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video installation / 1 channel / 30 min 6 sec / 2004
Marcelino Botin Award
With the collaboration of: Andriana Meyer, Laura Valdivieso & Federico Calle Archive images: Alberto “Paco” Leiva Music: Andrés Ceccarelli
Villa Potrerillos, a small town in Mendoza, in the Andes of Argentina, was flooded in 6 million cubic meters (6m m3) of water after construction of a huge hydropower project by the local government. Its inhabitants were evicted and then relocated to a housing complex built with a modern approach to life and complying with the standards set forth by the Provincial Housing Institute (Instituto Provincial de la Vivienda—IPV).
[English] [Spanish] Statement below
Photography / 2004 / printed on aluminum / 90 x 400 cm
video stills
[English]
Villa Potrerillos, a small town in Mendoza, in the Andes of Argentina, was flooded in 6 million cubic meters (6m m3) of water after construction of a huge hydropower project by the local government. Its inhabitants were evicted and then relocated to a housing complex built with a modern approach to life and complying with the standards set forth by the Provincial Housing Institute (Instituto Provincial de la Vivienda—IPV). 6 mm3-The Dark Room refers, on the basis of a contextual approach, to global conflicts involving forced displacements as a result of the privatization of water resources. This project examines issues such as collective memory, rebuilding subjectivity, and the conceptual scaffolding raised by the powers-that-be regarding progress and individuals.
6 mm3-The Dark Room attempts to develop a dynamic rapport of participation and interaction with the inhabitants of the displaced community, who become the narrators and commentators of their own stories. The work sets out in two directions, breaking down the boundaries between ethnographic documents and art, reality and representation. The video gathers together testimonies from the displaced community, dismantling the conceptual scaffolding that has been raised by the powers-that-be regarding progress and subverting the formula that justifies and legitimizes the outrageous claim that “the welfare and progress of the collectivity prevails over those of individuals.” The contextual notion of participation is introduced by a video that the displaced inhabitants themselves had shot using a modest video camera since 1998.
The off voice of the narrator tells that the old photographer Pedro Vidart had not benefited from any compensation and died in absolute poverty during the relocation; his physical disappearance is being admitted. The voice coming from the photographer’s dark room is apparently fictitious: the narrative element that crosses over the boundaries of documentary evidence and becomes representation. Nevertheless, this is one of the keys to interpreting the work: the collective memory of a community can be reassembled even in the absence of an individual. We propose this non-fictitious narrator as one of the ways to rebuild the subjectivity that is being reclaimed by contemporary thought. The video’s final sequence records the performance of the town’s children, a poetic act: their houses are being delivered, given, to the water.
The photography articulates the iconography of the process: the people of the town were asked to point out articles of value that they had brought from their homes. The power of these modest objects to elicit memories and the precariousness of an imaginary world that despite everything has been able to withst and time are remarkable.The paraphernalia of power—which boils an entire community down to a few statistics, files, legal briefs and stamps—is dismantled and placed as an element interfering with the portraits of the people. The unadorned image of the highway that led to the town, now under the water of the lake formed by the dam, illustrates Lacan’s notion of trauma
[Spanish]
La Villa Potrerillos, asentamiento humano situado en la Cordillera de Los Andes en Mendoza, Argentina, quedó inundada bajo 6 millones de metros cúbicos (6MM3) de agua tras la construcción del mega proyecto hidroeléctrico ejecutado por el gobierno local. Sus habitantes fueron desplazados a un complejo habitacional proyectado desde la perspectiva de la vida moderna y el progreso.
6MM3 – el cuarto oscuro refiere, desde un enfoque contextual, a conflictos globales relativos a los desplazamientos forzados como consecuencia de los procesos de privatización del agua. Este proyecto analiza problemáticas como la memoria colectiva, la reconstrucción de la subjetividad y contradice el andamiaje conceptual levantado por el poder en torno al progreso, que justifica y legitima el desarraigo con la fórmula de que “el bienestar y progreso de la colectividad están por encima de los individuos”.
En este trabajo ensayamos una dinámica de participación e interacción con los habitantes de la comunidad desplazada, quienes se convierten en narradores y comentaristas de sus historias. Ellos habían registrado el proceso desde 1998 hasta el 2004 con una modesta cámara de video. Este material fue crucial en la edición del documental.
La voz en off del narrador, en primera persona, da cuenta del anciano fotógrafo Pedro Vidart quien no recibió indemnización alguna por su casa y murió en la indigencia durante el proceso de relocalización; el narrador comienza por admitir su propia muerte. La voz que llega desde el cuarto oscuro del fotógrafo es el elemento narrativo que cruza los límites del documento y deviene representación. La memoria colectiva de una comunidad reconstruye, in absentia, un sujeto, una historia personal.