OTHER LAND

This research has the aim to explore the experience of the journey and transitions to other spaces.
Specifically, as the starting point, I am very interested in exploring the experience of migration, as a journey to other territories in order to establish new relations between the own internal and the new external space. Moreover I want to research how to re-create a new common territory of relationships, interactions and intersections by the encounter with the other. I would like to use the Foucaltian concept of heterotopias, moving as a boat that crosses an heterogeneous space; a compound of different fragments of identities and cultures, in form of an archipelago of islands in a dynamic interaction. The space of the boat and the state of flowing provokes in the subject a process of errancy, a process of liberation of a fixed root – digging up roots -, when confronted to the uncertainty of the open space of the sea and the endless horizont.

“The notion of the rhizome maintains, therefore, the idea of rootedness but challenges that of a totalitarian root. Rhizomatic thought is the principle behind what I call the Poetics of Relation, in which each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other…The tale of errantry is the tale of relations. Going beyond the impositions of economic forces and cultural pressures, Relation rightfully opposes the totalitarism of any monolingual intent…The thinking of errantry conceives of totality but willingly renounces any claim to sum it up or to possess it.” (Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, chapter Errantry, Exile)

My motivation for this work is based my own experience of trajectories and itineraries in the last five years, when I began to travel constantly out of my country, leaving my home, family and couple. From the peripheries towards the centers of power in the north part of the world. This was for me the beginning of a process of questioning of my own identity, as well as the relations of territories in a global scenario. It was also the first time I asked myself about my idea of home and it was the first time that I explore my past, the beginning of my family.
During this period I discover that the origin of my family was very fragmented and uncertain. Migrants from Italy, Portugal, Spain, that travelled to South America and mixed with the natives, creating a mixed culture. All this, is constructed part from my memory and part from my imagination. After those considerations I understood that my origin and the origin of my family was the journey: the bag, the farewell party, a process of deterritorialization, quoting the conceptsof Gilles Deleuze. This is the point of departure towards a process of expanding and creating new territories and collectivities.

I want here to quote Gilles Deleuze in order to gives insight into the concept of deterritorialization and flow:

“Each passage of a flux is a deterritorialization, and each displaced limit, a decoding.” (Anti Oedipus. p. 232)
“Deterritorialization is the movement by which “one” leaves the territory. It is the operation of the line of flight…We could say that the earth, as deteriitorialized, is itself the strict correlate of D. To the point that D. can be called the creator of earth – of new land, a universe, not just a reterritorialization.”
(A Thousand plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari, p. 561)

The aim of the journey-diary is to recover a “lost” vision and re-construct a fragmented narrative, a phisycal and mental flow: a journey. A vision that is the result of a fragmentary and random itinerary through different territories and influences. I want to use the metaphor of the space of the “archipiélago”, seen as a “chaos-monde”, where multiple cultures and times relate. Begining in my past, the origin of my family, towards the present moment, my actual state of migrant.
For this purpose, I decided to take as a point of departure of the journey a photograph of my grandmother moving from her born place (Ayacucho) to the capital city (Lima), as the starting point of my narrative, the first exodus, the first deterritorialization. By all this I want to explore the experience of the journey which is very present in my past and present biography. My wish is to map this process of transitions, passages and the creation of new territories and relations.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMICAL CONTEXT

“A person is always a point of departure for the production of a flow, a point of destination for the reception of a flow, a flow of any kind; or, better yet, an interception of many flows…In other words, this is the fundamental action of a society: to code the flows and to treat as an enemy anyone who presents himself, in relation to society, as an uncodable flow.”
(Les course de Gilles Deleuze, http://www.webdeleuze.com)

“A conjunction of decoded and deterritorialized flows, this is at the basis of capitalism. Capitalism is constituted on the failure of all the pre-existent codes and social territorialities.”
(Les course de Gilles Deleuze, http://www.webdeleuze.com)

