INTRODUTION
Waste, recuperation,
recycling and transformation are ideas which have always been present
in Marisa González's work. Parting from a artistic and musical formation,
she very soon discovers the enormous possibilities offered by the information
technologies, and communication applied to artistic creation. Beginning
with the investigation process around the new media which, for the time
being, ends with the appearance of The Factory, an exhibition supported,
as the author says, on hiperphotography and video tapes, where the still
image and the one in movement allow for the reconstruction of an already
inexistant landscape and territory.
In this ocasion, distancing herself from her previous works, where more
or less evident, or illusionarily suggested human presence was a constant.
Marisa González, here, is inspired by a factory, an industrial building
which held an essential function for its surrounding society and which,
after a century long activity, has ceased to exist. This disappearance,
the conversion of furniture, installations and buildings into waste
allow the artist to hold a recuperation and transformation process of
the dispersed materials, through which she articulates various planes
for reflection:
>The factory as a construction or building where determined activity
which is incorporated into a given territory takes place and constitutes
a defining element in an urban landscape.
>The factory as an establishment equiped with machinery, tools, installations
and productive techniques and sceneries of man's work.
>The factory as the action of manfuracturing or producing something,
generally objects or series articles.
From these approximations, Marisa González begins the invention process
of something not material, reconstructed imaginary, profoundly revealing
spaces, where human presence beats as an agent and destinatary of the
complete action. With this exhibition, produced and presented by the
Fundación Telefónica, Marisa González opens a new line in her creative
work though continues to be faithful to photography and multimedia as
expressive mediums.
Roberto Velázquez
GENERAL MANAGER
INTRODUCTION
The Factory is a project by Marisa Gonzalez for the Fundacion Telefonica,
and whose presentation is within the PHOTOESPANA 2000 frame, not a fortuitous
coincidence, but which is perfectly adecuated to the original support
on which she has effectuated this work. In photography, its digitalization,
and correspondant manipulation through computer and video, the artist,
one of Spain's pioneers in the field of electrography, shows the dimension
of a process which began in Chicago, when she was finishing her studies
in the department of New Technologies directed by Sonia Sheridan in
the Art Institute, during the 70's. Ever since then, an based on the
continuity which she has given to the initial exploration of the technologies
in her reach with a strictly experimental finality, as has been proven
in the various exhibitions in which she has participated both individually
and collectively. But now she takes over, for the first time in her
trajectory, a theme derived from architecture, pushed forth by events
which motivate her, specially through their proximity.
Beneath this exhibition's argument there is a real factory, a hitorical
building, characteric in the regional industrial revolution in which
it's inserted, and which, when ending its century-long existance has
been deprived of its function, for the anachronism of its installations
and machinery. The closeness of the demolishment and the vision of the
interiors and exteriors in ruins has given the argument for this exhibition.
Reciprocally, the register of the photographic eye and the video camera's
holds in the fractioned destruction, the slow disappearance of a manual
timeb which forces the recognition of the territory and the landscape.
Its dislocation through the horizontal "unfolding" technique destroys
the limit in the sequence, constitutes the justification of this industrial
archeology, determinant in the processal character of the presented
work. The project is thus resolved in an acting which is consequent
with the reciprocal appropriation and transformation which precipitate
a new tale with the help of the instrument handed over by the new technologies.
The recycling continues, nevertheless, to bethe preliminary procedure
which comes before any new configuration or intervention, boosting a
global comprhension of the unity of her work.
The present catalogue is made up of seven parts, division which doesn't
only correspond to the seven sections over which the information contained
has been organized and ditributed, but also to the seven silos which
make up the factory building's structure. The number "7" is reproduced
in all the classifications wishing to enphasize the symbolic character
of the seven silos, and their protagonism in this project's origin.
The catalogue's design is based on this element, and on the apotheosis
of the fall, which is the decisive event. The recital has also been
effectuated parting from this geometric number, both concerning the
chapters and the graphical structure: columns and modules concerning
the paging respond to the identical criteria. Equally so, the double
central page with the image of th impressive silos imitates those of
the cover and back-cover, but with the semi-cilidrical windows where
the action of the demolishment is progressively is staged. The content's
inventory also brings us back to this number, allowing for the introductory
converation, conceived as a presentation to the work by the very artist,
whose intervention in this catalogue deserves the spotlight, as derives
from the deliberate inclusion of the two sections titled Routes and
Anex: in the first, she includes a folder of photographs concerning
the processal work developped throughout the elaboration of this project,
to which she adds texts written in first person which describe her experience.
In the second, other former texts, also her's, and about her, are also
reproduced, granting the critic Jose Ramon Danvila, with whome she kept
a close friendship, a tribute. In this aspect, the catalogue is much
like a book, where the author holds the role of the author, but also
has all the requiits of a catalogue, not only through the exhaustive
documentation it brings forth, but also because of the collaborations
it includes. The texts by Sonia Sheridan, Claudia Gianetti, Roman Gubern,
Alicia Murria and Fernando castro, together with my own, particularly
represent an approximation to this exhibition and her work in general,
which, from the diversity of perspectives attempt to situate the artist's
production in a theoretical/critical and historical context, leading
to its justification.
Menene Gras Balaguer
Exhibition Curator
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