I have been working on a set of urban transects this weekend, attempting to bring the collages I had developed over Wintersession into the realm of scale. (I have yet to post these images, but hope to have them up before this week ends…) Since I produced these collaged sections (which was quite a while ago) I have been asking myself where do I take them next? This medium has definitely spoken to me, I have enjoyed working with it so much, in part because it is a way for me to introduce iconic images onto a drawing, and in a way, communicate the heavy context this space has with my past.
One of the troubles I have had with depicting this district, is that my visual relationship with Miramar is based so much more on my family’s history with it. It’s not about the new school building, nor the bar where we go to get a drink, but about the stories of my father taking his new car out when he was sixteen, about the dog shit on the sidewalk, of my two aunts sneaking out in miniskirts. I feel as if my life memories have been defined so much more by other people’s than mine, and in a way the spaces I am inhabiting are the results of stories and grainy photographs from an era that I will never belong to.
This is something I have understood for a while, and come to terms with, because I believe there is a genuine beauty in the fact that they cannot completely share these experiences with me, just as much as I will never be able to completely share my life with my children. Instead, the links I can understand out of these stories, these romantic memories, is a world in which the quietest moments become the strongest marks. The church will always be bathed in the same light, the trees will always move with the same wind, the cracks in the sidewalk become wider, but rarely disappear.
I have been trying to understand how I can use these memories, these shared connections into a catalogue of characteristics of this space, how I can begin to categorize the lushness, this perfume that seems to be mixed with the sweat of every generation past and pour it into a new space.
These are the questions I have been asking myself as I have been working o m drawings. Every time I am looking at Trastalleres, there is this one figure that always catches my attention although I have tried to take it out of my mind. It is a dry-dock that I do not believe is used anymore, either way, I’m sure there are no plans to use it and possibly eliminate it. But as I was observing it I kept on thinking about Olga’s suggestion on making the space a transformable one, a space that, instead of being subdivided into categories, one space that can take on different meanings at different times. I felt as if the dry-dock was an interesting comparison, the way it accepts a vessel and closed its gates, drains the water and becomes an empty bathtub of activity. The different states it takes on, wet, dry, empty, full, I believe there is a strong energy in the space, especially because of the irony of its relative versatility compared to its monstrous size.
I’m a bit nervous abut the amount f time I have, but I would like to do an animation for the March 10th review. I want to do a short story that articulates how this space can become a vessel for any inserted activity and context. It’s a bit funny because I feel as if the convention center, located just a few thousand feet away could have been that (and technically is so.) But perhaps this is what I have been thinking of, a type of urban convention center, a reprogrammable space that is subject to whatever fills it. It’s a genuine shame that the new Center can never come close to that, every time I look at that building I feel a genuine frustration because it reflects our issue of identity so harshly… Not only do we have to isolate (what should be such a dynamic building) from any contact with the urban population, but also, what has bee put there is a box with a thin wave of glass symbolizing its Caribbean location, the graphics are what define it surroundings; what is inside is never given the opportunity to define it’s exterior image.
There is an incredible power to Latin American Architecture, particularly around the time of the fifties and sixties, in which apart from the ultimate form, the materials, even the program, the objects created were ultimately public spaces. They were skeletons, concrete carcasses that had had outside textures, nooks and holes that could not be controlled nor programmed. These monster buildings could be tackled by a street vendor looking for a place to park for the day, or a vagabond in search for some shade, they were iconic, yet vulnerable.
