Belén Zahera, (January 2013)
Belén Zahera, Arrangement #1 - 'And it turned out there was not such a point', 2012
A Submersible: Could you talk a little about the significance of showing documentation of your work online for you?
Belén Zahera: I suppose I see it as some sort of forming or shaping of the work, everything becomes documentation when you put it up on a website or a catalogue or whatever, and so it affects the meaning of the work as well.
What interests me about the act of documenting the work is that it always involves making a choice. You have to select or decide what to show, what not to show and how to show it. Such decisions change the perception of the work and to an extent they transform it. Documentation is always a mediation and so it may allow other readings of the work. To a certain degree I like the idea of playing around with these possibilities on platforms such as websites or blogs.
In my case, for instance, I realise the significance of documentation when it comes to photographing installations. Either you take the whole picture of it - and so you can’t see the details - or you take closer shots and you can’t see the whole. Either way you mean and offer something different. Even though the work should remain the same it won’t. In this respect I really like the idea of being able to manipulate the meaning of a work through its own distribution. Then, the website becomes also part of the work. Though, in relation to websites this can be counterproductive. I think some of my work is already cryptic and its documentation does not help. Also, I don't really define or explain the works on the website. I don’t have a newsletter page either because I simply don’t see the point. If I found websites essential for self-promotion I would have a different one. Rather, it is much more appealing to me to treat it as another layer of the work itself.
It is interesting to think about the channels by which the work is distributed or even how what you do changes depending on this. Obviously the website is one of those channels, but so are the writings, the collaborative projects, publications, talks or anything else I may do in relation to art. It’s important to me that part of my practice consists of thinking about how to show, shape and constantly rewrite the work I have already done or the topics I’m researching.
All of those media or channels are spaces, there's not such a thing as something that exists only virtually or in a gallery or whatever, all of them are instances of a thought or an idea or a way of making so I don't really like to create such a boundary between those things even though all of them behave differently. And that's what you have to negotiate and that's also the work of the artist I suppose, at least to be aware of those types of things.
A S: I notice that you also have a blog directly linked from your website, asterisms.tumblr.com. Could you tell me more about that?
B Z: I suppose that is another way of having like a parallel practice. In a way the blog works like a tool, like an instrument to have a track of my process or things that I'm interested in. And I suppose that is not a work but shapes the work at the end of the day. So I consider that important in a way at least to show it on the website. This template I work with in Tumblr, it allows me to work with something that looks like a map. So if you go on my blog you can see all my posts like a pattern, you have a whole view of everything at the same time. Then the relationships between things are more noticeable in a way even though they are individual posts. With the blog the relationship for me between everything is clear because I've chosen it. But it's not as clear for everyone else as that person is projecting their way of seeing things. And that’s what interests me also in my physical work. That's why I like to map things because somehow you create certain relationships but they are not fixed. And it's true in a way you have control by having different sections but at the same time the way you document the work involves giving things and those things can be interpreted very differently. So you also play around with loosening of concepts or images which I'm interested in.
This all comes from the type of practice that I have that is closely related to how things change their meaning depending on how you relate them, or how you choose them and to how you present them.
In a way everything's related but everything kind of adopts various forms. I might make an installation talking about certain objects or showing certain objects or a certain relationship between them and then I could take one of those things and give a talk about it and then that would relate to something else, so in a way I like my practice to be more like a constellation of things and practices. Something that doesn't follow a straight path but kind of expands. And that’s why I don't really know what I mean when I say a "final product" because there isn't such thing at the end of the day. I think I read once that Proust was the nightmare of his editors because he wouldn’t stop rewriting and making corrections on the margins of the galley proofs of his books. And so, they had to remake the galleys over and over. I’m not sure whether this is true but I quite like this idea of something that remains unfinished even when it is considered as final.
My approach is very material and that's why I said previously that for me there is not such a difference between virtual things and physical things. For me everything has a sort of materiality that you explore through the different media you work with. Something that interests me in my installations is whether one can overcome the history or the added meaning of things by contextualising them differently. And that's what we always do on the internet. If you see blogs of whatever you just reblog things, you just take images from the internet and you make them grow and you create another discourse through them. And that is something that we are all very aware of because of the time we are living in. But it wasn't that clear before. I kind of like when you manage to suspend identities of objects or words. Because when you take something away from its context and place it somewhere else you are altering the meaning somehow and you are also suspending the meaning that the thing used to have.