As a part of the process of research it was important for me to have a geopolitical frame that give me the possibility of a critical and political approach to my work and a new perspective. For that reason I made an interview to an especialist in economy,a teacher of the University of Amsterdam Giulgielmo Carchedi, with whom I made a video as part of the research. Here I draw some conclusions.
In the last decades, the transnational migrations between Latin America and the great centers of capital in the North hemisphere (EE.UU., Europe) has been growing in number and economic, political,social and cultural importance. Human mobility as conditioner of the social life is many times the rule more than the exception in many contexts in Latin American.
The transnational migratory flows reflect not only a form of more and more common life of an endless number of Latin American in the world, but also a political and economic factor of growing importance and preoccupation for national governments and international institutions, including transnational corporations that depend on the hand of cheap work of the migrant worker for sustenation of its economic project without having assume the costs of reproduction and formation that are loaded to the emitting country.
In addition of that, the migrants contribute to new processes of social, cultural and political transformation as much in places of origin (disarticulation of the family) like in the destiny places where they are inserted in new translocals and transnational contexts creating spaces of political negotiation, cultural and economic. A phenomenon of global and deterritorialized cultures.
In the context of translocal and transnational migration, spatial mobility does not take place in a political emptiness. Any spatial displacement, does not matter if for economic or political reasons, it is structured and mediated by power relations.
This vision is important for my research, because I include myself in a collective process of diaspora, namely the young generation in my country Peru, because of the lack of oportunities for development. The other important aspect drew from this reflection is the realization of my new social satus as "migrant" with temporary residence permit and with certain right restrictions. These new political status makes me belong to a new "comunity" of temporal imigrants.

INDETERMINATE NARRATIVE

itineraries to the void / a journey to unfamiliar territories

In order to reconstruct this narrative I discover the potentiality of making use of indeterminate narrative structures, that can articulated all this heterogeneous fragments.
I am interested in the character’s experience of the unexpected during the path, the route, by surpassing obstacles, conflicts, crossing borders, having temporal intense encounters. In the course of the journey things happen by random and coincidence, while the character is searching for something different, a kind of goal.

This is a narrative structure that has a direct reference to the Odyssey, written by Homer, where the main male character (Ulysses) make a journey towards a personal goal, but in the course he get lost, let by indeterminate forces and unexpected encounters.
In this stage I want to use the reference of three film directors that make use of this narrative structure in some of their films: Theo Angelopolus in the Ulysses’ Gaze and Eternity and a day, Jim Jarmush in Death Man and Strangers Than Paradise and the film Le Mempris, by Jean Luc Godard.

I would like here to quote an interview with Jim Jarmush in the bonus track of the film Broken Flowers:
“…I like to make scenes where you have no idea what is gonna happen next, is not a formula. It is something that echoes trough my other films, because is such a valuable part of life to me which is randomness, just chance and coincidence. You know, you can plan things as much as you want, but the most beatiful deep things in our life are not racional, very usually emotional, or the connections with other people and those things are vey misterous. You see the universe moving in a way we don’t control.”
The mood of those films goes between sad, funny, absurd and serious moments. It “it is a sad and beatifull world, where love is always an impasse”, quoting Roberto Benini in Down by Law.

Further more, in the film Death Man, the main character decided to make a trip to the West searching for a person, for a better place, a better work, but without having success. In the words of Jim Jarmush, “is the story about a man who takes a journey which carries him further from anything familiar. It is a mythical journey, in which the character goes beyond the western civilization towards wild areas and have an encounter with another culture, an indian, who became the guide towards the end of his life, towards the realm of the death. From the very beginning the end of the film is revealed in a conversation that the character has in the train. This fact reveals again the “impotence” of the character in deciding the action, thus this passivity, this character can be considered a tragic hero. The main quality of the character is that of leaving the “known land” (home) and becoming a foreigner, an errant, a vagabond during the journey. But the odissey is towards himself, as an internal journey , full of mysteries and symbols. A journey as a way of purification, a passage towards the death.
This itinerant narrative structure underlines the flow through spaces, as well as the flow of time. The spaces that are crossed are physical and mental at the same time. Both internal and external journey were unfolded simultaneously.

The flow of time is another very important aspect present in this kind of narrative structure, where different times can coexist. Here I would like to make a reference on Theo Angelopoulos work, quoting a fragment of the documentary “A journey through time “, about the last single shot (plan secuence) of the film “Eternity and a day”.

“Cinema has the priviledge of being able to show past, present and future all at once. At the same time we see the end of a party celebrating the birth of a girl, and the journey of a man towards the death. Birth, death, past, future, present. The people in the scene belong to the past, but it is also a projection of the future. He is in the past and the present, but also projects himself in the future.
Any intervention, any cut could interrupt the flow of time, the impresión that time passes. I think that shots have a breath. And if you try to intervene, you disrupt their breathing.”

