An experimental platform-project for analyzing mountains.
1.
Triglav, 2864m
Triglav is a project about the homonymous mountain in Slovenia. The work is divided into four videos showing the mountains four cardinal points (south, east, north and west) and archive images related to the iconography of Triglav. The objective is to show the mountain as a real entity, and as a symbolic element.
Like other mountains in the world (Fuji, Ararat) Triglav has a symbolic value for the Slovenians, as evidenced by the national coat of arms. As a result of this use, it is possible to find iconography of the mountain throughout Slovenia.
Due to the political references that this project could have, in the work recorded personally, the objective was to create neutral representations that show Triglav as it is physically: a mountain mainly constituted of limestone (from carbonates coming from the Upper Triassic and Liassic platforms) that belongs to the Julian Alps, geologically part of the Southern Alps, which geologists consider to be a part of the Dinaric Alps, while geographically they belong to the Southern limestone Alps.
Four vídeos in VHS (the regular video format used in Slovenia when it became independent in 1991) of 2 hours and 3 minutes each (a full E120 VHS).
South
East
North
West
2.
Ararat / Ağri Daği, 5137m
The objective of the Ararat / Ağri Daği [Armenian / Turkish] project is to travel across the countries situated around Mount Ararat creating series of photographic works and a collection of memorabilia focused on showing the mountain as a real, symbolic and iconic element.
Not only is the symbolic value of the Mountain for the Christian and Islamic religions remarkable, so is its use as the icon of Armenia (although the mountain is in Turkey). As the result of this use, it is possible to find iconography of the mountain all around Armenia and in the Armenian diaspora communities. It is one of the few examples of this nature in the world and can be compared with the representation of the Mountain Fuji in Japan.
Because of the political complexity of this project, the aim is to create neutral portrayals of the mountain using points of view that allows the public to question the political issues. In this sense, besides of showing the icon and symbol, the project shows the Ararat as it is physically: a volcano formed from lava flows and ejections of pyroclastic materials.
Ararat 360º, stop-motion road-trip
39°55'26.5"N 44°12'33.3"E
Views of Mount Ararat / Ağri Daği
View from Turkey
View from Armenia
View from Iran
3.
Transfăgărășan, 2034m
With its 151 kilometers of curves, the Drumul Național 7C road is perhaps the most emblematic of Romania. It was built between 1970 and 1974 during the mandate of Nicolae Ceauşescu, in response to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Thus, it was conceived as a strategic military route, connecting the historic regions of Transylvania (in the north) and Wallachia (in the south) as it passed through the higher sections of the southern Carpathians. The road was built mainly by armed forces, with a high financial and human cost, assuming an aggressive intervention in the natural landscape. It could be said that this road is considered a symbol that refers to a recent historical period that has been key in the current identity configuration of the country.
In the exhibition, the Transfăgărășan is used as a means/way of approaching a place and a territory. The photographs shown are vectors where the different aspects involved in the act of displacement converge: our personal experience, the road as an object and its relationship with the landscape through which it passes.
We are interested in exploring the limits within the rectangular two-dimensionality implicit in the photographic medium. And if we understand that sculpture has to do with space, the experience of going through and traversing a place by mapping it, then it would also have to do with sculpture. In this way, we have redirected our gaze to this curvy site as if we were trying to solve a complex sculptural equation by moving through it. We let ourselves be carried away by the suggestive forms that constitute this very peculiar landscape and then gather all these elements in a group of photographs with which we can combine our contained spatial perception through the formal reductionism that is typical of the photographic medium.
Project made in cooperation with Amaia Molinet.
The images that result from the recording of our experience of traveling (space exploration) present opportunities for accidental encounter or coincidence, confirming the importance of this combination of vision and movement as essential to make these fortuitous events occur that we record in photographs. In them, the predominance of the presence of the road is, of course, inevitable. However, in addition to this presence, and underpinning its importance for the genre of driving performances, the road is also the narrative thread of our project.
We are not only interested in the route, but also in the experience, and transfer it immersively to the exhibition format from the possibility of connection with the environment that the photographic medium offers us. Being inside a car, looking outside and observing, parking, getting off and photographing, are acts limited to the environment and are themselves means of relating to the surroundings, presenting similarities to the ways in which being behind the camera as photographers can distance ourselves from what is in front of the camera.
The result of this work process is a selection of photographic prints, which, while representing the physical volume of space, also guide us towards a new mental and emotional terrain
Therefore, we understand that the road is established as a device that intervenes, through its own rules, in the relationship between the driver / artist and his surroundings; both fix or limit immediate interaction or engagement with the surroundings. In a sense, we are "strangers" who move away from our environment through the action of speed and the photographic device through which we see the landscape pass.
Cervantes Institute of Bucharest, 2020