So I like that position, I like this flexibility of things I talked to you about, this idea of excess which is probably my conceptual ground right now. It is as though everything had hidden parts and meaning and history. Through art and writing you kind of actualise aspects that were not clear before of those objects, images or even texts so yeh I'm interested in that because it feels as though everything's very transformable. Everything can be moved and nothing remains fixed in a context or at least it shouldn't be.
I think the very interesting thing about the internet right now is that traditionally you could have an archive where every object would have a place in history and a place where you could find it again. However on the internet that is not true anymore because everything is changing all the time. Everything is reblogged, recontextualised and used by other people under different titles, meanings, discourses...so you can't really trace back to the original point of departure of all those things. If you would take it in a very radical way you would have an archive that's lost its historical objects because the history is rewritten all the time by other people in a way. So that's the amazing thing and I suppose, I'm not very focussed on the internet, my work right now doesn't work with the internet as such but I think it inherits this kind of way of relating. I don't take everyday objects as something fixed or as something that has a function that is already determined. Instead I do the the opposite, to open other kind of discourses and ideas and relationships. And I suppose that's something very specific of our time in a way. And it's also the way we remember things.
There was a very interesting article that was published in the ‘Science’ magazine last year, a group of scientists did a study of how Google had affected our way of remembering and they came up with the conclusion that when people know how to access information they would forget about the information and they would remember only the way to access it. So that reveals that there is a path we can remember but the thing can be forgotten. And that is something that interests me a lot as well because...I don't know, it gives you a completely different understanding of history or archeology or different kinds of disciplines that work with the the layering of meaning through time. To an extent the time has become timeless and things don't have a fixed identity any more and that's probably what interests me in the way of making art.
A S: Last time we spoke you introduced a distinction you make between the collection and the arrangement. Would you be able to talk about that some more?
B Z: Well I must say that this is like a distinction that I made in response to actively thinking about the work, but it has already changed slightly and it will change again probably. It is a way to classify or create different levels within my work itself. Right now, on my website, the name "collection" has been changed for that of “surfaces” and “curves” and I have kept a third level which is the “arrangements”. I suppose this becomes a sort of methodology. Each group of works is organised under one of those categories depending on the degree of intervention or complexity. So, for example, “surfaces” contains things that I find and are inspiring to me somehow. Then, “curves” contains works that are more elaborated. They are gestures, things that I find and intervene in. I see both classifications as incorporating objects that even though they may become works in their own right, offer me the possibility of using them in different contexts, in different installations and in different sets of relationships. They are a kind of ever growing collection of things that I may bring to another level, which is what I call “arrangements”. The arrangements are mainly installations, in which the relationship among the elements respond to previous research. They are contexts, events more than messages. I’m interested in making art whose main goal is to propose a situation rather than to communicate something. And this is why I might allow myself to use the same object or gesture in different arrangements or installations, to open up the readings of such a thing. I suppose the arrangements work at the level of the symbolic montage. They show mysterious relationships which are not easily accessible. But I quite like the fact of proposing a sort of impossible explanation or definition within the work.
A S: Could you talk about your work distance (2010)?
Belén Zahera, Distance, 2010
B Z: Yeh that was a gesture. I mean it could actually be shown as a work alone and it would probably make sense. This is the one that actually shows the meaning of a gesture in itself. I was doing something else and I was filming the screen of my laptop and then because the camera was automatic it couldn't focus, probably because the screen was very white and it couldn't really get the darkness of the letters. So it was going in and out of focus all the time and I thought that was a really nice thing so I filmed that. And then I just kind of pointed it at the work and obviously the camera managed to focus straight away.