The framing of the flow of time is a crucial aspect of this kind of narrative, where the character “saunters” or “strolls” through different spaces. Taking the aspect of the flow of time into account, the musicality (sound) background become very important. In my view the music or sound, as another layer, gives the texture to this flow, underlining its course.

In the film Ulysses’ Gaze, by Theo Angelopoulos, the character decided as well to make a personal journey in order to recover the three wheels of the first film that was shot in Greece in 1905; a film of weavers in Avdella, a greek village.
This was the beginig of his journey through different cities (Sofia-Novi Iskar-Cerven Brag-Nikopol) crossing different borders in the region of the Balkans and Greece, and being the witness of social and political circumstances of those contexts.
Here the character aims to recover the first film, as a symbol of recovering the first gaze, the lost glance, a lost inoscence. During this odissey he has different encounters with womans, which he left in order to go on with his goal, the goal of the journey. Here is another important aspect of this kind of narrative structure, namely the temporary encounters with the other and the difficulty of the love or couple relationships. ¿Is the permanent state of deterritorialization the impossibility of creating relationship, temporary roots? ¿How to recreate a new sense of relation by this circumstances? In my view this is a question that arises from this characters and narrative structure.

This conflict is portrayed in the film “Le Mepris” of Jean Luc Godard.
Le mepris is based on the story of a scriptwriter that is contracted to re-write the script of the film the odissey. For this purpose he travels with her couple to the south of italy. The story unfolds in the landscape of the sea, where he must leave her couple alone while he is concentrated in his own enterprise. Like in the Odyssey of Homer, the woman is left behind, while the man is concentrated in his own enterprise. But here the relationship goes to an end, towards the feeling of despise.
Couple and relationship is a conflict point by this unsettled state of errancy.

The last topic I want to mention, involved in this kind of narrative is the question of the return, the question of “home”. The character in the state of errancy tries to return to Itaca, to reconnect to his orgin or departure point. I want to quote here an extract of the poetry Ithaca, by Kavafis.
Ithaca
As you set out for Ithaca
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
(…)
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
(…)

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
K.Kavafis

This feeling of nostalgia is very present in the characters of Theo Angelopolus, who portrays the sense of a lost home, a lost inoscence. Specially in the film “the suspended step of the storn” and “Landscape in fog” (Topio stin omichli), which I would like to quote.

“Our home.., we crossed the border and we still are here. ¿How many frontiers should we cross in order to arrive home? ¿You know what is the frontier? If I take a step... I am in other place or die. “

“Dear father: We write you, because we have decided to go to see you. We never have seen you before and we missed you.¿How could we wait so long? We travel as leafs blew by the wind. ¡What a strange world! Bags, cold stations, gestures and words that we don’t understand. And the night that scares us. But we are happy. Going forward.”

THE REAL IN FICTION

The fabulation is not an impersonal myth, but it is not a personal fiction either. It is a word in act, a word act by which the personage does not stop to cross the border that would separate its private subject of the public policy and produces he himself collective statements.
(p.293, The image-time, Gilles Deleuze, 1985,Paidós)

In contrast to the idea of a diary that is supposed to testify or documentate facts, i think in the possibility of surpassing a pure authobiographical or documental work, and exploring the ambiguous borders where a fiction begin.
For these reasons, I am interested in constructing a character that gives me the possibility of fabulation. I have decided to create two different “I”, the narrator (author) and “I” , the character.
By this operation I want to make use of a mobil point of view, in which the narrator can goes from his first person to the first person of the character. It is a movement from the inside of the character to the outside view of the narrador (author). Like in the painting “Las Meninas” from Velásquez, the author is located inside the frame. I am very inetersted in the movement between in/out the frame, in/out the stage, on/off, stage/backstage.
By this strategy a “ fiction” is created, but at the same time, is revealed as a construction, in other words, between the staged and the unrehearsed reality.
All this with the aim to map the complex movement and position of the character, sometimes inside the scene and sometimos as an spectator.
Or using Brecht terms, as an artistic strategy which gives me the possibilty of distancing, while I want to create the tension between the fictional charachter and the real context and circumstances that surrounds him. Furthermore I wouldl like to achieve a documentary dimension of a fictional construction, to investigate the fiction/non fiction borderline.

