___________________________________________________________
video installation / 1 channel / 11 min / 2008
With the collaboration of: Andriana Meyer, Dino Andrada and the children of COSE
“Five dots” examines the relationship between exercising punishment based on control over the body of the convicted subject and his resistance to power by virtue of his capacity to produce symbols. After a photography workshop in the reformatory for juveniles in Mendoza, Argentina, in which the authors of the present project intervened as mediators, the inmates were given the opportunity to draw a self-referential record based on their own symbolism and imaginary world.
[English] [Spanish] Statement below
video stills
Documentation
[English]
It is in heterotopias, or counter-spaces, preeminently jails and reformatories, where metaphors, codes and maginary worlds that implode meaning flow freely. This implosion takes place at different semantic levels but it is expressed with the body and on the body.
In the penitentiary for juveniles of Mendoza, Argentina, five dots tattooed between the thumb and forefinger mean that when the hand is shut tight a mortal ambush is being laid: “four of them are on our side, the fifth one is army or police.” When marginal, discontinuous, disqualified, non-legitimized wisdom is involved, it facilitates the arousal of submerged wisdom: Foucault contends that “the knowledge that the dominant culture does not need for itself is the only one that is not assimilated by power, that is, it is the only one that shall not be assimilated as a weapon of repression.”
“Five dots” examines the relationship between exercising punishment based on control over the body of the convicted subject and his resistance to power by virtue of his capacity to produce symbols. After a photography workshop in the reformatory for juveniles in Mendoza, Argentina, in which the authors of the present project intervened as mediators, the inmates were given the opportunity to draw a self-referential record based on their own symbolism and imaginary world—songs, phrases picked up in the street, invented by them, dreamed about, altered by remembrance. Finally, they were requested to recite, in front of the camera, excerpts of the “punishment technology” studies conducted by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
The references to Bentham and Foucault constitute a strategy to reconfigure the extreme self-critical categories of the Western world to relocate them in context and challenge each other.
Ethnography: It brings together a series of recording elements used by the penitentiary (medical files, X-rays, etc). At the same time, it provides a “social portrait” of this reformatory and its inmates as drawn by the media. “Five Dots” clashes with the criminal records by providing portraits drawn up by the inmates themselves.
[Spanish]
Este es un proyecto que surgió luego de que dimos un taller de fotografía y video en la cárcel para menores en Mendoza, Argentina, Al final del cual propusimos a los chicos un ejercicio en el que hicieran un video, que los retrate, a partir de canciones aprendidas en la calle, inventadas por ellos, soñadas, alteradas por el recuerdo. Una vez hecho el ejercicio, les propuse que leyeran frente a la cámara fragmentos de las “tecnologías del castigo”, glosadas por Foucault en “Vigilar y Castigar”:
En espacios heterotópicos por excelencia, cárceles y reformatorios, discurren con fluidez metáforas, códigos disparadores de sentido. Esta implosión tiene lugar en diferentes planos semánticos pero casi siempre se manifiesta con el cuerpo y sobre el cuerpo. Cinco Puntos analiza la relación entre el ejercicio del castigo basado en el control sobre el cuerpo del sujeto penalizado y su resistencia frente al poder en virtud de su capacidad de producción simbólica.
El título de este proyecto se refiere al tatuaje que la mayoría de los chicos llevan en una de sus manos cinco puntos tatuados entre los dedos indice y pulgar de tal forma que cuando se cierran en un puño uno de los puntos desaparece. Esta es una metáfora visual en la que subyace un deseo: Cada vez que uno de los puntos desaparece, cuatro de los suyos ha matado a un policia.
La puesta en juego de saberes marginales, discontinuos, descalificados, no legitimados, posibilita la insurrección de saberes sumergidos: Foucault postula que “el saber que la cultura dominante no necesita para sí es el único que no es asimilado por el poder, es decir el único que no va a ser asimilado como arma de represión”.
Etnográfia: En el material etnográfico recopilamos una serie de elementos de registro utilizados por la institución carcelaria (prontuarios, expedientes médicos, radiografías, etc). Al mismo tiempo da cuenta del “retrato social” que los medios hacen de este reformatorio y sus internos. Cinco puntos contradice al prontuario con los retratos que los reclusos hicieron de sí mismos.
