PARDO, Tania (2013) :: Catalogue text: Derivas de Ciudad, cartografías imposibles

PARDO, Tania (2013). “On cartographies, driftings and cities [A conversation between Esther Pizarro and Tania Pardo]”. Exhibition catalogue text: Derivas de Ciudad, cartografías imposibles, Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente (CEART), Fuenlabrada, Madrid

TANIA PARDO: Where does your interest in cartography come from?

ESTHER PIZARRO: My interest in cities comes from a personal experience, of understanding the city from a lived perspective. Those space-time co-ordinates lie in the city of Los Angeles, the city where I lived for two years, thanks to a Fullbright postdoctoral scholarship. It is there where there was a convergence, on the one hand of my research on a theoretical level and on the other, of broaching a change in my formal language because there I was aware that it made no sense to continue doing the sametype of work I had been doing to date, and because it was work closely tied to the  university and to my time in education.

T.P: The city of Los Angeles has fascinated many artists, including the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader in his work “In search of miracles. A night in L.A.”.... Why did you choose L.A.?

E.P: I had been there before thanks to a predoctoral scholarship and when I returned I was 28, I had then finished my thesis and I had been fascinated by that no limit concept.  L.A. is a city where the limits are blurred, there is no centre as happens in European cities and where everything is articulated around road junctions, roads and motorways. Suddenly you see a city that is flat but in the downtown area there is a superimposition of motorways junctions, a flaky-pastry road system. This city was like an enormous structure you could fly over for hours and not come to its boundary.

T.P: It is evident that your work contains a marked autobiographical root, in which one intuitively perceives a very direct relationship between the city and the experience lived…

E.P: The starting point is undoubtedly autobiographical, indeed the cities on which I begin to work are those where I live for a time. They are particular cities, which make sense from the experience lived there. I connect this a lot with the phenomenology of perception that Merleau-Ponty talks about and therefore understand the body as a limit, that being the world and how that moving border helps us to understand the space we live in. I understand that, as citizens, we live in an urban setting, as our main reference point, but that urban setting is, in turn, what causes strangeness, disorientation, discomfort in many things. At that time, what really interested me when I moved to cities where I had not lived before was that sensation that any place could be feasible for an experience, for an event; that factor that does not occur when you are in the city where you grew up, where places now have the hierarchy of your experience.

Therefore, those driftings, that capability to surprise, that capability that everything may be possible, that need to devour the city, or that anxiety to apprehend it, it was always from that experience which has led me to stop at the lived city concept. Subsequently, over the years that autobiographical component has gradually given way to a deeper study of the general city and of the human being or the individual; let’s say, not so much the city understood from my own experience but rather that I have begun to be interested in other people’s more open experiences.

T.P: In addition to the city concept, there is something else very prominent in your artistic undertakings and that is your interest for very specific materials in your work – felt, waxes, threads, etc. What place does the material aspect occupy in your work?

E.P: The material aspect is to a certain extent defined by the choice of materials that compose each of the series I work on and they are not a free choice. Always defending that for me it is fundamental that the material chosen serves the idea I hold; it has to be that specific material and can be no other. In this question, I like to vary materials. In fact when I consider making a new body of work, I don’t know what materials I’m going to work with; indeed, in this initial conception phase of my work, I like to expose myself to the use of new materials and it was specifically the city which in some way told me or returned to me the material that I should work with. I consider each material has a kind of soul, independently of how it is technically worked, because that is part of the trade and is not the fundamental question. When we stand on the borders of things is when we get the most out of them; the fact of being able to think the material, of suddenly giving it connotations which were previously not being worked with or flipping over perceptions to those we are not used to, is fundamental. That need to invert the negative and make it positive, of using things that are usually lost and giving them another value, something I do, for example, with a material with which I can identify - wax.

T.P: There are specifically two materials which have been a fundamental material in your production, wax and fabric. What is the meaning of the use of the two materials in some of your works?

E.P: On the one hand wax alludes to the topic of the material and on the other, the fabric or pattern represents a kind of information coding; data recompilation is something different to the material. Wax is a material that has interested me from the beginnings of my career, apart from its technical qualities also because of its value through its diffuseness. It is a material that is used to blur image, it generates a fragility and, at the same time, it is an element that enwraps, protects and envelops. Historically, wax has always been used in casting as a means to an end. In other words, wax is a vehicle used to leave a hollow because when it melts it leaves an empty space that is occupied by the metal. Reflecting a little on the value of materials, I wondered how a material that really has those values has to lose them along the way, because it is that material, wax, that has given meaning to the act of casting. Wax may be a material that in itself is an end material - we have the impressionist sculptor Medardo Rosso, a precedent because he was the only one leaving sculptures in wax, precisely for that fuzzy value and for its capacity to give those faces a diffuse appearance, as if melted, something that, in that sense, ties in very well with the contemporary city concept. A fragile city, a city like a sick organ that is continually mutating and which may be exposed to changes which are, in some way, going to transform its morphology. That is why wax seemed to me to be a highly suitable material for indicating the city’s fragility and the diffuse nature of the contemporary metropolis.

