‘You are here’ H.I.J.O.S and the DNA of Performance.

I must admit I found something triggering in reading this text. Something about it took me back to working as part of Forensic Architecture whose methodology and work I really don’t believe in, but I think this is different. So, this is a self-indulgent reading response where I’m separating the methodologies for myself. While both ‘You are here’ and Forensic Architecture link the scientific and the performative there are important methodological differences.

The first obvious difference is that the work is made, done, conceived by survivors for the survivors in ‘You are here’ where Forensic Architecture, to quote Emily Watlington in Art in America, have made ‘a career exploiting peoples’ trauma. Often, they show the research years after the cases have been closed, and it isn’t always clear who benefits from the display.’

Forensic Architecture take fragmented information and create closed circlets that are doomed to inaccuracy, as ‘one “fact” in their work is a guess and another is known, but often, both items are treated the same in the final model’. So, they build models in their own words ‘to fill in the gaps’, whereas the works in ‘You are here’ levels the gaps, or more highlights the gaps. Forensic Architecture leave no space for poetics.  Whereas ‘You are here’ is open-ended, inviting viewers to be active and engaged, and motivate themselves, not be told what to think.

Technology also becomes the main narrative for Forensic Architecture as they employ humanist uses of seeing, measuring, and imaging. These technologies often over stimulate the viewer removing their agency to think with.

‘You are here’ is engaged with a social moment of how people organise, heal, and confront trauma for themselves.

Ref: https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/forensic-architecture-fake-news-1234661013/

Tortuous Routes – Four walks through Villa Grimaldi

Tortuous Routes – Four walks through Villa Grimaldi, by Diana Taylor, documents the sight of Villa Grimaldi, Chile, used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners during the governance of Augusto Pinochet. Taylor returns four times over many years, subjectively documenting the changes in the sight. How the sight is designed, who it is designed for, survivors or tourists, as well as Taylor’s interactions with different methods of narration, her observations of embodied experience through tour’s guided by survivors, as well as later headphones and audio recordings.  Brings up many political issues, how time affected what people needed from the sight to what our responsibilities as witnesses to this history might be and how museums, and documents can support remembering and action.

I loved how slow this text was. I loved how it was written. I felt like I was taken on a journey. I loved how it was personal but not too personal.