BORDERS CROSSING :
WEAVING NEW TERRITORIES & CARTOGRAPHIES
Towards a re-conceptualization of the idea of border/boundaries and territory

Everything happens at the boundary between things and propositions. Paradox appears as a dismissal of depth, a limit. Humor is the art of the surface, which is opposed to the old irony, the art of depths and hights. 
(p.11, The Logic of senses, Gilles Deleuze)

The aim of the journey-diary is to map a process of deterritorialization and territorialization.That means how I reconstitute or re-establish my personal subjective territory, in relation to a new different external space (cities and society).
On the other hand how I re-imagine my collective spirit of belonging, how I reconstitute "home".
My exploration tries to construct a "bridge" between different realities, on which i can cross and transit freely. By the experience of "free trasit", coming, crossing and returning several times the geographical borders appear in my personal experience a new "mobil" condition where home became an imaginary trans-local physical place that I reconstruct constantly. I would like to use the image of a "spider" that is constantly "weaving" her territory in different natural locations. The unfolding of lines of relations and lines of thought with the aim of creating a territory.
So, I am exploring how to pass from "nostalghia", the feeling of "desarraigo", fractured geographies, "unhomely", towards the reconstruction of a new sense of territory and to weave a new home and new hybrid imaginaries.
In this experience i would like to explore this territory of relation and imagination, which stimulates old and new objects of desire, which exorcise personal and collective memories of my country of origin and creates new future links and relationships in the new land: a see of networks.
I think it is the vital and imaginative experience of "transitions" the moving force of this operation. The subject (myself) interacts with the new public space and enviroment, and in the course of this process I have produced new personal subjective and collective statements. ("I"and "We")
Reterritorialization, opposed to policies of marginalization, is in my view related to smooth, connective and porous enviroments ("spongysness"), that are open to permeate new identities and promotes processes of cultural hybridization, transitions and interchange. Using the metaphor of the spider, a territory where new "spider fabrics" or ties can be attached. In this research I would like to explore the spatiality of this process, that take place in the body ( skin) and space (nature and urban enviroments).
The first aspect to be explored is the body as the tool of territorialization.The second aspect is the spatial frame work where de-and territorialization operates as a key aspect in order to understand this process.
The third aspect is devoted to re-drawings of "home", "the fictional and internal return to Itaca". How to reconstruct an individual and collective identity during the process of de- and re-territorialisation? How I used the past (memories) to make sense or re-imagine the present territory ?
Re-drawing home, is a part devoted to the exploration of the personal internal journey , where collective memories and questions during the process of dispora appears. Questions such as, What is home ? Do I want to return? Where I come? To which community i belong? How is life here ?
All this questions were explored by the use of drawings, that portrait and internal "journey", parallel to the external journey.

BODY ACTIONS
Transitions: Body in trance

What is more deep, is the skin (Paul Valéry)

To be sensuous,real,is to be an object of the senses, a sensuous object, and therefore to have object outside oneself which are subject to the operation of "one's senses". 
 There is said that sensuousness is the human perception through which alone objects are given to us. Objects can only be given to man in so far as they "affect" to him. Human sensuousness is affectibility. Human perception as sensuouness is receptive and passive. It receives what it is given, and it is depend on and needs this quality of being given. As a sensuous being he is an affixed, passive and suffering being. 
(p.12, Eros and Civilization Herbert Marcuse)

