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video installation / 3 channel / 27 min / 2003
Venice Biennale 2003
Curated by: Irma Arestizabal / With the collaboration of: Andriana Meyer, Jorge Luis Serrano, Roy Sigenza, Francisco Estrella, Music: Luis Paniagua
Sad. Co.-The Blind Castle sails through the collective memory of the Empire. This inner voyage begins in the ruins of the U.S. transnational firm, the South American Development Company (SADCO), in the mining town of Portovelo, Ecuador.
[English] [Spanish] Statement below
Video Stills
Photography / 2003 / UVI impression / aluminum / 100 x 220 cm
Ethnography / 2003 / plaques / earth, /gold dust / cd cases
[English]
SAD CO – THE BLIND CASTLE sails through the collective memory of the Empire. This inner voyage begins in the ruins of the U.S. transnational firm, the South American Development Company (SADCO), in the mining town of Portovelo, Ecuador.
SAD CO – THE BLIND CASTLE brings back to memory the asymmetrical relationships emerging from the Portovelo Enclave, aimed at retrieving stories and memories that have been suppressed. By oral transmission, it brings together what was left behind by this imperial settlement, its linguistic, imaginary, and cultural remains. It examines neo-colonial relationships and the resistance strategies of those who were conquered: One of these strategies: the miners used to “steal” infinitesimal amounts of gold from the company by rubbing the mud of the mines onto their bodies.
The video profiles four survivors of the Empire’s presence, old miners of the SAD CO.: Delfin Calle (1907), Efrain Quezada (1916), Alfonso Lalangui (1916), and Miguel Alvarado (1919), transforming them into living documents. The core act of this transmission is a performance (central channel).
A subjective camera offers the viewer a drifting shot of the remains of SAD CO. The texture of the recording format mediates the experience of perceiving memory, in what Deleuze has referred to as the “objectification of a subjective experience” capturing experience at the very instant it becomes a visual product (right channel). Among the testimonies of oral tradition, there is a subjective temporality: the miners tell how they used to soak their bodies in the mud of the mines to take with them tiny amounts of gold so as to compensate for the exploitation of which they were the victims. The video records the action and the performance experience is enshrined as a space where the living memory of the present and the ghostly memory of the past encounter each other (left channel).
[Spanish]
SAD CO – THE BLIND CASTLE analiza las relaciones neo coloniales, navega en la memoria colectiva del imperio. Esta travesía comienza en las ruinas que dejó la transnacional estadounidense, South American Development Company, S.A.D.C.O. en el pueblo minero de Portovelo (Ecuador). Los viejos mineros cuentan que para resarcirse de la explotación de la que eran objeto “robaban” a la compañía pequeñas cantidades de oro, untando en sus cuerpos el lodo de las minas que contenía partículas del mineral.
En el video se recogen los testimonios de los viejos mineros de la Sad. Co.: Delfín Calle (1907); Efraín Quezada (1916); Alfonso Lalangui (1916) y Miguel Alvarado (1919)— y los presenta como documentos vivos. Sospecho que en adelante no tendremos más oportunidades de escuchar su versión.
SAD CO – THE BLIND CASTLE reaviva las relaciones asimétricas surgidas en el enclave-Portovelo, con el propósito de recuperar historias y memorias suprimidas. Recoge, por medio de la transmisión oral, los rastros de esa implantación en lo lingüístico, simbólico y cultural. Analiza las relaciones neo-coloniales y las estrategias de resistencia de los vencidos.
Una cámara subjetiva propone al espectador una deriva por los remanentes de la SAD CO con este procedimiento, recurrente en mi trabajo, trato de incluir al espectador en el recorrido y le planteo una experiencia cuasi cinética.
Este trabajo lo desarrollamos en colaboración con el poeta portovelece Roy Siguenza, quien hizo el acopio etnográfico. De ese maerial recuperamos fotografías que fueron hechas por uno de los gerentes de la SAD CO (John Tweedy). las cuales fueron intervenidas y re-contextualizadas para la puesta en escena de la obra.