning into a ruin. Although it could be argued that natural decay was consistent with Burri´s own ideas about entropy, the authorities were not prepared to let nature take its course and, after considerable debate, a programme of restoration and repair was begun in 2008.9 … Striking though the cretto is to the casual visitor, it seems to have particular meaning for the people of Gibellina, even for those too young to remember the earthquake. For them, it´s a place for a day out, it draws people to it, it is used – unlike Gibellina Nuova, where the superfluity of monuments and public art shows no sign at all of being used. Occasional events, My thanks to Davide Spina for his assistance with the research for this article. 1. The bibliography on the cretto is large, and that on Gibellina Nuova colossal.
The main sources used here are: Ludovico Corrao, intervista di Baldo Carollo, Il Sogno Mediterraneo (Alcamo: Ernesto di Lorenzo, 2010) (…) Interviews with Alberto
Appendice 02 «Happy Ghost of a Possible City: Il Cretto, Gibellina» Adrian Forty (excerpt of the article “Happy Ghost of a Possible City: Il Cretto, Gibellina”) London, AA Files, N 66 2013; pp.102-103. festivals, ceremonies are held at the cretto by the residents of Gibellina. Whereas most memorials merely allow things to be forgotten, this one hides what it commemorates, but retains a presence in people´s everyday lives. The cretto belongs to a tradition of making memorials out of concrete that goes back to the Second World War. The choice of material is paradoxical, since concrete is more commonly associated with the erase of memory than with its preservation.11 Nevertheless, most memorials constructed in the last 60 years are concrete, for reasons that are not always straightforward. The usual answers are to do with concrete´s durability and its apparent absence of any iconography – its seeming blankness more absorbent of mental projection than other more symbolically redolent materials. ... The Cretto is big, very big – so big that it has sometimes been referred to as a work of land art. Yet this description is hardly appropriate, since the artistic trajectory within each land art developed abhorred literalism and associational content. Works like Smithson´s Spiral Jety or Nancy Holt´s Sun Tunnels were not about anything, they just were. The cretto, on the contrary, has content – it contains a town. Often described as a ‘shroud’, sometimes as a sipario (a theatre curtain), it is a covering that marks a closure, the ending of something, in this case of a town. These are not properties consistent with land art as usually understood.
Zanmatti and Franco Purini in Rome in April 2013 provided additional information. (…)
9. On
the restoration, see Giuseppe Mercurio, ‘A New Worksite for Burri’, Riso, op cit, pp 150-71.
As a memorial, the obvious comparison in formal terms is with Peter Eisenman´s Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, whose raised stelae correspond to the islands of the cretto. But beyond the superficial visual resemblance, the comparison breaks down. Unlike the Berlin memorial, a ‘made-up’ memorial in the sense that there is no particular reason why it should be where it is, nor the size that it is, the cretto is extremely specific. The Berlin memorial could be anywhere in Berlin, possibly even Germany, without it mattering much, nor would it make any difference if it were twice, or ten times, the area. But the cretto has to be exactly where it is, its projected size determined by the extent of the town of Gibellina, and even though only three of the pathways correspond exactly to the previous street pattern, the raised islands are urban blocks, not ‘concepts’ or abstract forms. What it commemorates is not a generality – a people, a race – but, and this is an unusual subject for a memorial, a place, the town of Gibellina, whose ruins it contains. Unlike the Berlin memorial, allegorical, portentous and empty, the cretto is an actual sepulchre – nor is it melancholy or oppressive, on the contrary it seems cheerful and reparative, ‘the happy ghost of a possible city’, as Franco purini put it.13 Its sepulchral function, as a covering for the ruins of the town, also gives rise to its being thought of as a work of architecture and although, as we have seen, this has been convenient to its protection, it is not truly a work of architecture either, in that it offers no opportunity of inhabitation – indeed it deliberately prevents such a use. In reality, the cretto conforms to none of the conventional categories for build works –and in its non-conformity lies part of its success. Without doubt the most lastingly successful product of Corrao´s artistic patronage, it defies all attempts at classification. Corrao´s own assessment of it, ‘shroud, dream, symbol, pure thought’, perhaps comes closest to describing what it is, though even he neglected to mention the sheer enormity of its presence.14 […]» See Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture: A Material History (London: Reaktion, 2012), chapter 7, pp 197-223, on the use of concrete for memorials. 11.
