DESTRUCTION

Rhetoric of the make-believe in function of the sublime

Menene Gras Balaguer

"The interruption of electronics in the domain of technical images has caused an increase in the resources of expression for the image and above all the definitive and possibly irreversible breakdown of the myth of photographic objectivity upon which naive theories regarding photography as a sign of the truth or as a reproduction of reality are based". Arlindo Machado, Machina e Imaginário1.
"The world is an illusion and art consists of representing the illusion of the world". Paul Virilio, Estética de la Desaparición2.
The most important effect of the new technologies is that interaction has become an option for mass communication media. Interactivity, the brilliant future of the communication media industry has to be brought out of the laboratory. Restrictions on access to high tech installations belong to the past: interactive data structures can reach all homes either by telephone or by disk. The spectator, freed from the need to take romantic journeys in search of works, is becoming a traveler of the data flowing through the Net with an elegance that raises California beaches to the level of a virtual airplane. Dieter Daniels, Strategies of Interactivity3.
The relationship between art and technology is not a recent occurrence as they would have us believe faced with the discoveries the new technologies promise when used to channel artistic expression. This has always existed, explicitly or implicitly. What is true though, is the fact that we will never stop asking if technology implements the sense of artistic expression or if it is adopted as the content itself. Often there is a kind of confusion between the functions that can be assigned to technology and the use an artist makes of its possibilities. Understanding and using the tools that the new technologies provide us with is not in itself a guarantee that the content of the art reflects what it is supposed to according to the aesthetic and artistic value attributable to any given production at a given time. Adding to this uncertainty is the observation made by Stefan Morawski4 some time ago that art is passing through a critical period and that it is necessary to adopt strategies which allow us to cover the simultaneous multitude and variety of forms that art includes. In the same way, Pierre Francastel5 asks us to consider the underlying problem to be whether there is or there should be a true confrontation between art products and derivations of human activity, which would seem to be more difficult if you make use of identical machines during the manufacturing process. The rhythm of production of these machines is also equivalent whatever sector they are located in, and this has obviously favored the explosion of aesthetics beyond the institutional limits set by tradition as Gianni Vattimo6 observes. This author clearly distinguishes between the explosion of aesthetics as occurs in historical vanguards which conceive of the death of art as the suppression of the limits of aesthetics, and the explosion which began with the neo-vanguard under the impact of technology which favored and even determined unavoidably a form of generalization of the aesthetic. As a result, the reproduction which the former can be subjected to, as Walter Benjamin (whom we always end up quoting) points out, turns out to be constituent of certain forms of art, and this the amplified aesthetic of life and existence has a significant impact through the media.
Nevertheless it is evident that in spite of the changes which have been imposed upon the aesthetic experience, the use of the instruments which the new means offer has become a need in that it can be equated with greater freedom in the exercise and experimentation of the possible or impossible forms of art. Its justification is its inherent capability to promote the development of art that corresponds to the historic present. Notwithstanding, this cannot subtract from the intentions of the person who creates its forms. No machine, no matter how powerful it is, will replace the individuality of a person. Artificial intelligence will never be able to triumph, as Román Gubern notes in The Electronic Eros7. The miracle of this new audiovisual landscape responsible for electronic leisure or pastimes will never do away with the human presence, which is what has made it possible in the first place. At the same time, the proposal set forth by this author regarding the position to adopt faced with the avalanche of electronic images which we are immersed in, indicates the need to conserve the capacity to maintain a critical conscience faced with the phenomena which surround us in an information society and with communication dominated by "cultural disorder". The random alterations which we are subject to along with the resulting imbalances are a consequence of the identity crisis suffered by forms of art and culture which are in turn a product of the hybridization and contamination of forms in a theatrical society. Gubern reminds us of the counterculture movements of the 60´s and 70´s and proposes replacing the term counterculture and what is understood by it, with the term interstice culture. This culture occupies, in his opinion, the areas not covered by the offerings of the dominant cultural apparatus of either multinational or local origin, imposed by the vast dominant models on the global public. Paradoxically, it has in the net the possibility of existence and consolidation and is equivalent at present to the beginnings of an active resistence which maintains alive certain essential questions.
