An imposed freedom? A material culture analysis of El Centro de las Artes de San Luis Potosí
Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
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Jorge Luis Borges
‘We must build’; the greatest imperative. Beyond hunt, beyond craftsmanship, beyond courtesy love even, ‘we must build something that prevails’ better encloses the human quest. One that more often than not, leaves us unsatisfied. Borges puts forward a defeating truth: all we ever build is made of sand: of a granular substance without any static form; that escapes from our hands, that can so quickly be turn into nothing. Stone, on the other hand, is hard solid. There’s a comforting weight to it that hold us to the ground.
What happens when greater forces —time, climate, human
action— change the state of stone from absolute to a slowly-becoming nothing? Is the stone empty of meaning then? Are the minerals of its components somehow more present and valued? Stone that was shaped to imprison, to capture, to hold, to silence, and that is now mediated to provide freedom, is the unit of analysis of this text. The Ex-Penitentiary of San Luis Potosí now holds the name of Center of the Arts. A nomenclature doesn’t suffice, though. It’s the materiality who ultimately speaks. As we still live in a world of transcripts and translations, a “desire to bring to light, to incorporate into language” (Latour, 2005: 142) that which we cannot immediately register in the plane of materiality, I will aim to an approximation of this dialogue with the aid of people that has established a working and, nevertheless, emotional relationship with the building, as to grasp what the building is perhaps saying back in the echo of its walls, or in the cantera that granted it a form. To guide us through, I will continuously refer to the building as both a ‘sensor’ and an ‘agent’— in Eyal Weizman’s terms, and will explore Þóra Pétursdóttir and Bjørnar Olsen’s ‘ruin memories’ concept, that collocates ruination under a different light, one that ceases to see ruins as source of loss and destruction, as a contradiction of memory, reflecting only oblivion, and that advocates, instead, for the deeper revelations and alternate memories the process or condition of ruination can scatter around (2014, 11). It is precisely this ruin condition which most interests me. The transformation of a Penitentiary in ruins into a Center of the Arts, undoubtedly implied —and continues to pose— some fundamental decisions concerning logistics, aesthetics, and ethics. The ethics of whom, though? Or the ethics of what, in any case? “Everything is art. Everything is politics” (2013), states sharply the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. Following this notion, I will describe the moral and political transformations the building has undergone through its physicality, as I do my best to make a case against its over-aestheticization. All of which ultimately begs the question: can freedom be imposed?
1884: Serving the prison intentionality, the building is ordered to be constructed, based upon the Pan-
opticon model developed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, which translates into a series of ramified buildings with corridors and cells that centers on a circular courtyard as meeting point. The jail operated for 105 years until in 1999 it closed for two reasons: due to the excess of inmates and because the city had grown so much that it was already part of the center of San Luis Potosí —when it was previously in the periphery—, and this no longer represented security for the population. The ruination process as such started then, and went on until 2006, when CONACULTA (The Secretariat of Culture), proposed and succeeded with the project of transforming the place into a cultural center for the arts (which from now on I’ll be referring to as the CASLPC— its acronym in Spanish).
Designing an afterlife to confinement
Susana Draper reflects on the moral duty of the repur-
posing of prisons, calling them “afterlives of confinement” (2014, 2012); although she’s specifically concerned about the implications of post-dictatorial regimes in urban developments, the alone denomination she establishes plays well as setting the scope of this analysis. Materiality gathered in a certain space, materiality as unit, has a life to live, as it has been gathered in a specific and purposeful manner in the first place. But when this accustomed life is bereft from purpose, is there an afterlife for it to live? A brand new start? Will this building be re-married? Will it find redemption?