An important part of the journey diary is a photographic documentation of body actions, positions and itineraries through different public spaces within the "new" cities (Rotterdam and Amsterdam) and body actions in my private space.
In my view this actions aimed to re-establish temporary a territory by the use of the body, to reconstitute a sense of place by means of body actions, rituals and itineraries.
The moving body is used as a tool to reconstruct the sense of belonging and as a physical placement in space.
In my view, the body of the migrant articulates its transformating potential by the fact to cross physicaly geographic, political, social and cultural borders. The movement and the displacement of a body within this field of power, that is borderland, or the transnational zone, has the potential to des-estabilize the notions of `town, culture, territory' and to transform and appropiate it into a new territory.
Here I wouldlike to make a link to theatrical space: the stage can also be regarded as a field of powers, where the actor embodies the human force with all its complexities and is confronted to other kind of forces: the collectivity, the state, the family, nature . By this interaction of forces and relationship in the time and space is creted the dramatic structure. Entering on stage is an act of crossing a border towards "another space" that can be regarded as a ritual space (ficitonal space), where his/her identity is re-established and a new territory of relationships is created. This new identity or territory are autonomus. I mean, they are not linked or making a references (or representation) to something exterior, on the contrary, the power of the theatrical "madness" consist of the potencial of the reality on the stage. The reality of the stage as an space, the reality of the body and action.
Returning to the body, that body - the body disciplined and classified, belonged to the disciplinated regime of state, nation (imposing rules and restrictions) can be re-trained in order to become competent in dominion of other forms and styles. In that sense any corporal practice that aims to explore different “corporalities”, have a transformating potential, that opens the possibility to reform the same body and that way to change the place in that the body located us. In other words, the body put into action, has the power to deconstruct the objectived body. Here again, I see migration and performance as two strategies to put our corporality in movement and to re-organize our position in space.
Forme me it was not only important the position of the body, but its tactil relation to space.
One discovery during the work, was the importance of the body contact and skin, as a tool to reconquer and explore the new space. Touching different skins (woman body, fruits, trees skin,meshes, scars, body fluids) and touching with my body the earth surfaces was a medium to reestablish a sense of place organicly and emotionally.
In the whole photographic documentation it is present a search for natural or organic surfaces (earth,water, grass, trees) and porous material with wich i look for a contact. In opposite to "gloosy" or flat surfaces, I was searching for folded and spongy, porous structures that allow me the feeling of interchange, penetration, inmersion and re-appropiation with the possibility of "connecting" and the sense of proximity, against the feeling of alienation, dis-placement and distance.
The public spaces of both cities (Amsterdam and Rotterdam) where places where I found difficulties to re-establish a sense of place. I found exceptional spaces with connectivity, spongysness and inmersive possibilities. Places or events where I could find a "fold" to hide,to penetrate or rest, like an animal refuge or nest, an animal that cuts out a territory and build up a house. Establishing a home, as primordial animal act of re-creating a territory. Here I want to quite Gilles deleuze and Felix Guattari ,
"Nature is like art because it conjugates in all ways these two living elements: Home and Universe, Heimlich and Unheimlich, territory and deterritorialization, finite melodic compounds and the large infinite plane of composition, the small and the big refrain" (Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?, p.176)
Lots of the new public spaces where "open" (like Rotterdam Schwourgplein) or transparent, like shopping malls, in order to provide control and cleaning. City gardens, like the Westerparc in Amsterdam and Museumplein in Rotterdam were some exceptions. The search for a permeable and penetrable spaces was one of my goals.
From other point of view the sound was also very important aspect in terms of inmersion, as my body look for special kind of sounds to re-territorialise. The sound space was very important. Again a certain "porous" and "vibrating" sound structures as the moving of leaves, criket- , frog- , bird-sound or flows of water or even ondulated voices allow me to experience this re-placement, a form of inmersive enviroment with connective structures. Because of such connectivity with my senses wakes up my imagination and memory. In those places of strong connection I could experience this internal movement, i call it "resonance". As an musical instrument the body resonates internaly, an efect of the total conectivity and afections.
As a metaphor for my artistic work I would like to use the metaphor of to "shake" reality, to make it vibrate as a tremor, to put in trance.
I want to make an analogy between migration and performance, migrant and actor, where the migratory movement seen as a metaphor of crossing disciplinary and identity borders in order to enter in a dialogue can be compared with the movement and the space of the performance.
To see performance as an art of crossing the boundaries between the real and the unreal, by introducing the realities of the body. In my view a performance manages to do away with the distance between reality and representation. The current barrier barrier between reality and the representation of reality is lifted momentarily.
At the end of the first stage of exploration I recognize some main concepts for the work with the body:

ritual body
sensitive body
disciplinated body
physical body
instinctual body
collective Body
metamorphosis and transitions on stage

The second parto f the exploration, with the collaboration of a dancer and an actress, will be developed not more by the use of photography, but as a performance. For that purpose i decided to explored in this second stage the main ideas of :

The body in framed and unframed experiences.
The actor as a migrant, the migrant body and the body as a territory.

