LIGA 31: Panósmico (Mex). Hydrographic Auscultation Circuit
Photography: Arturo Arrieta
At a time when we increasingly question the way problems have been solved by trusting in the capabilities of grand visionaries, new techniques of looking at the urban fabric have to be found. It could be argued that the artist today can take a certain responsibility in investigating the interrelations behind complex scenarios and has the potential to experiment with new modes of communication. The Mexican collective Panósmico, made up of Mariana Mañón and Manolo Larrosa, has entered into this political moment as artists who seek to question the paradoxes that make up the complexity of our societal relationship with space. They have been active since 2017, collaborating on research inquiries into the interrelation of the body with the perception and design of urban space.
In the wake of the “death of God” comes the emergence of ethics as aesthetics. As Boris Groys notes: “Where religion once was, design has emerged. The modern subject now has a new obligation: the obligation to self-design, an aesthetic presentation as ethical subject” (Groys 2018: 10). As part of this shift in the tasks of design, the process of iterative collaborative reasoning becomes aesthetics in its own right. In defining his understanding of eco-aesthetics Malcolm Miles argues that the relation of the subject to other subjects/objects is fundamental in developing an ecological design approach (Miles 2014: 3). In the practice of Panósmico, such an understanding involves the agency of non-human actors in their research concept, as they critically question the sole authorship of humans in relation to the design of natural and urban landscapes.
Panósmico is connecting different fields. They envision their work conceptually, as artists, but they also, through the know-how of their collaborators, enter other fields, such as architecture, urban design, writing, filmmaking, or computer programming. In all of their collaborations they emphasize the importance of developing the proper approach to making this practice of field-crossing function conceptually. The different ways in which various disciplines seek to comprehend a complex scenario goes along with the challenge of mediating in-between their ways of articulating. Prejudices and inflexible modes of operation have to be challenged in order to start a collective process of making sense. The collective identifies itself strongly by its objectives as a platform and a medium that incentivizes a collaborative, multidisciplinary practice. Every project they develop differs from the others, as they vary the approach and the methods used in accord with the collaborators involved. In acting as a medium, their practice offers a platform for multiple perspectives on certain subjects, to be translated into a display as part of an iterative procedure.
An early example of Panósmico’s artistic approach is the “anti-anthropocentric guerrilla action” within the work Crackology, undertaken in collaboration with landscape architect Félix de Rosen. Developed as part of the collateral program of Manifesta 12 in Palermo, they mapped out the geological depressions, architectural faults, plant appropriations, water filtrations, and other aspects of decay (from a human perspective) in the neighborhood of Danisinni. Signs acted as a medium to invite the neighbors to keep on researching and to develop an understanding of the interrelations of certain attributes that make up the shape of the city. Pedestrians were invited to pay attention to the presence of non-human forces, displayed in a diagram with four concentric categories that served as a hydraulic thermometer applied to an urban environment. The thermometer measured physical attributes, such as the materiality, location, and presence/absence of water, as well as social and poetic components.
In the spring of 2019, Mariana Mañón and Manolo Larrosa invited me on a research trip to Mexico City to take part in the first phase of the research inquiry into the Río Becerra. Together with writer Iñigo Malvido, we undertook an extensive study of one of the city’s last remaining partly exposed rivers. Around the mid-twentieth century, fascinated by architect Carlos Contreras’s design, city authorities implemented a model of supposedly visionary urbanism that encased the rivers in pipes and built roadways over them (Inzunza 2016). In the neighborhood that the Río Becerra runs through, people have turned their back on the neglected riverbed, which is severely polluted. We carried out field visits to meet some of the local residents and to develop an initial understanding, looking for feasible points of departure for further investigation, as well as possibilities for future interactions and in-situ projects. Data collection, mapping, and archiving were part of the exploration of the territory. The title of the exhibition showing the results of this first phase of the project ―“New Narratives”― is not to be misunderstood as a drive towards creating a new narrative in the tradition of grand planning gestures. It suggests that the river is itself an information system that can tell its own narrative out of the various layers of history and materiality it is composed of.
To carry out the second phase, Panósmico replied to the open call for a project to be exhibited at the space of Mexico City-based LIGA DF. Referencing the book Imaginal Machines, by Stevphen Shukaitis, the gallery aimed for proposals concerned with structures and mechanisms that could form the “basis of a radical and collective imagination,” a collective approach to “sharing the experience, knowledge and techniques that ground us as a society.” Shukaitis advocates the construction of “imaginal machines” as tools of radical imagination aimed at developing new forms of collective self-determination. He suggests that “imaginal machines” might only become functional by breaking down. They come into operation through constant transformation and re-figuration by their malfunctioning: through an antagonism without closure, which is in constant recomposition, as it keeps the machine running (Shukaitis 2009: 10). The way Panósmico structured the research inquiry aims at programming an apparatus that is supposed to uncover the layers of meaning surrounding the Río Becerra. Techniques on how to develop a design process that keeps the machine running are tested, taking into account their robustness and taking machine failure into the calculation as an element in the re-figuration of procedures in an iterative process. In establishing a direct line of communication between the information system of the Río Becerra and the gallery, a decentralized communicative machine is constructed, making it possible to develop an understanding of the composition of the body of water. Thus, the machine acts as a medium for the river, causing the entire system of nodes that make up the installation to start imagining.