So it was a kind of symbolic gesture. Also in the very beginning I was very interested in the concept of distance, probably because I was very interested in the relationship between the real and the virtual. So I suppose the screen being blurred or being focussed at different times is metaphorically a really nice thing. This act of pointing...actually, it's been two years in between but it relates also to my piece in the degree show which was based on the fact of pointing at something and how...the point never exists...you create the point just by the fact of pointing at something. So that was probably the idea underpinning my last work, but it was also involved in this previous work in a way because when you break the distance between the camera and the screen then the camera manages to focus and then everything becomes clear. So in a very kind of intuitive way there was something already there that I developed two years later in a more structured way. So yeh, that's why for me that constitutes a gesture now...because it's part of a process, I see all of what I do as part of a process of thinking or you know...it's always on the move.
A S: So looking around your website and your blog, I saw you've got a post on Camus. Now I don't know much about Camus but I gather there's this idea that when we see the world we create these concepts with which to think it and in a sense they can distance us from the world. And then when we look at the world in a more “pure” way it seems strange and alien to us, like when you're seeing it as it actually is you can't understand it, because some people would say life is inherently meaningless. But we try to put meaning to it and that's why life's absurd perhaps. So I was bearing that in mind when I was looking at your work, for instance Every Any and None, and that sort of resonated with that for me. Because when you have a jigsaw you have an image that is allowing you to make sense of these physical little pieces which have their own relationship with each other as they only go together in one way. But then as soon as you take the image away it's almost like looking reality in the eye and then you can't put it together. So I just wondered if there was that kind of resonance for you at all?
Belén Zahera; Every, Any, None; 50 cm x 38 cm; White monochrome jigsaw puzzle 500 pieces; 2011
B Z: Yeh I think you're right and that's why I'm probably not the first one who has made a blank jigsaw puzzle anyway. In relation to Camus, his conclusion in “The myth of Sisyphus” is that Sisyphus, even condemned to pull a rock up a mountain forever, is actually happy only at the moment in which the rock falls down from the top and he has to descend again. For Camus, this is the moment of consciousness, this pause is the moment of thinking. I’m very interested in this idea of finitude, on which I’m currently working. But going back to the jigsaw puzzle, I think for me it wasn't very interesting as an artwork in itself but more as an instrument to think about how we know things. And it was also interesting because as you said, a jigsaw always follows a pattern and we are never aware of the pattern because it's the image that allows us to do it. And so once you remove the image if you are to actually do the jigsaw puzzle you have to understand the pattern. This puts everything upside down to an extent. I've never done that jigsaw puzzle but I like thinking about doing it in a way whereby my goal would never be to actually do it - as I know what I’m going to get, the blank it makes - but to understand or reflect on the process of doing it. This jigsaw shows that the interesting thing is to know how to do it, to know the system that is underpinning the whole game to the extent of transforming the game itself and its goal into a completely different thing, and that's probably the way I'm interested in knowledge construction/deconstruction.
And also there is something that is maybe a bit silly but it's interesting in this work as well: If you were to actually do the jigsaw puzzle you should start by doing the frame because the frame is the only part that has straight edges, so it's always easier to find those pieces and try to put them together. And that also gives you the idea of the restrictions of a system, there is always something, a structure, a mode of thinking or a certain approach to problem-solving that is very difficult to break. In other words, it’s difficult to think otherwise.
We only understand a system by deactivating it. And that is probably what the jigsaw puzzle attempts to do. It's like the opportunity of doing something that is nearly impossible and it's not going to give you a nice product - a nice picture - because there is nothing in it. However the process, this is to say, how you relate the pieces, how you understand the pattern is the work at the end of the day. So basically that work is not a work. It’s more an idea or a device for thinking. Trying to do it would end up in knowing something about jigsaws that you wouldn’t know by playing with a normal one. To me, this work is a process in itself, it reflects on the way we know or do not know things.
A S: I was again thinking along those lines when I was looking at some more of your works. You know the one with the video to grasp the remoteness the relationship between near and far that you've spoken about here, is that a similar sort of thing? About how the stuff that's right up close to you, you can be very detached from, but when you're thinking about something that's very abstract, very general you can be very immersed in that. So thinking of our lives in terms of physical distances isn't perhaps an accurate way to consider them...