We would hope that cultural policies would aim to do that. However, it’s an increasing matter of preoccupation how narrow the loop is when it comes to the preservation and actualization of buildings. Much of this is connected to our very conception of a ruin, and our constant need for either a blatantly ‘newness’, or for a fixed and ideal image of whatever we think ‘antique’ means. We don’t seem to like the in-betweens: “Modernity is rarely associated with ruins. Yet never have so many ruins been produced, so many sites been abandoned” (2014, 3), assesses Pétursdóttir and Olsen. As they explain, our traditional understanding of a ruin, the “classical and Gothic ruins [that] inspired poets, artists and scholars, motivated philosophical mediations and served as instruments of contemplative and aesthetic pleasure” (2014, 5), served to construct an entire industry around them, to preserve and exalt them as “anchors for identity and belonging, [even as] holders of universal cultural significance and human values” (2014, 5). However, modern ruins pose quite the opposite scenario, one that almost no one takes pride in: “Being modern and ruined, made modern ruins ambiguous and even anachronistic, and their hybrid or uncanny state made them hard to negotiate within established cultural categories of waste and heritage, failure and progress. They became matter out of place– and out of time.” Designing an afterlife to imprisonment in the CASLPC, meant acknowledging a failure of modernity, yes, but that of a long time gone ‘early modernity’, a ‘modern past’. The CASLPC was originally built in a French fashion, much as part of the Europeanization project carried out by the then president Porfirio Díaz, who forcefully ruled the country for over three and a half decades. As a prison, the CASLPC held prisoner the resistant’s presidential candidate Francisco I. Madero, who wrote in his cell a draft of the document that would serve as the initial flame of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. The INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History), might have seen in this
Fig.: “From June 22 to July 22, 1910, Mr. Francisco I. Madero, martyr of democracy, was imprisoned in this cell for his love of freedom”
anecdote a heritage item of great historic value, and might have decided accordingly to solely walk the path of ‘musefication’, but this was not the case. The ‘Plan of San Luis’ (the document took the city as title), is proudly displayed at the original cell where it first came into existence; however, there is not any other history items to accompany it. The document seems dislocated, but not lost. It’s placed there as a referendum, and speaks a truth, a desired one, of what happened there as the born of freedom, not the other way around. As Poe once wrote, “misery is manifold”; freedom is too, it’s multi-faced. To select art expression as one of its many faces, meant, as I said, the acknowledgment of the failure of ‘a modernity’ —Diaz’s projects were, after all, a lifetime pursuing of the modernity of his time —, and a bet, instead, on a post-modern way to harmonize the tragedy of past times and the possibilities of a future centered on the emancipatory effects of art. The 2006 renovation of the building meant the recognition of the freedom vs. captivity dichotomy; a contrast that was eloquently designed in the material transformations of the CASLPC. Iván García is a graphic designer that completed many courses on graphic arts in the CASLPC, and an enthusiastic storyteller when it comes to the history of his city, San Luis. He shares: When the CASLPLC project started, there were only contemplated for its use those materials that would be seen as a continuation of the original design, such as the pink stone (cantera rosa); Eventually the INAH—in an ‘eureka’ moment of its architect— decided that the new sections should be made with contemporary materials and textures, such as concrete, steel, etc., so that the difference between construction stages was striking and evident.
This unapologetic juxtaposition of past and present, far from rendering as arbitrary, acts as a merging link between the two. Freedom, and more specifically, freedom through the lenses of art, acts in the CASLPC not only as a symbolic feature, but as a living force. Can freedom be conveyed through making art? That seems to the be task there, as painters, muralists, musicians and sculptors, all try in individual and collective efforts to permeate their own stands on freedom against the CASLPC’s every surface. The aesthetic and functional decisions that shaped today’s CASLPC, erect an architectonic palimpsest that speaks of an accumulation of past and present times. This is clearly exemplified in one of the main yards, now dedicated to sculpture workshops. In its rescued form, we can still see some Arab columns and arches that supposedly were there even before the prison, but that were hidden within the wall. Now they stand uncovered and proud, in the yard that also holds one of the most important tributes to freedom in the CASLPC: the sculptural work in bronze ‘The spirit’, by Ricardo Motilla. Iván explains:
This patio is the only place from which the towers of the Basilica of Guadalupe were visible, so it was an important point, spiritually speaking, for the inmates. In fact, the sculpture was placed there because of this reason; it was the place of “liberation” of the prisoners.
The other most notable artistic approach to freedom, can be found in Ana Castelán’s sculptures in the opposing yard. Collectively named by the artist as ‘Libertad[es]’ (a word game that joins the plural for ‘freedom’ and ‘freedom is’), is described by its curator, Armando Adame, as a piece strongly grounded on the semiotics of materiality: “Ana has always used the material of creation: mud; now she experiments with a human material par excellence, the material of strength: the concrete, which she works and associates with other elements no less connected to the eagerness to build that characterizes our specie”.
Does it work, though? Is there really an inherent freedom quality to art, as we seem to think? Is the freedom in the making, already freedom? Moreover, is the CASLPLC playing along, or is it more like a stubborn and grumpy old man rejecting all these young hands on top of it? “Just leave me alone”, I imagine him saying.
The sensorial: materiality as a bridge to alternate memories
According to Weizman, a building is far from static, on the contrary: buildings are “elastic and respon-
sive” environments, “social forces slowing into form” (2012: 7), this is what makes them act both as ‘sensors’ and ‘agents’. As Weizman notes, “deterioration and erosion continue the builders’ processes of form-making” (2012: 7); it is through these transformations that they become ‘sensors’, registering a far wider spectrum of external elements:
The structural pathology of a building is a diagram that records the influence of an entangled and potentially innate political/natural environment, registering year-on-year temperature changes, almost imperceptible fluctuations in humidity and pollution, which are themselves indications of political transformations, patterns, and tendencies. (Weizman, 2012: 8) We inflict on buildings our very human and current narratives, whether those are one of imprisonment or freedom, and we expect them to perform their parts accordingly. And they do, buildings perform their assigned roles, but in a constructive manner. This is when they become ‘agents’, providing structure to events instead of just providing them of shape (Weizman, 2017: 16). Mai Salazar took multiple workshops of animation at the CASLPC, but her most memorable experience was her involvement in an acting and dance class, that would invariably make her think of the CASLPC’s past: I would always think of some prisoner whose heart is racing, or who lacks the air because of the anxiety of being locked in such a small, overcrowded room. It was an inevitable thought because we used to rehearse in a mezzanine area, it was wide but still somehow claustrophobic, and then the adrenaline and the accelerated pulse of dancing… I could only think of that. That kept me going.