The world of fabric has always held a dual interest for me and, specifically in this exhibition, it is particularly evident in the piece entitled Mapas de movilidad. Patronando Madrid (Mobility Maps. Patterning Madrid). In fact, if we observe any fabric, we can see that it is formed by an orthogonal alignment which is the weft and the warp. Any fabric redefines for us an isotropic, homogenous, Cartesian grid which is formed by horizontal and vertical lines. If we transfer this to the city, it is very common to refer to the urban fabric because in many cities, in contemporary ones in particular, that weft is Cartesian and orthogonal. Then, I recover the idea of understanding streets as rows and filaments that make up that fabric.

Together with this, in my work I also highlight the concept of patterning or pattern. In the dressmaking world, the pattern is related to cutting the shape and the silhouette that also is an important component in my work. Specifically, it is the silhouette that is spread over a fabric which proves infinite, and in that case then, pattern design is something absolutely sculptural and which enables me to merge that skin concept with the all-enveloping idea. That is, if we understand the city as a structure, like that body onto which different skins are superimposed, that is why the different patterns gradually give the city a tremendously organicist vision to which we attribute a series of components and feelings that bring us closer to the tactile city, the city of experiences, of the events which tell us how the human being also understands the city. Why, in short, the town planners’ cold Cartesian city is only in their drawings and any individual is capable of understanding the city that way.

T.P: How would you yourself define your work?

E.P: I work with two fundamental components in my artwork, space and the material. From there, I use the means and the languages I need, while it’s true that in the end my artistic responses move in a three-dimensional field. I could say I’m a sculptress  but I believe today that being corseted into a single definition is very complex; I prefer to talk about a fluid boundary like that liquid modernity to which Zygmunt Bauman refers and that can be applied on all levels.

I define my work as a constant search to understand the meaning and the relationship between the human being and the space he inhabits and a reflecting on how we move in the world. We are material and the city is the space surrounding us. From there on, there are infinite relations. That is why I’m currently continuing with this line of research because I believe that we never run out of ideas when rethinking the city, because it has multiple layers, flaky pastry-like, infinite. As we study how our society is gradually moving and how we form part of it, new visions, new layers open up to us.

T.P: Talking about those infinite relationships that are forged in the city, there is one in particular that stands out and that is the individual’s relationship with public space, a concept you have addressed in some of your interventions.

E.P: The topic of public space is, in my opinion, fundamental. My artistic career is devoted to carrying out interventions in public spaces, but the fundamental component for carrying out these interventions resides in working with some kind of component that exists in that space in which I am going to intervene. I don’t try to make monumental sculptures on a large scale, which can equally be set up in one place or another; I’m not interested in that side of public sculpture. That’s why it’s important to differentiate between public sculpture and interventions in public places. Prior to undertaking a public intervention, I do research into that place and try to discover some component that will bear the weight of the piece and it’s from there that I develop the proposal.  The interesting thing is, in fact, the process, the archaeology of the place, the fact of discovering its memory and working with important events that have happened in that place to return something that is intrinsically tied to that place and which would make no sense anywhere else.

T.P: In public interventions, the majority of times the spectator bumps into the piece without looking for it; in your work, both in interventions in public spaces and in exhibitions, what role does the spectator play?

E.P: The spectator is a fundamental component; any work of art is made complete with the spectator. At times, in my work, the spectator must make an initial effort of approximation and to some I would say one thing and to others something different. Many times it is the spectator himself who returns a reading of the work that I had never even contemplated.

T.P: But specifically, in the piece Mapas de movilidad. Patronando Madrid (Mobility Maps. Patterning Madrid), you seem to open a new cycle when it comes to engaging more people in the creative process, don’t you?

E.P: In this piece that I am presenting at CEART , I actively engage the spectator, given that the work involves the prior participation of one hundred people. It is a methodology that hitherto has not been used and that is proving highly satisfactory while at the same time being very complicated to articulate. In any event, there are different types of spectator, for example the public interventions spectator is the one that is most spontaneously involved, given that their everyday space is invaded by a new element and produces a response of amazement, rejection, pleasure, etc.; before that situation I’m very interested in the concept of functionality in art and I try to reflect this in my interventions – functionality is what engages the spectator most.  The interventions I undertake in public spaces at times have a very important didactic component – I try to make each work say and teach something about that place.

