LIGA 39: TANAT (Mex). Writing a Landscape
Photography: Arturo Arrieta
“Technologies do not develop through a linear succession of interconnected evolutionary stages, nor do they follow any internal logic, but rather they emerge in a particular social and ecological environment.”
Heather Lechtman[2]
TANAT’s proposal for LIGA invites us to approach architecture as a sculpture where matter and words may be shaped. Although the studio’s pieces often translate into stone monolithic assemblages informed by the mineral extractive economy and pyramidal heritage that characterize Mexico, on this occasion, Diego Borrell, together with the TANAT team—Lucía Lozano, Ana Paulina Navarrete and Mariana Estrada—have created an interior garden inhabited by pendular objects that exultantly hover amid the channeling of water. This conspiracy of lost (and newly found) elements creates an ecstatic atmosphere which avoids a univocal definition and becomes a place of open meaningful transmission.
I believe that Writing a Landscape (Escribir un Paisaje) is not only the staging of some of Borrell’s ideas on architecture but also the search for shelter, resonance and quiet of certain objects. This idea overlaps with a conversation I once had with the ethnolinguist Diana Guzmán, an indigenous leader of the Desana people who, as custodian of the initiative to create an Ancestral Memory Center in Mitú, Vaupés[3], said to me “[it will be a place] where the grandparent-ever-present-beings can dwell more comfortably and teach us how to become better human beings.”[4] Seeing and making the world in this light raises the question: what have these objects rotating in the air come to teach (or learn)? Are they content here among us? How do they sense and hear us from within their presence?
Perhaps this program proposed by TANAT suggests the habit of finding new myths that, in resonance with the old myths, gradually develop places to listen to the voice of things. What does the waste material discarded by Mexico City’s metabolic processes have to say? In the words of political scientist Jane Bennet “How would political responses to public problems change if we took seriously the vitality of (non-human) bodies?”[5]
The search of this exhibition correlates to our pre-Columbian Andean architecture, which was mostly plant-based and left no trace of stone pyramids. Rather, there is an extensive field of metallurgical objects that lie, either buried in moors and lagoons, or in the hands of huaqueros (treasure hunters); as well as exhibited and archived in the collection of the Gold Museum of Bogotá.[6] The astonishing precision with which these metal objects were cast combines a skill and geometrical sensibility that the architect Lorenzo Castro has referred to as the frog’s potential.[7] With the same metal (or alloy) an innumerable number of goldsmith pieces were made, among which frogs stand out: diverse and with a symbolic capacity to connect gold with water. Frogs understand that the water flowing through the rock creates gold deposits; that the water running down the hills disembogues in lagoons where the metamorphoses of amphibians dwell; that the water amplifies the croaking sound which attracts the rain. The universe of a small gold frog is expansive while the uniformity of the ingot, or tejo—the formal optimization of billet stacking conducive to usurp precious metals, and consequently, to elide systems of symbolic meaning—is not.
Today we can discern, Castro said, “between designing frogs or ingots.” Water is subtle: it trickles and ripples, permeates, soaks, and vanishes leaving its trace behind. How do we relate to water and its states in constant flux? In Writing a Landscape, TANAT pays close attention to the amphibious thinking of the frog over the serial thinking of the ingot; it does not create an exhibition space as much as an enclosure to contemplate many dialogues.
“I told the Yachak [this] and he told me that ‘contemplation’ came from ‘temple’ and that ‘temple’ was the place where the eyes were observant. Therefore, he said, for those who read the flight of birds, the sky is a temple. […] It is curious what one remembers because one does not make a choice.”[8]
Notes:
[1] Taken and translated by the author of this text from the stanza “E de pensar que não somos os primeiros seres terrestres; Pois nós herdamos uma herança cósmica.” in Jorge Ben Jor, “Errare Humanum Est,” theme #3 in A Tábua de Esmeralda, Phillips, 1974.
[2] Lechtman, Heather, and Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. Los Orfebres Olvidados de América: Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, 1991
[3] The department of Vaupés in Colombia is a transition between the dry plains of the Orinoquia and the humid Amazon jungle. Mitú is the capital city and is located on the bank of the Vaupés River, one of the main tributaries of the Negro River.
[4] Guzman, Diana and Pedro Aparicio-Llorente. Mitu Ancestral Memory Center – Research and Design Phase. Proposal for the CCA Indigenous-led Design Fellowship Program. April 2024.
[5] Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010.
[6] In 1988, archaeologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff’s book, Orfebrería Y Chamanismo: Un Estudio Iconográfico Del Museo Del Oro, was published. Among the reflections that Reichel-Dolmatoff makes regarding the museum’s collection, he emphasizes the lack of archaeological origin these pieces have since they were the result of the huaquera economy (grave diggers or treasure hunters). There is a description that I relate to TANAT’s work for LIGA, and that makes me believe TANAT seeks to move away from spatial composition to delve into ritual action: “Many pieces are adorned with small hanging and mobile plaques, sometimes square but generally circular or somewhat oval; sometimes they are beads, small pipes, or ribbons. The object then has one or more rings welded to the front surface, articulated with another ring, and from them the mobile plates are suspended. These pendants are found on earrings, pectorals, diadems and on various small human or animal figures. The distribution of these pendants is found practically in all regions of Colombia. When you take on a piece like this you adore, of course, when you wear it, the continuous movement of these little plates that give a lot of life to the jewel; but I would also like to note that by literally ‘attracting the eye,’ the wavering and changing shimmer exerts an almost hypnotic action on the observer. This effect is well known to shamans (and neurologists) who know that, under certain conditions, the perception of flickering lights can induce visions of a hallucinatory nature or cause a prehypnotic state.”
[7] Castro, Lorenzo. “Proyectos de paisaje en el páramo de Santurbán,” Latin GSD Symposium Blurred Territories, Panel: Where is the frontier? Boom and resistance. Harvard University Graduate School of Design. April 19, 2016.
[8] Ojeda, Mónica. Chamanes eléctricos en la fiesta del sol. Random House Literature, 2024.
