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Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Banff [CAN] APR-MAY 2018 |
Investigué el proceso de gestación de la 'Futura Red Ferroviaria Argentina ' que se inició en 1855. Hice mis propias versiones de ferrocarriles. Esos caminos reconstruidos funcionan como metáforas que evocan el momento en que mi abuelo robó parte de la estructura de una vía férrea para hacer un anillo de bodas para mi abuela. Con esta leyenda familiar como base conceptual y visual, he explorado la relación entre el origen de los ferrocarriles y la dependencia impuesta por el Imperio británico al Río de la Plata en el siglo XIX, así como las expectativas contemporáneas sobre materiales con herencia trans-cultural y su adaptación al cuerpo físico. |
I have investigated the gestation process of the Future Argentina Railway Network that was initiated in 1855. I have made my own versions of railroads. Reconstructed roads work as metaphors that evoke the moment when my grandfather stole part of the structure of a railroad to make a wedding ring for my grandmother. With this family legend as a conceptual and visual basis, I have explored the relationship between the origin of railroads and the dependence imposed by the British Empire on the Rio de la Plata in the 19th century –as well as the contemporary expectations on materials with transcultural heritage and their adaptation to the physical body. I have intended to deal with the history and traces of these structures. In fact, I consider that a material (that composes a structure) extracted from the ground by digging has already had a long journey among people, even though it may be regarded as new. These structures go back and forth through humans, countries, and cultures. I focus on such structures because they have a symbolic relationship with the entropic condition of human culture. They are used to transport people or to be transported to people. Since originally railroads marked the beginning of a cultural transformation of an area –as it happened in the nineteenth century in Argentina– I am seduced by the possibility of imagining tracings that could potentially be in the water, the sky, or people’s bodies. I think that finding material equivalences for temporal displacements is always complicated by the historical perspective. Thus, I concentrate on diachronic movements, and on how these specific structures participate in the process over seemingly incommensurable periods of time. |