Universes in Universe / Columna
de Arena / Nr. 64
URL: http://universes-in-universe.de/columna/col64/index.htm
José Roca:
Del Sueño al Hambre, and Back Again
There is a dialectical relationship between urban decay and plans to build an
ideal society which is articulated by means of a grandiose and grandiloquent
urban project, and which subsequently is built as a sign of its (future) crisis.
Autoflagelación, Supervivencia, Insubordinación forms
part of a project, different versions of which have been presented. For this
project, Garaicoa managed to locate the architects who had designed buildings,
which had subsequently been abandoned, and proposed that they make a survey
of their present state with a view to collectively developing new projects on
the foundations of the ruins. While it is possible to state that the case of
Havana was present in the birth of this project, in Autoflagelación,
Supervivencia, Insubordinación Garaicoa refrains from referring
directly to the Cuban situation in favour of a more universal debate. The crisis
of the modern project and the progressive arguments that give it sustenance
– the eradication of poverty, hunger, social inequality, the achievement
of political autonomy, etc. – is a phenomenon which is as prevalent in
the Third World as it is in the First. Furthermore, the recent demonstrations
against the oppression implicit in the spread of trans-national capital (Seattle,
Melbourne, Washington, Prague and Genoa) or anti-war demonstrations show that
the dark side of utopia, whether capitalist or socialist, is violence, and that
the latter is not the sole preserve of underdeveloped countries. The buildings
in Autoflagelación..., created not so much from reality but
from an inner desire, point towards the establishment of a potential ideal community.
Garaicoa makes a building out of knives, symbolizing the painful process of
building a modern megalopolis; the city built from daily bread shows that the
stability of such a project is only possible thanks to the sacrifice of its
inhabitants. As in the favela, shantytown, bidonville, illegal settlement or
whatever other name might be given to the dystopia of the modern project, self-flagellation
and precarious survival breed insubordination. We live off adversity, but for
how long?
[see the complete version in Spanish in Columna 64]
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nr. 64 (Spanish)
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Text and Columna de Arena: José
Roca
Presentation in Internet: Universes
in Universe - Worlds of Art, Gerhard Haupt & Pat Binder