CONVERSATION with MARCELA MORAGA

 For this exhibition Marcela Moraga will show Naufragio PC, four photographs from a series of ten featuring a small robot in different beaches along the Pacific coast. The robot, measuring 90 cm in height, made from computer parts, is distinctly positioned in each shot to project a sense of loss (perdida) or displacement (disequilibrium) as it appears to move among the rocks, sand, and shoreline.

            The photographic series was originally conceived for the exhibition “Arte y Catástrofe” (“Art and Catastrophe”) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Valdivia in December 2002, an exhibition that commemorated the historic earthquake and tidal wave that left most of the city in ruins in May 1960. For that exhibition the artist also created a large-scale version of a robot and installed it on the museum’s terrace facing the river Calle-Calle, which suffered the aftermath of the tidal wave as a result of its fluvial connection to the sea. In Moraga’s imaginary narrative, the robot, as humanoid substitute for the citizenry of Valdivia, found its way from the river after having suffered a shipwreck (naufragio).

            The digital prints will also be presented with Gateway, a digital animation (1 minute) that complements the photographs by reinforcing a sense of playfulness and whimsy, notable characteristics in the artist’s total body of work.

 Julia P. Herzberg: Marcela, why did you choose a robot as the subject of your performative photographic works for the exhibition “Art and Catastrophe"? (“Arte y Catastrofe”?)

 Marcela Moraga:  The curatorial line of “Art & Catastrophe” was directed at what occurred in Valdivia in 1960, when the earthquake and tidal wave destroyed the city. The event tied the works in the show to the concept of catastrophe. When I received the invitation to exhibit, I had already presented a work called Camada PC at Galería Animal in Santiago, which consisted of a cardboard box containing a PC monitor surrounded by seven mouses, simulating a domestic animal with its offspring. At the moment that I was preparing this work, I learned that there was a cemetery for computers in Santiago, where PCs were broken down and many of their components discarded. That knowledge brought me to the conclusion that there may be as many computers as television sets per household in Chile (and, to an ever greater extent, in the rest of the world). This discovery led me to visualize how the informatic and robotic worlds have installed themselves in our homes with all their paraphernalia and, consequentially, all of their disposable parts. I was, therefore, interested in what would occur with all this movement of components. For that reason, I built the first small robot out of fragments of discarded computer components (referring, at the same time, to the work of Nam June Paik, who constructed characters out of television sets, because of the vast quantity of them in the world and their influence on culture and the media).

            As I built the robot, I found myself, to a certain degree, developing a character, one that should have a life, a past. Then, by including the four photos of the small robot in the show’s catalog, I was also linking a story between the robot of the images and the robot installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Validiva. The two figures complemented each other in an initial point because the two were built with computer parts and both were installed in a specific landscape.

 JPH: What were the connections you made, if any, between surfing on the Internet and the 1960 earthquake and tidal wave of Valdivia?

 MM:  As I mentioned earlier, the robot emerged out of my interest in computer components. That cemetery for PCs made me realize the need for these objects and our dependence on them. On the one hand, there is the constant fear of losing your informatic memory because, for example, of a virus. On the other hand, I made a direct connection between Naufragio PC and the internet, in terms of the concept that travelling by internet in Spanish is “to navigate” (navegar), while it is “to surf” in English. Both terms are related to the sea and, obviously, when you get lost in that milieu, you become shipwrecked. The loss is total: shipwreck, tidal wave, earthquake, catastrophe...

 JPH: In a recent series titled Playmobil Photos / Playmobil fotos (2002), you featured “real” people dressed as Playmobil figures. In one of the scenes, the figures had a bicycle accident; in another, they were seated around a classroom table with building blocks; and in the third, they were waiting at a bus stop in Santiago. What were some of the sources that informed that performative work?

 MM:  The principal source was the Playmobil toys. The world of Playmobil becomes a visual attraction in the photos that appear on the toy’s packaging and in the toys’ catalogs. The images are parodies of the everyday life of human beings. A certain kind of human being is established in each one of the scenes, characterized by profession, race and setting: for example, farmers and their implements. In each of these images, one can make a scene in the form of a model with skies, water, sand, artifical stones, together with the corresponding Playmobil pieces. In this sense, these photos refer to the landscape of a specific place, a place restricted to the action represented in the illustrations on the Playmobil box.

            I related the unreal construction of the images to what occurs in the film “The Truman Story”, where the main character builds himself a ‘typical’ life, with all the accessories of a human being, so that Truman can believe that his life is real. Besides that source, I believe that Paul McCarthy’s “Pinoccio” had its influence, where everyone is the same, all just characters that live their own reality as dolls. My work is different, in that it connects the world of cartoons and games with real life.

 JPH: How does the digital animation Gateway  relate to the Naufragio PC series?

 MM:  One of the important references I use in my work is landscape painting. My early works were done outdoors and referred to that genre of painting. Playmobil Ediciones also includes this reference. In the case of the digital animation piece, Gateway, and the Naufragio PC series, the same thing occurs: they both have their origin in landscape. In Gateway, a small house appears on a kind of inter-dimensional trip. The house enters one scene and exits from another in a circuit that ranges from a close-up detail of landscape to a satellite image. It is a game that can only exist when the reality of space becomes a stage set. Landscape, at best, is an idealization of nature. It, therefore, becomes a scenographic representation, a specific yet unreal space.

  In Naufragio PC, we know that the robotic character does not exist in our reality. When the object is installed in these landscapes, however, it immediately becomes real and takes on the capability of movement, since the photographic image of nature endows the scene we are observing with the characteristics of reality. There is also a circuit and a voyage through different landscapes, as in Gateway.

 JHP: What are some of the sources in popular culture that have shaped your creative directions? And who are some of the artists, either in Chile or abroad, who have contributed to your conceptual directions?

 MM:  I think that among the icons of popular culture, I would single out the cartoons of Ren and Stimpy, Japanese animation, a number of science fiction films, TV series, and the music in the work of Mike Patton, Aphex Twin and Kraftwerk.

            As for Chilean artists, I would include writer/poet Vicente Huidobro, poet Juan Luis Martínez, and visual artists Juan Downey and Eugenio Dittborn. In terms of international artists, the work of Paul McCarthy, Matthew Barney and Jason Rhodes, all from the United States, as well as a number of XVI century Flemish and Dutch landscape painters have all been important to me.

This Conversation was translated from Spanish to English by Ed Shaw.