American architect and philosopher Keller Easterling notes that to manipulate a medium, one has almost to develop the ability to view it on a split-screen. On this split-screen it is easier to understand the difference between what a form of organization says and what it does, as well as to what extent the message concerning its agency is decoupled from its underlying device (Easterling 2018: 154). Such a split-screen method helps us to understand not only the organization, but also the narrative that acts as a driver for the organization (Easterling 2018: 158). Easterling argues that people are good at pointing things out and calling them by their names. When it comes to relations in-between things, however, there is a lack of capabilities in describing the composition of these entities (Easterling 2018: 149). She notes that we are at a moment in time when problems are in deadlock. Economic and military causality patterns deliver no reasonable explanations. New technologies are bringing no salvation. The consensus on laws, norms, and master plans offers no alleviation. The problems leave us clueless, because their dimensions elude any rational explanation (Easterling 2018: 150). Keller Easterling argues that perhaps it is more important to accentuate problems then to solve them. Maybe disorder is smarter than novelty. Maybe it is not the existence or the content of a problem, but the interrelation in-between problems that is worth looking at (Easterling 2018: 154).
The Hydrographic Auscultation Circuit (CAH), developed to study the different bodies of water that circulate in urban environments, is a nomadic laboratory. It makes it possible to analyze the information the river and its environment provides as if by looking through the split-screen Easterling is talking about. It uncovers the interrelation of components that make up the current state of the river. The CAH investigates the relations in-between a plurality of problems resulting from human interference with the landscape. The machine is not creating something new. Its main function is to trigger processes of imagining possible futures, starting from an understanding of how information systems are composed and how we can allow them to find a form of expression. The nomadic laboratory is supposed to have the capability to present its observations and experiments at various locations in the city. A website, which describes the different phases of the project and identifies the actors participating in the development, is designed to document this procedure for a wider audience.
The different disciplines coming together for the project make it possible to look at the information system of the river on a split-screen. Only through specific knowledge about developing the various nodes that make up the “imaginal machine” is the capability of uncovering the layers the rivers is composed of made possible. As a computer programmer, Mateo Torres is able to transfer the data from the river into a digital landscape, from where the composition of the Río Becerra can be altered. With the data being transmitted over space and translated into a display, a computerized design, which becomes physical in space, allows an architectural experience. Architect Roberto Michelsen is in charge of developing the physical display for the information to become spatialized in the gallery. He built the aqua-screens displaying the data gathered by the sensors within the field. He believes that all the collaborators were open to pushing the boundaries of their disciplines. Visiting the Panósmico studio, you begin to ask yourself whether you are in an artist’s space or a botanist’s laboratory. Speaking with Mateo, you catch yourself wondering whether he is a poet or a mathematician. Francisco Ohem, a filmmaker, recorded the river with a drone and developed a map that is displayed in the exhibition space. Iñigo Malvido contributed through his poetics to giving new perspectives on the body of the river and its perception. He believes that poetry itself is interdisciplinary, since it connects different systems of thoughts. Panósmico is in charge of the coordination of the design process. They introduce the different viewpoints and approaches of the disciplines into the engine of the decentralized machine. The Italian philosopher Mario Perniola, writing about the sex appeal of the inorganic, points out that, as “a completely spatialized visualization of information, cyberspace transforms everything into landscape and introduces into it an extraordinary and astonishing dynamism” (Perniola 2004: 91).
Panósmico argues that, by developing an understanding of the information system the river provides, a process of alteration and transformation of the landscape is already initiated. In the first phase, field observations and research provided the basis for the components considered within the development of the Hydrographic Auscultation Circuit in the second phase. With the interpretation of the data gathered within this current stage of the project, the in-situ interventions of phase three can be imagined. One should not expect the “imaginal machine” to provide us with a grand solution. Nonetheless, by accentuating a plurality of problems, the interventions have the potential to become design opportunities, building on the information system contained within the Río Becerra, with a distanced human authorship.
Easterling, Keller (2019): “Medium Design.” In Arch+234.
Groys, Boris (2018): “Introduction.” In Nick Axel, Beatriz Colomina, Nikolaus Hirsch, Anton Vidokle, Mark Wigley (eds.):Superhumanity: Design of the Self. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Inzunza, Alejandra Sánchez (2016): “Mexico City’s Invisible Rivers.” In Citylab, retrieved from https://www.citylab.com/design/2016/06/mexico-citys-invisible-rivers/486302/.
Miles, Malcolm (2014): Eco-Aesthetics: Art, Literature and Architecture in a Period of Climate Change. New York/London: Bloomsbury.
Perniola, Mario (2004): The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic. New York: Continuum.
Shukaitis, Stevphen (2009): Imaginal Machines: Compositions of Autonomy & Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life. New York: Autonomedia.