13. Franco
Purini interview.
14. Ludovico
p.257.
Corrao, op cit,
07 Bibliography BOOKS BLOOMER, Kent C.; Moore, Charles W. (1977) Body, Memory and Architecture, New Haven and London, Yale University Press BOYER, M. Christine (1994) The City of Collective Memory. Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments, London, Cambridge-Massachutes, the MIT Press.
KELLY, Caleb (2011) Sound: Documents of Contemporary Art, London, Cambridge-Massachutes, Whitechapel Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press. RIBEIRO, Orlando (2011) Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico. Estudo Geográfico, Portugal, Letra Livre. SARAIVA, Clara (2007) Um museu debaixo de água: o caso da Luz . Etnográfica [online]. vol.11, n.2, pp. 441470. ISSN 0873-6561.
BRADLEY, Jessica; Huyssen, Andreas, co-aut.(1998) Displacements: Miroslaw Balka, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario.
SARAIVA, Clara (2005) Luz e Água. Etnografia de um processo de mudança, Portugal, Museu da Luz
BREUER, Rolf. Ed.lit, Deblonde, Gautier, introd. (2001) Rachel Whiteread : Transient spaces – Deustsche Guggenheim Berlin , New York, Guggenheim Museum Publications
SEBALD, W.G. (2003) Os Anéis de Saturno. Uma romagem inglesa (trans. T. Costa), Lisboa, Quetzal Editores. Princenthal, Nancy, Basualdo, C., co-aut.; Huyssen, A., co-aut. (2000) Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press.
CAGE, John (2009) Silence, lectures and writings, London, Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.
VON KARAJAN, Prix Eliette (1996) Rachel Whiteread Skulpturen / Sculptures Residenz Verlag 1988-1996 , Salzburg and Wien, Editor Dietgard Grimmer.
CHION, Michel (1990) Audio-vision. Sound on screen (edited and trans. C. Gorbman) New York, Columbia University Press. DILLON, Brian (2011) Ruins: Documents of Contemporary Art, London, Cambridge-Massachutes, Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press. DISERENS, Corine (2003) Gordon Matta-Clark, (edited T. Crow, J. Kirshner, C. Kravagna) London, Phaidon. FARR, Ian, (2012) Memory, Documents of Contemporary Art, London; Cambridge-Massachutes, Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press. FURLONG, William (1994) Audio Arts: Discourse and Practice in Contemporary Art; Great Britain, A.O. Academy Editions. HALBWACHS, Maurice, (1992) On Collective Memory (trans., edit. and intro. L. Coser) Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press. KAHN, Louis, Twombly, Robert, edited (2003) Essential Texts, New York, London, W.W. Norton&Company
INÊS CRUZ
Doris Salcedo. Shibboleth ,Tate 2007, London Rottenberg, Anda, ed. lit.; Zech, Hanne, ed. lit. AMNESIA : DIE GEGENWART DES VERGESSENS / HERAUSGEBER NEUES MUSEUM WESERBURG BREMEN (2000) Bremen : Neues Museum Weserburg, cop. DISSERTATION ABREU, P. (2007) Palácios da Memória II a revelação da arquitectura, Volume I - Secção Teórica O Processo de Leitura do Monumento, Unpublished PHD dissertation, Faculdade de Arquitectura, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. DOCUMENTARY MOURÃO, Catarina (2006) A minha aldeia já não mora aqui, Portugal, Doc Alliance. PUBLICATIONS FORTY, Adrian (2013) ‘Happy Ghost of a Possible City: Il Cretto, Gibellina’, AA Files, The Architectural Association, No. 66: 100-107.
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MA Scenography Royal Central School of Speech and Drama University of London 2014