SPACE AND SPATIALITY : OTHER LAND
Spatial concepts and models

Events are like crystals, they become and grow only out of the edges, or on the edge. (…) By sliding, one passes from one side to the other side, since the other side is nothing, but the opposite direction. (…) It is not therefore a question of the adventures of Alice, but of Alice’s adventure: her climb to the surface, her disavowal of false depth and her discovery that everything happens on the border. (p.12, The Logic of senses, Gilles Deleuze)

At this part of the research I began to explore space models that establish a new politics with bordes and - between the framing and unframing - creating a fluxus and transitions between the inside and outside, the public and the private, the natural and the architectural, internal and external, in summary: a new political relation.
I discover that this “in between” or border area has the power of transforming relationships. My exploration directed towards this interstice or intermediate area and moment: the in between moment as the "blue hour" between the day and night, the watch and dream, between two stable points. This undefined and transit territory became the main interest. For that reasons I began to explore this "passage states" with the use spatial models. I began to develope different spatial configurations where I found this phenomenon of transtitions and interchange.
Parallel to the exploration with the body, In the first part of this work, I began to research with space models, related to concept of transition, passages and territory. I began to develope architectural models of paper and drawings. By this process I began to discover new posibilities for spatial configurations, developing two main concepts. The next to articles were the result after the third part of the exploration, the performance, OTHER LAND, which I developed with the cillaboration of a dancer, an actress and a musician. After this experience I had more clear some territorial (global) relationships that this reflect on.

Spatial conclusions :
From block spaces to other lands

"...I live in a paradise, that is also a prison." (Rafael Freyre) 
"...the true paradises are the lost paradises." (Antonio Araujo) 
" The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images... The spectacle is the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life." 
(Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle)  

In my view, new forms of individual control are appearing again in the global scenario. The model of the prison and panopticum with a clear definition of perimetric borders and intentions become already archaic. The new spatial prototype appear now more ambiguous in form and intention, namely as mixed spatial configuration that combines: inmaterial "soft " borders with a seductive systems of mediatic delirium. But enclosure and surveillance remains in the backstage of the production of such spaces for the display of power, authority and the regulation of time. (border regime, city walls, state borders, custom borders, surveillence cameras, tax borders, citizenship, immigration restrictions, electronic sensors, etc). Beyond its physical appearance the psychological, emotional and symbolic effects of the border -as an imaginary line - is infinitletly more powerful. The consolidation of the economical blocks (EUROblock, DOLLARblock, YENblock) in the global market - that aims in expanding its own logic as an imperialistic space model - have contributed in the establishment of such concept of space, influencing directly every scale of spatial configuration. The world space is shaped by the market, that produces nowadays spaces in form of "economic artificial enclaves". Such spatial configurations can be regarded as "synthetic paradises" of capital concentration in form of inaccesible oasis (like VIP-places) that became irresistible in the imagination of the "excluded" of the blocks (non-european, non-american) who are constantly seduced by this "image", becoming obsessed in their dream of exodus towards the "paradise". From the hell to the paradise, from the rural to the metropolitan, from the underdeveloped countries to the market centers in the nothern world, from the periphery to the center, the block space "appears" as a magnet for attraction, as an image of promised land for the realization of all possible individual dreams. Such logic is based on the creation of artificial spaces for the hedonistic consume, delirium and seduction, that in itself hides the seeds of social control for the subject (the consumer) and capital concentration. The consumer enter in a cycle of production (work) and consumption of objects of desire (a rolex, a bmw, a prada skirt, etc.) . All the technology of the space aims and serve to optimize and facilitate this transactions and experiemce this life style.  The global city become the most symbolic and emblematic example of this spatial celebration; the city that connect the subject to the global, the city as an enterprise, as a spectacle, a shopping mall, a generic space for the accumulation of all possibles forms and shapes of consume. Each brand become and ideology and each shop a new temple for each indivudual desire. Block Spaces are materialized in the global cities; spaces in form of social condensers, incubators of social desires for the synthetic materializations of private dreams and for the glorification of the metropolitan ideal and life style. This shaping of artificial dreams, artificial experiences of freedom and pleasure for the subjec - managed by the market with the use of media - is the technology of such space. Spectacle, spa, swimingpools, theaters, highrise, leisure, shopping-malls, exotic restaurants, strip-tease, casino, gardening, design, tourism and entertainment grow in the fertile soil of such space, devoted for the "free time" of the worker. The market control such spaces where the subject can free himself but at the same time contributing to the consume. The space of the block, as an artificial generic space in alliance with the media, produces artificial realities, a phantom reality. The block space can be defined as a strip for the accumulation of synthetic Idylls, walled oasis under a generic grid. Surveillance and market are the two sides of a coin.  This can be regarded as a from of control and repression of the subject - the alienated spectator- against their own production of reality, of space for the eros, space for their own fantasies and freedoms, as well as spaces for the liberation of the pathos. This other space for personal and collective freedom and interchange is left in the voids and gaps of the system, as a waste land, an other land.  Other Land is opposed to Block spaces. They unfold forces of de-concentration, avoiding monumentalization and homogenization of space and fixation of signs. Other lands are connected to the differentiate topography, the social, the ecological enviroment, are porous systems of interchange: a set of relations located in the borders, in the perimeters of defined dominant identities and states, that tend to grow, colonize and expand their own logic. Like an "in between area" of spaces, promoting coexistence, contact zones, protecting diversity, micro-economies and multiple logics of relations. Other land is a non defined area, an interstice, based on crossed border relations, spatial promiscuity. A sea space in form of a mixed archipielago with the potential for non mediated encounters and reconections to the individual and collective body: a carnaval, an non-mediated, non-artificial reconnection to the whole body: individual and social. The idea of border is replaced by the concept of "skin", as a surface of relations for transborders dynamics. A not homogene transparent surface, on the contrary, a diversity of porosity, translucency and differentiate grades of opacity. The border see as a space, a new centrality protecting non-defined, not colonized, wild areas: terrain vague, voids or in between spaces for unstable, unprogrammatic, unexpected activities, between the urban space and the architectural object, between the external landscape and internal gardens. Other Land is the backstage of the power.

