Aequatorlab
Aequatorlab is a multimedia Project started in Rome in February 2007 in collaboration with MLAC (Museo Laboratorio de Arte Contemporaneo) in Rome with the purpose of researching spaces and peoples that can be found along the Equatorial line crossing the artists’ countries of origin, notable Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil. Our research is aimed at opening opportunities of dialogue between social and cultural actors, by means of documenting and producing artworks and developing ideas that can originate from these encounters.
The representation of the Equatorial line as a political trace The AEquatorlab Project develops around the discursive opportunities of an act, such as following an imaginary line that determines the erasure of two opposite worlds, but t also jeans opposition between these, and its possible encounter. We have produced real and virtual itineraries along the Equatorial line, gathering visual, narrative, literary and sound records that portray the experiences of people living along the line. A Project such as Aequatorlab originates from the necessity of a physical displacement that results in a geographic and cultural route The line is a pretext for an inquiry, documents that were produced are at a time symbolic products, but also spaces of thought
and reflection that generate new productions. We have built up on our travels along the line and Developer a parallel reading in other parts of the World, by identifying issues that unite or split “the Norths from the Souths” and vice versa. The equatorial line therefore turns into an imaginary boundary between these spaces, namely the untouchable and hermetic “Norths” that develop n the Majority World, and the “Souths” that reproduce n societies that thought of having reached a certain level of wealth and development.
The research The term frontier (frontiera in Italian, frontière in French, frontera in Spanish) contains the substantive “front”; a frontier is a front that turns against someone or something. In a frontier conflict is inevitable. This front is mobile, subject to innumerable transformations: a frontier is an artificial construction, ensuing from a community’s expectations and wishes hence geographical and social motivations. Purpose of the laboratory is rightfully that of dismantling frontiers, finding the passages to cross them, and challenging them. It started in Rome with the purpose of putting in relation arts and academia research, ad since then it has gathered peoples, intentions, geographies that are recorded in a blog, in order to give an account of the fluid and dynamic dimension of its identity as an artistic essay. http://aequatorlab.blogspot.com The documentation phase was meant to re-think geographic, social and individual frontiers as places that can convert symbolically into third spaces. These displacements, in which we are looking for living testimonies, possible narratives, constructions from the voices of the people involved, are the keystone of our investigation.
Contents Visual reading of the territory It includes images, video and audio recordings that work as starting point or first “stone” in the construction of the itinerary of the exhibition.
Documental in-depth research It included audio and video interviews, photos, written material and documentation gathered during fieldwork. The documental part is in itself the narrative structure of the Project.
Participated development Discussion platform, multidisciplinary laboratory with a concrete result in exhibitions and discussion panel. Developed with the participation of people from the place where the project is shown.
The Lab Our proposal is to reach out to social actors from different backgrounds and invite them to participate in a multidisciplinary process coordinated by members of Aequatorlab artistic collective. During three days this participants will discuss and share points of view regarding the local and global aspects of frontiers and borders, and the final results, be they theoretical or artwork will be included in the final exhibition. A blog is created in every place we go to contain and display the process and outcomes of the meetings and workshops. http://aequatorlabquito.blogspot.com
URL www.aequatorlab.net http://aequatorlab.blogspot.com
E-MAIL aequatorlab@gmail.com