This emotional response, that illustrates the CASLPC as being a sensor and an agent, seems to establish a dialectical relation between the building and the artist. Elva González is an architect and professional dancer, that has interacted with the CASLPC in many occasions. As an architect, she is especially sensible to the materiality of the place: I love the stone walls, I love them. The glass walls are amazing too. Something very strange is that I do not like glass walls, but in here you can see the stone on the other side, that was what changed the feeling for me. It is not easy to find this type of buildings that are built with these materials, with this type of stone, stone on a wall, for example. It’s a strange connection to a past that we do not know but that we like. It’s like finding common grounds with the structure, something that holds us— this stability.
When Elva talks about the materiality of the building, she does so as talking of a relative she has heard many stories about, but didn’t get the chance to know. Although nostalgia has been recently attacked as being used for commodifying purposes —and with much reason—, this is a sort of nostalgia that reads authentic, because it goes beyond the self, straight into the plane of human immanence we all strive for. Pétursdóttir and Olsen, would call this a “recollective” memory, a “conscious and willful human process of recalling the past” (2014: 8), that they associate with Pierre Nora’s “lieux de mémoire”: the cristalization of memory into collective objects, sites or places (2014: 8), and to Henri Bergson’s exposition of duration, where the past is “pressing against the present, ‘gnawing’ into the future and ‘swelling’ as it advances”, and it does, precisely, through materiality, that “allow the past to live on, gather and proliferate in the present” (2014: 9). The way in which the art pieces are presented in themselves, also tells us a great deal about the CASLPC’s materiality as constructing a new plot, in its own terms. The artist who chooses to exhibit his or her art in the CASLPC can, certainly, expect an added effect or, perhaps, an altogether different one.
Each piece of art is displayed within an individual cell. The visual contrast as result is powerful. Emotions are enhanced, and any pre-given symbolic game changes its rules.
I made a stage collage here, about the minotaur. I had a little written text, I took everyone to one of the entrances of the corridors, they had to stand in front of it, and hear me read out loud. I said that that they were standing at the labyrinth’s entrance, that there was a red thread and that, if they wanted to follow it they could find the minotaur. The cool thing is that the space was so, the word isn’t flexible, but, sort of neutral, but at the same time loaded with meanings, and the forms, the stone, the roughness, really made me and everyone believe that was the labyrinth, for sure.
Elva, as many others, has built an intimate relationship with the CASLPC, but one that is changing as constant renovations are beginning to be too many, and too unfortunate. The main project ahead resulted in the complete disappearance of the ruins that belonged to the women’s jail section, in order to build a Leonora Carrington museum, that would still be part of the CASLPC. “They turned that part into shit”, conclusively states Elva.
Newest rennovations at the CASLPC
Conclusion: The freedom of the non-finished The CASLPC afterlife worked for many years because it was a project in process. Its value as a center for the Arts was anchored, not in aesthetic perfection, but in a material space in which its artists could still feel a pulse. The beating of the building, encompassed by years and years of prisoners, was later encompassed by a beat of a country’s freedom (even if only briefly, as we are now subjugated to bigger evils, but that’s another topic), and much later found a new heartbeat in artistic creation. Aesthetics, referred by Weizman as “the judgement of the senses” (2012:13), should be applied as most ethically as possible to the built environment. This is to say that an over-aestheticization, let alone when is poorly executed, not only compromises the soul of the building, but it does to it that which not even the ruination process would ever do: it empties the building of its inner life.
We’re living under a premise that constant renovation must equal the same sort of aesthetics, a desired simplicity and whiteness that, just as fashion on its bodily instances, can only work for certain spaces, and not for the others. Why should we measure every building indistinctively? Why not start listening again to its materials, as the renovators on 2006 seemed to have done? What I propose here is, of course, not an utter negligence towards building management; quite the opposite: a cultural mediation that acts on a more sensorial basis, one that stops seeing ruination or aging, for that matter, “as purely rhetorical devices”, to start seeing them as “affecting presences” (Pétursdóttir and Olsen, 2014: 19). A sensitivity that would enable us to enhance the material’s conditions, setting its essential parts free to continue their natural processes in a beautiful and secure manner, and to build our life around it accordingly. What kind of freedom can be obtained from silencing the spaces we inhabit?
References: Ai, Weiwei. Weiwei-Isms. Edited by LARRY WARSH, Princeton Univ. Pr., 2013. Draper, Susana. Afterlives of confinement: spatial transitions in postdictatorship Latin America. Univ. of Pittsburg Press, 2012. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, 2005. Olsen, Bjørnar, and Pétursdóttir Þóra. Ruin memories: materialities, aesthetics and the archaeology of the recent past. Routledge, 2014. Weizman, Eyal. “Forensic Architecture: Notes from Fields and Forums.” 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts. 0-13. (2012)
Note: All the featured photographs were taken by me on January, 2018. San Luis Potosi, S.L.P, Mexico.