From transactional spaces to trans lands

The world space is nowadays configured by transactional spaces. The speed of the flows of goods and money transactions and the flows of digital information and population shape the panorama of this century as well as redefine the space. The flow of mediatic imagery by means of the technology aims of expanding markets and gaining consumers, more than connecting localities and weaving new forms of relations and interchanges. The relation to the enviroment, as an explotative relation, as well as to the worker, as an alienated worker, are the basis for the market economy, as a system in sate of permanet expansion, transformation and colonization of new monetary territories.  Such force and flows, have as the main vector for this movement the aim of an economic transactions, most in forms of unequal exchanges and money speculation. The logic of the market as a totalitarian logic of this century makes use of the technology of speed of flows (the ship, the boat, the internet, the airplane, staircases, the elevator, cars) in order to optimize the surplus. All this technology at the service of the mobility for economical transactions.  Trance Land is a spatial concept that explores other potentials in the flow.  The state of flowing, transitions and errancy has the potential of expanding the territory of relations, beyond monetary transactions. Trance land is a space for liberation. Being free temporary from a fixed root, gives the possibility of exploring new territories and relations. Such state has the potential of transformation for the subject, who experiences a process of de- and reterritorialization.  The journey through other spaces for temporary periods of time, driven by aspirations, love, material need or practical necessity, creates a new complex geography where people weave new relations between new territories and unfamiliar cultures, with the potential of creating new spatial and social configurations for encounters, to recreate the sense of home in the modern capitalistic cities, as places of congestion, anxiety and paranoia for the individual, places for the "unhomely" modern condition. The landscape becomes the sea, the space the boat or the bag and the actor a traveler, who is in the state of passage. "Passing through", and "crossing borders and frontiers" through paths and highways, like a contemporary Ulysses, a warrior trying to return home (Le Retour d'Ulysse)  To be a la dérive (drifting), quoting Guy Debord as a technique of passage through varied ambiences and microclimates. It involves playfull behaviour and awarness of psychigeographical (urban) effects, by letting oneself be drawn randomly by the attractions of the terrain, the social morphology and the encounters they find there. Through surfaces, terrains for walking, wandering, sliding: reconnected to the earth and sea, to the primar state of nomadim.  While being lost, disoriented and errant a threshold between different cultures and spaces is created. By this, the " lost traveler " in "strange" places has the possibility of reconsidering his vision of origin and home with great moments of nostalghia . Home become the final goal: the return to Itaca. The body in trance, terra in trance, other land and loss place are the different angles of the same crystal ship. 