These initial considerations are based on the fact that the exhibition that this text tries to introduce has been based on the tools that the new technologies offer the users, but subjugating these technologies to the desired content and not vice-versa keeping in mind that they are not capable of solving their own conception. In fact, in addition, as can be seen in the conversation held with Marisa González included in this catalogue, these and other questions related to artistic production, its identification, and it legitimizing, are present in the creation of each project that is begun. In "The Factory", title of the work presented at La Fundación Telefónica, we are aware of a desire not only to investigate new forms of representation, in line with the work process which has characterized her career from its beginnings, but also a desire to adapt them to the content conceding a marked priority to the latter. She never stops offering proposals of concepts based the intersection of the "encounter" brought about by chance and by recycling as is usual in the procedures she uses and adopts as a method without this affecting negatively the opening up of the work. This may seem insufficient if we try to cover in a significant way her output, but this limitation is eliminated immediately when her work is viewed as the result of an artistic practice whose discursive updating is produced when it is shown multi-dimensionally in action environments that cannot pass unnoticed. The structuring of this present project has gone beyond the prevision which could be seen in previous works and which here has grown to unrecognizable dimensions to the extent that its organization is based on a theme not previously dealt with before by the artist and whose reference image is architecture. The origin is connected to circumstances which are related to her personal history. This has been a constant in her work even though in this case it appears that it is distant from the figures which inhabit her power of imagination daily.
The uninhabited architecture becomes a common scene in this exhibition which seems to prescribe the need for the human figure to be present so that the work can have meaning, which is a departure from what usually happened in her previous works.
Nevertheless, absence is also a form of presence expressed because of a previous existence in her work and which cannot be eluded. The human element, in any of its manifestations, constitutes the reason for her work in which any unnecessary formal creation is excluded since it is considered useless and an end which art can no longer consider. The artist decided to take up the project The Factory when she learned of the planned demolishing of an old factory which supplied Bilbao with bread. Certain circumstances led to her interest in the factory given the connection the artist has with the city she is from and where an important part of her life was lived. The initial hesitation and doubt was due both to the fascination the possibility of internalizing events which were going to take place in an outside space held over her and to the fact that ignorance of what could be created based on a reality that was going to be transformed due to the demolishing of a building which for many years had been identified as the symbol of the industrialization of the city. The idea of being able to work in situ was an opportunity which was very similar to that which had preceded earlier projects such as the visit to factory at Onil which was a decisive factor in her work on the dolls. The industrial molds which were used in the process of producing the dolls allowed her to experiment with materials which led to an evolution in her work solidifying her procedures and the application of generative systems. Her ability to carry off the pretense of serialization imitating industrial production models which unceasingly reproduce copies of copies without decreasing their commercial value does not imply that a differentiating factor is added to what appears to be the same. The artist defends the idea that no image is the same as its copy despite the similarities which it might share with the one before it or the one after it.
The theme of this exhibition comes from, as we have indicated, events in which the artist was involved by chance but which she turned into an opportunity to make use of what fate put before her, and which she saw as capable of being decomposed and then assembled again with the help of technology in order to serve as vessels of expression capable of transforming reality. One of the most relevant characteristics in Marisa González´s work is her desire to experiment and her use of the new technologies which she views as tools essential to the development of current art forms. The uniqueness of her work is added to by the use she makes of the "machines", a term she uses frequently, convinced that they are necessary in order for contemporary art production to reach its ends, as she clearly tries to express in her work. This, in turn, can only be conceived of through systematic experimentation and investigation of the syntax using a program provides and which determines the forms of reality that can be included. The computer, as can be seen in the carrying out of her work, has the faculty to make possible varying intuitions which otherwise would not find a place in a creative source of imagination which is selective by nature. Still, the desire to strengthen the redefinition of the notion of "a work" is always present because her work is characterized, among other things, by her defense of interactivity, a fact evidenced by the strategies she has used consistently throughout her career to use so successively in her experiences with Copy Art and Fax Art and on the Net as well. Edmund Couchot justifies the need to eliminate any separation between works of art and the public in a society torn between historical time and the individual time of the human being. According to this author, on the other hand, this dimension is fundamental in order for art to fit itself to its time. Undefined progress is opposed to the notion of progress, and if the latter is not thought of in place of the former, change cannot be produced. "Radical change occurs when there is a relationship between progress and change of meaning"8. This latter element should have a reciprocal effect on everything included in our society´s symbolic economy in order for it to be a determining factor.