T.P: If we take a tour of this exhibition, Cartografías de ciudad, derivas imposibles, (Cartographies of the city, impossible driftings), we can see that in your earlier works your attention spotlighted more general concepts such as the unlimited city (L.A.); it goes on to focus on a single area (Rome) until it enters a more intimate and limited space – the attic (Paris). In addition there is the passage of your own experience, of that lived autobiographical city, to use, for the first time, in this exhibition, the experiences of other individuals as material for a piece. Is it now when the process becomes a fundamental part of your work?

E.P: In my early works, the epicentre was based on subjective experiences which arose out me. But from them on, each new project has given rise to another, specifically in the central installation (Patronando Madrid) of this exhibition, I am completely decentralising that load.  The topic of using data is becoming increasingly more interesting for me. Mapas de Movibilidad. Patronando Madrid (Mobility Maps. Patterning Madrid) is a work that is wholly process-based, although it is true there is a foundation structure which I build, on which the routes are going to be patterned. It is a more subjective structure; however in that structure I am contemplating, any offshoot could be possible, i.e., it is articulated in such a way, constructively speaking, that any route is possible; I will simply reproduce the points on that structure that have been the resulting routes of the one hundred individuals who have taken part in the project. At management level it is complicated to decentralise a project, but it is proving very satisfactory because you become a data decoder, almost an analyst.

At the end of this piece, it is even possible to make a very subjective reading of the city and of the individual because, although their anonymity is respected at all times, they are nothing if not specific profiles of the city itself. In some way I am trying to make visible those infinite routes which are taken daily in the city, where each street is inhabited by a stroll, by the drifting of an anonymous citizen. I place them in open space-time co-ordinates, because the data gathered belongs to data of seven days which do not have to be consecutive, but the space is limited to the central almond of the metropolitan area of Madrid.

T.P: In 1998, after your stay in L.A., you undertake Percepciones de L.A., topografía y memoria, (Perceptions of L.A., Topography and Memory), but what meaning does memory and recollection  actually have in your work?

E.P: In the end, it is memory and recollection that construct the image we have of the city. When a person travels, he is exposed to different spaces, different sensations but, in the end, when you wonder what that place is like, what that town is like, you close your eyes and you work with your memory. Memory allows you to filter out the trivia, carrying out an exercise where the concept of “blurring” is implicit because it works with what is diffuse and fuzzy. Memory and recollection have enabled me to understand the city based on the experiences I have had in these cities, the image that one forms of oneself as a citizen is that of recollections and personal experiences. From there, in this exhibition Percepciones de L.A, topografía y memoria I began to use wax because it allowed me to relate it to that concept of diffuseness. In other words, memory and recollection are established in the past, in another time space and work with what is diffuse and blurred. While perception, to the contrary, focuses on what is sharp and immediate.

T.P: You subsequently undertake Construir Ciudades (Building  Cities) where you focus on floor pieces which allude to Rome. How is the antithesis between these two cities translated in the works?  

E.P: I carried out this work in Rome, where I lived for four months after returning from L.A. Rome is the historic, ancient city, thousands of years old, completely the opposite of the city I had come from. Metaphorically, Los Angeles was the fabric that represented what is horizontal and flat and in Rome I discovered the concept of the multilayer, flaky pastry city.  A city that been built on a superimposition of cultures, of histories and memories. In Rome, I focussed on a neighbourhood, a quartieri, which I regularly walked through and I began to work with the concept of memory, but not a memory of the city, but rather one that is lain on the concept of ruin, of excavation, of what is destroyed and also what is recovered from that ruin, which in the end proves diffuse. That was how Construir Cuidades began to be articulated.

T.P: When we talk about a city, we inevitably refer to architecture. How does your work relate to architectural aspects?

E.P: Architecture is an important reference point in my work, but architectural aspects always come within that contextual framework and that complex entity – the city. I have gradually come to move from territory, in my stage in Los Angeles, to the city; in my stage in Rome , and to architectural aspects to the stage in Paris.

When I was living in Paris, the habitability of the attic seriously attracted my attention and it there where I take the nature of architecture up again in my work. The function architecture performs is to inhabit spaces and the function of sculpture is to produce spaces for thought; then in that sense, at a conceptual level, architecture and sculpture work in a very fluent dialogue.