RE-DRAWINGS OF HOME
bag-home : Visions

After the whole main research was done, as one of the main conclusions, I arrived to the concept of returning “home”, as the last part of the journey. Under this intention was hidden the wish of re-drawing a personal territory of belonging.
At thismoment I was trying to linking the act of drawing to the one of thinking and to a specific territory: drawing a line of thoughts and drawing a territory.
The act of drawing, including the wrinting, seen as moving and thinking, as a knowledge and experience tool. Those connecting dots allow me to create an image of the world, and to reestablished a territory. Drawing may allow me to rethink it or imagine it in different ways.  Drawing is to take note, to sketch, to plan, to make pirouettes; drawing is finally to make a move while traveling.
I also discover in the technic of the drawing, that allow me a continuous and partly unconscious creative process. Ideas, feelings or impressions can materilized with a very fast and economic technic. Concepts and visions can be turned into diagrams and forms. Moreover after the act of repeting the same drawing again and again, it brought me into a process of destilation and concentration of ideas. I also saw the action of the drawing itself as a performative act, a movement in space, a drawing of a line.
The pen or pencil, was the tool to leave the trace of an action and moment in time and space., as the moving body crossing the space.
The drawing and re-drawing of same motives several times, as an obsession, since I am abroad my country was one of the first phenomenons that inspire me to begin this work. In one moment I was in possesion of thousands of drawings that i made every day, automaticly. All this was a very unconscious process, because i never thought in making an art project with all this materials. Was after having accumulate so much material, that I decided to create a Project, namely the journediary.
In my view, the drawing is an operation of re- and deterritorialization, as they contantly recreate imaginative interior territories. By the drawing I have the experience of appropiation and reconstruction of a territory. Most of my drawings make a reference to emotional states, ideas, memories, fantasies and obsessions. All they recreate a kind of artistic universe, an space where my identity and vision is constatly re-established. In one hand they can be seen as a subjective impression, but in otherhand they trie to make links to collective statement. The acumulation of all this signs in paper tries to reconstitute a body or recreate a body with all this fragments. The body, as an individual and collective body, an attempt to re-draw home, to unite all the fragment of a dispersed body.
The journey diary, as well, becomes a container of different types of memories and fantasies, a collector of heterogeneous forms whic can have a sense only in relation with all the parts.
The obsessions of drawing architectural spaces, body positions, animals, plants, abstarct compositions, chairs, landscapes were in my view trie outs to shape an identity, to create an internal territory connected to a collective spirit: home.
In the distance I a have memories of my country and collective global signs which make it recognizable in relation to other cultures.
The challenge for me is not to search home (Peru) in the past, but to recreate the traces, and ruinous vestiges imaginary in the present and future, as a coming country.
So i consider that my tries to return to home are always failing, as home is a place you can't return, but only as recreating it in the present.
Despite all the material lackness, precariousness, historical defeat, emotinal negativism and political uncertainity rooted in the peruvian society - where most of the young generation migrates abroad - , my position is to confront all this lackness with imagination, is like making a miracle or exorcising the curses.
The idea of the journey can be conceived as an itinerary of knowledgment and pain.
There is a contradiction between two feelings. On the one hand the search for adventures, new experiencies and knowledgment and on other the nostalghia and love from home and family. This both feelings creates the space of an internal conflict. As in the novel the Odissey, by Homer, tha character has the will to return to Itaca. The state of errancy on a ship in the marine landscape becomes the metaphorical place for the odissey, the place of being lost. And the desire of exploring the other worlds became stronger than his love for Penelope, his attachment to home.
I see the interminable trip of Odiseo as a human itinerary, but not only for searching the Itaca-mother country-home, but the human Itaca-natural-mystical-origin, Itaca that finally is not found, because does not exist or is not possible to return ?
The odissey as a serch in other territories and than to return, as an interminable passage.

Bibliography

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OTHER LAND

jueves, 14 de junio de 2007

a performance by the artists :

miércoles, 13 de junio de 2007

martes, 12 de junio de 2007

A PIECE OF OTHER LAND

lunes, 11 de junio de 2007

FROM TRANSACTIONAL SPACES TO TRANCE LAND

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