LIGA 40: The Uncomfortable Giant (Per), Blanco, Estudio Jochamowitz Rivera y Ghezzi Novak
Photography: Patricio Ghezzi
It is a difficult question. Things of colossal size are almost always presented to us without visible traces of their transit. They suddenly appear before our eyes, as if teleported, or as if they were born there, in the place they now rest. The enormous Mexican Piedra del Sol, for example. How did it roll into the Museum of Anthropology? What manoeuvres had to be invented and how many ropes had to be stretched to move its twenty-four tons?
In the field of art, the processes of moving materials and works are often opaque. The habit of thinking in terms of origin and destination means that we neglect what happens in the corridors. There is also a sort of black box in which the conditions of the transits and the details that are not made explicit for fear that they might “taint” the work are kept. But almost always the beginning and the end are less interesting than the middle, and it is along the way that the most unexpected actions and metamorphoses occur, as when by turning over an archaeological piece its most relevant characteristics are revealed. When we have to move something large, its weight is inescapable; we become aware of its gravity, of the responsibility that comes with having brought it into the world. That is why moves are so disconcerting.
An object is most comfortable when stationary. And there is no surprise or risk in comfort. Revelation happens through displacement.
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As I write these paragraphs, an eighty-meter-long giant made of totora reeds travels across the Pacific Ocean. It is moving slowly. Perhaps irritated and probably scuffed, because in order to fit in the container in which it is travelling, it had to be divided into thirteen parts, with the promise that its body would later be reassembled. Right now, according to the ship’s tracking app, it is crossing the border into Guatemala. Following this giant’s journey is as important as its production was. Rather, its journey is also its production: it is being made as it sails. The trip is not a secondary formality, but the condition of its existence, and documenting it becomes necessary. In fact, artworks are not in themselves definitive, for they experience every stage of their life with turmoil, and every space that shelters or rejects them alters their qualities. Thus, all artistic value has a strong social dimension: as a work of art moves through improbable territories or enters relationships with other bodies, its mood develops, its character becomes more complex, and layers of meaning are added to it, just as when the Uros add new layers of totora reeds to their islands so that they can continue to float on Lake Titicaca.
Travel is done in company. There is no doubt that we need help to travel, just as birds are assisted by the wind to fly faster, or as wildebeest are aided by herd protection as they cross crocodile-filled rivers while migrating, together with zebras, gazelles and other grazing animals. Nor was this giant’s journey a solitary one. Since its departure from the lake where it was born, a considerable number of hands have handled it, lifted it, caressed it, arranged it. “And how far is this going?”, asks one of the giant’s porters at the port in Lima. His question sounds almost nostalgic. Meanwhile, the other handlers—about nine in total—take photos of it, as if in a gesture of farewell, as if they wanted to remember that they had helped it embark on its long journey to Mexico.