T.P: Paris is a benchmark city in contemporary thought which refers us to a plethora of names ranging from Walter Benjamin or Guy Debord’s psychogeographical guide. What is there of that city in your work?

E.P: In Paris I took a great interest in the contrasts of architecture, from the habitability of the attic to that stage-like nature where the façade looking out onto the main street is immaculate, whereas if you go round the back, the party wall is falling to pieces. Based on my fascination for that contrast, I did a series of works in which I convert each neighbourhood in Paris into a rooftop; I turn them upside down, moreover, and the chimneys become support posts. In the inner parts of these works there is a complex juxtaposition of staircase platforms which remind us of Piranesi’s impossible spaces with never-ending stairs or Gaston Bachelard’s text on La poética del espacio (The Poetry of Space) where he talks precisely about the attic and the power of the staircase that never we never seem to climb down, rather always up, as a metaphor of life itself.

T.P: In Geografías Interiores y Cuerpos expandidos Inner Geographies and Expanded Bodes) (2005) this would be the first time you address the concept of cartography applied to the human silhouette. How did that idea arise?

E.P: It was a consequence of the work done in Paris because the scale became limited and resulted in the individual as a landscape. I spread and went from cities to landscapes. This led me to understand the body in itself as a landscape to which I apply cartographic measures, with their contour lines, their elevation marks. Going from the flat to three dimensions is an exercise that enthrals me, the action of encoding, bodies in this case, has led me to now want to do so with faces that do have an identity.

T.P: On the other hand, as well as the autobiographical aspect in your work, the domestic concept also has a significant presence in your work, as we can see in your recent exhibition Prótesis domésticas (Domestic Prostheses). How do you contemplate the domestic aspect in your work?

E.P: In this sense, I continued a research project which went from the individual to the home and domestic aspects, which, in turn, I related to prosthetic aspects and with the fact of understanding the city as a sick body on which there are growths and which at a particular time it is necessary to surgically remove and correct using orthotics and prostheses.  These concepts, the correction or replacement of something amputated interest me deeply. Because I understand that the organicist view of the city understands a body with organs. Then, establishing a parallelism between the language of orthopaedics and urban language and within an environment with domestic aspects, the home, the house and, specifically in this exhibition, what I am showing are absolutely recognisable, everyday items of furniture – a table, a cot, a shelf, a stool, etc., which I deform by fitting them with urban prostheses, a metaphor of how the object has had certain functions amputated which are replaced by growing elements. The limit of the shelf, for example, is becoming faded because a city is hanging down. Here, other research processes are apparent, relating the contemporary city to those, anaesthetic, surgical, tumour processes.

T.P: But why does everything refer to a sick city?

E.P: Because the city is, in some way, sick; it is an organ which is continually undergoing surgery, acupuncture and new corrections and prostheses are being produced, elements which don’t quite work.

The question of sickness has to do with the damage we are doing to the city, with social awareness that we are not protecting the cities and secondary effects are occurring (ozone layer, environmental pollution). All that makes a city sick, it becomes grey and its pulse lowers; then in some way Prótesis domésticas reflected on this.

T.P: And in this exhibition entitled Derivas de ciudad, cartografías imposibles (City Driftings, Impossible Cartographies), what are you telling us?

E.P: The tale of cartography, of the city’s driftings. I aim to reflect and make the spectator reflect on how we live the city and what image we have of it, of the environment, of the space in which we move. That idea is not what appears on a map – a map is nothing more than a coded series of data drawn up by specialists; but there are many kinds of maps and I am interested in making the spectator see that in the end, the image one holds is a subjective, mental construction that is built based on our own experience. This becomes clearer in the piece we are presenting (Patronando Madrid – Patterning Madrid) – I like to talk about it in the first person plural, because although it started within me, the work has been undertaken by one hundred individuals. I am interested in that rhizome produced, that collective construction. Collective but, at the same, individual because they are individualised biographies which come to total seven hundred layers which are the seven hundred routes reflected in the project. In the end, the resulting fabric is a piece of felt, that material whose structure is not Cartesian but rather a rhizome, of which Delauze talked and where every possibility may occur, where the directions depend on other things and not on some axes or a previously structured thing. I have tried to reflect that rhizome fabric in the installation through those seven hundred driftings that I have been given and that I interpret in some way based on some data.

In this piece I am constructing a kind of fabric formed by 700 layers that make up the seven hundred routes that are reflected. The route works with space in a three-dimensional way, but at the same time it is a diagrammatic fabric based on patterns as maps of driftings and flows, a mapping of one hundred people’s lived city.