Belén Zahera, To grasp the remoteness, 2010
B Z: Yeh I think there is a lot of that. That work is old as well, it’s from 2010. It relates also to the video "distance". I suppose at the time I was interested in it from the perspective of the systems of representation. And also it had an existential dimension obviously, for example the the fact of being able to fly to the farthest point of the world in 24 hours makes the world shrink. You know how technology has actually achieved this feeling of closeness which is kind of an illusion because things are very far away sometimes. So I was at the time interested in that kind of tension between what we understand as "near" or "far"... you know you and I are talking on Skype and we are very far away but we are in the same space somehow.
So I suppose there was a question about technology and how it affected the way we relate to the world somehow. This was an interest for sure at the time. It is still, although I have a different approach now. So when I made that video I was just looking at making a very simple gesture to show a relationship between things that can be understood as far or close depending on how you look at them.
At the time I was very interested in aeroplanes. I also used to record my landings probably because I was far away from home and I was travelling a lot. I don't know, I thought the aeroplane was a really interesting thing, probably after balloons it was the first technical instrument that allowed us to see the world from above. So that was fascinating, because of the distance you could actually see things differently. This is all very...it even seems like a romantic view of the internet maybe, and the problems of representation in a way. But it has kind of accompanied me through this time. So with that I kind of played around with randomness in a way because it was extremely difficult to actually shoot that film. It was really difficult to catch a plane crossing the mirror which was really small. It was like a lucky strike at the end of the day. But it was kind of nice, for a few seconds two things that are very far away and very different get completely connected, just because you make such a connection. So implicitly this work has a lot of starting points for what my work is now probably.
A S: So if we can talk about your installation, Arrangement #1 - 'And it turned out there was not such a point' at the Slade for you MA show. We sort of touched upon that already, you've spoken a bit about the indeterminacy of it all. So it would be really interesting to hear you talk about that...
Belén Zahera, Arrangement #1 - 'And it turned out there was not such a point', 2012
B Z: Well you can see from the images of the work, it was a proper gathering of things and that's why I talked to you about this idea of the collection because I think this work really shows that in a way. It had different levels. The arrangement was titled and it turned out there was not such a point which relates to what I was talking to you about before, this distance between a finger that points at a point that is never really there and how you create the point by pointing. So maybe that was a kind of beginning. Also there was this idea in the whole work about the relationship or the difference between defining and knowing. What it means to define something or to identify something and what it means to know it. This is something that probably underpins my work somehow, the idea of how you pick up knowledge about something or how you escape from that knowledge in order to create another meaning. So I think the work was like a kind of exploration of that. And it had a lot of layers so it's very difficult to explain it all now. But the point is that it was like something site specific and it contained previous works and others that I'd collected or made for this installation. The first part was a table with a slide projector and then there was this panel of return sheets from the library. So everything can be understood as individual works put together. So for example this slide that is projected is part of an ongoing work that I've called “slides” so far because I don't have better title. And they are basically images that I take from different fields like cinema or scientific images or books and on which I add a kind of sentence that works as a subtitle because it's placed in the bottom of the image. These subtitles work in relation to the original meaning of the picture but they also offer a contradictory reading of them. I think these slides develop the idea of the relationship between image, text and meaning. They re-contextualise and add meaning to something that was previously introduced in a completely different discourse.
So the one that appears in the first part of the installation which is projected from the table, it's from a film called La Jetée by Chris Marker. It's a science fiction film, this image is like a reference without reference really because it's taken from the film. And therefore if you haven't seen the film you don't understand why I've treated the image that way. But when the hands are pointing at something in the film there is this man who has come from the future and he's in the past now and he's showing a woman where he comes from. And that's something you know because he says that in the film, but in my installation you can only see the fingers pointing at something. I started from that context but I wrote a completely different thing, I wrote "look backwards" which is a sentence that refers to the past instead.
Then that sentence and that image is related to what I put on the table, because on the table you see different scientific images of telescopes, images of dark matter, the light spectrum and all things that you can actually see with the telescope and also the mirror of the telescope that is probably the main thing in an optical telescope that actually allows you to see further. So the sentence "look backwards" on the slide relates to the fact of science always looking forward, and to science fiction always imagining the idea of future. The fact of making telescopes always better and better, always with more resolution and always with a bigger mirror. So I played around with the images on the table as well because I put an image of a telescope mirror where a scientist is reflected so then you loose kind of track about what it means to look forward or backward because of the reflection.
So everything was related somehow. Also for example there was something kind of hidden because that slide was also projected on a sort of second wall. This wall wasn't painted white, it was painted with the colour that you see on my blog where I have the image, the average colour of the universe. And this is a kind of scientific image because there was this study that some people from NASA did a few years ago. They measured the light spectrum in order to create an average colour of the light projected by all the stars in the universe. And they came up with this colour which is nearly white. So what I did was to go to Leyland in order to get that colour in paint. Then I painted that second wall of my installation with that colour connecting the slide projection with the table and all the images of telescopes and light on it. And also this message of “looking backwards” related to the stars because obviously the stars emit light which gets to us later always so there was also this idea of looking forward and looking backwards, in terms of future and past and so including the dimension of time through the relationship between image and text...I'm talking about these things with you but this is something nobody probably realised for example because it wasn't referenced in the work. However I have a blog with that little image of the average colour of the universe and so I can now explain to you why that wall wasn't white.
The other part of the installation was this kind of floor that was lifted. I had the jigsaw puzzle but I put the jigsaw puzzle on graph paper. I put that there because obviously I wanted to highlight the relationship between the jigsaw puzzle and the existence of a pattern in it. And it was funny, I didn't do this on purpose but I took the graph paper and then put the puzzle near and I realised each piece of the puzzle was exactly 4 square centimetres so basically each piece perfectly fitted each square on the graph paper. So it played in my favour somehow. And then next to that was a bit of my research through different encyclopaedias. For instance the Penny Magazine which was a journal from the 19th century by an English society, called the Society for the Distribution of Useful Knowledge which was something that interested me a lot at the time. Basically it was a very utopian, modernist project about delivering knowledge to everyone. They used to focus a lot on articles about the importance of geography which for me means the importance of existentially knowing where we are and that was interesting in a way considering that I would like to think of things not placed in a fixed location.
And also because we talk about geography using systems of representation and I've always been interested in that. So I used also this dark globe that was actually made of blackboard and it's a replica of an object used during the 19th century in very rich schools. So children could actually draw with chalk on the globe in order to learn the countries etc. So I reproduced that object because obviously I couldn't afford to buy an original one. I suppose, within the whole work there was this idea of the impossibility of placing something without affecting it, or of defining something without changing its meaning somehow. So everything you see in the installation was kind of...it was arranged. Not in a naive way, I perfectly knew how I wanted everything put together. But at the same time I think it's not very tight in the sense that it doesn't give you only one reading but several depending on your previous knowledge, or the links that you make through the work as well. There was another slide as well that was projected on the opposite wall, it's a scientific image of the evidence of dark matter. Scientists can't see dark matter because it doesn't emit or reflect light, but it distorts light so if you look at the image you can see there is like a curve of light so that's how scientists know that there's a focus of dark matter.
So I put that “subtitle” that says "assert blindly" because at the end of the day science can be understood as a fictional discipline to an extent, I think, because you define things by making suppositions or hypotheses about things. This is probably the reason why I’m interested in science. It always works by setting a model, that is kind of previously made, in order to prove a hypothesis, then you can actually outline a theory that works on a specific level but that can be overcome as well somehow. From the view of art, I’m also interested in the role of scientific images, which are not always of that much use to scientists, as they also work with other types of data, but are indeed strange.
The way scientists research is by proposing a space of action so they already narrow the subject of study and they propose certain models and their investigations have actually to adapt to those models and so this process makes the whole scientific approach kind of fictional. To me that is interesting in relation to art because generally these kind of disciplines like history as well are supposed to be an objective knowledge of things.
But even though I use references from science, history, etc, I wouldn’t say my work attempts to revise or represent such disciplines. My approach is more related to knowledge construction in relation to language and action. How art may or may not actualise hidden or excessive aspects of reality and how this may produce, transform or affect reality itself.
Links:
belenzahera.net
asterisms.tumblr.com