The existence of her world and the events in it are made possible by the "black box" of the computer, nevertheless she is not trying to create a reality based on infography, which, naturally, she does not rule out since she believes that art needs technology for its development; which, at the same time, implies that art needs to draw upon all the means of expression upon which human communication systems are based. Notwithstanding we must always keep in mind what it is that we communicate and question the term as Derrida suggests when he says "One should consider whether the word communication indicates a specific content, an identifiable meaning, and a describable value". For him communication is in the first place, "a vehicle, means of transport, or a passing-through place for meaning"9. The complexity of the procedures used by the artist begins with a taking-over of the object or the artefact which usually occupies a physical space and to which she adds a specific character to then continue with the investigation of its properties. Although previously we can distinguish other antecedents which are those that constitute the systems of relationships capable of articulating an idea, its concept, and its external manifestation. The purpose is to name and create a phrase, even if it is starting from the demolition of the language and the negation of its possibility to exist as an organism that makes itself self-sufficient using the elements that form it. In fact, none of its metaphoric constructions can be understood except by starting with the justification offered for the form of existence they are given, and whose nomadic quality is essential for its transformation and, obviously, to make its virtual possibility effective. The artist works with the "series" imitating the system of industrial production by means of the computer, whose autonomy does not exclude the individual that gives the order to activate its functioning with a specific objective in mind. Machines are tools which require work but they are not the only thing involved in her production because the decision taken by the individual who decides its purpose is essential. She cannot understand the use of this machine unless it is through its potential for configuring forms of expressions which could not be conceived of by any other means. The artistic artefact fulfills this function and from this same function comes its aesthetic value. The series is a result of the means of production through which the machine becomes an instrument which generates the driving energy needed to infuse it with its character. At the same time the work is a product of invisible calculations and of a dialogue in which other means of expression, sound, gestures, speech, intervene as well as the immersion, navigation, and conversation on the Net where other agents come into play. All these aspects, as Couchot indicates, contribute to creating the new hierarchy of sensations which becomes effective in some works such as the ones offered here.
The series continually reaffirms the possibility of the reproduction of a given mold which meets with the guarantees of the pattern or model which is authorized to facilitate production with the unlimited repetition of the original to which we must add a margin of error. In "The Journey to Onil" the artist began the processing experience on the trip she made to the doll factory located in the province of Alicante. Her intention was to familiarize herself directly with the production process of the dolls and to gather materials to take back to Madrid with the idea of reprocessing these anonymous figures, dead animals that evoke the precariousness of the inanimate human body. The fragmentation of the molds was fundamental in that it represented the fracturing of the human being, impossible to conceive of in any other way, from the point of view of the orphaning of the individual and the breakdown imposed by the mastery of speed, whose most immediate consequence is physical dematerialization converting the existence of all things and all beings into a mere movement of simultaneous appearance and disappearance. Virilio points out with respect to this conquering of speech that "the technological culture has only perfected the appropriation of the driving elements and incessantly increases our dependence on the systems that regulate the meaning of appropriation (speedometers, control panels, teleorientation...)10". Recycling the aforementioned molds and converting them into images through the use of the camera and the corresponding manual and mechanical manipulation implied the inauguration of a process which was undefined initially and which would go on for some time while its possible developments grew. The artist defends recycling as a means of intervention which characterizes her acting upon a reality which occurs randomly and by chance, and transforms its thus making it fit her intentions. Her activity begins when this circumstance or situation occurs and she feels, so to speak, trapped by an event, an object, or an image, which as random as it may be, holds an irresistible attraction for her, and which offers possibilities for its inclusion in a personal and individualized universe.
The truth is that in all of Marisa González´s work we can observe the coexistence of the most sophisticated technology and of the pathology of the aesthetic sense which is expressed in a language which goes back to the projection of a self which feels itself splintered off and surrenders to the scepticism of this experience of understanding. What she proposes is to act within a system in which both artistic language itself, contemplating it from the origin of its reason to exist, and the final purpose of what you desire to manifest in the act of artistic form while at the same time adopting as the foundation and the objective individual life experiences, are questioned. For the artist art only has meaning when it is reintroduced into life and when it make manifestations possible which otherwise could not exist. More than this, what she makes fundamentally clear is that the language of the machines or the systems of signs which the machines process are metalinguistic and metasemiotic signs because they refer back to other signs. Javier Echevarría in his latest book11 uses these arguments to distinguish between machine language and human language. These other signs do not remain so hidden in the artist´s work, as can be appreciated at first sight in that she proposes to make them visible, placing their power to confer meaning before anything identified with the apparent artificiality of mere form. What are these signs and to what do they connect with? None of her investigations in whatever field has ever been solely based on mere delving into form for form´s sake nor on its sensing effects. Her work cannot be disconnected from what concerns the human condition and its circumstances even if this appears to be lacking. The meaning of the work is found then wedged between the limits of the most essentially human and dependent on the demands she makes.
However, at the same time, it is inconceivable without her compromise with the point of view which includes the historic aspect through the necessary mediation for its organization into a system of signs that imply a contribution to the development of art forms which, at the same time, could not be understood without this same contribution. The relationship between art forms and the incorporation of technology in the creation of artistic languages has been clearly represented in her work from the beginning based on the assumption that it cannot evolve alone by force of circumstance but must be subjugated to the intentions of the individual´s artistic practices. The term evolution indicates, on the contrary, a simple movement which is carried out through inertia whereas the term development implies rather a chance situation which also affects the final purpose of the same. The immersion into the world of art forms occurs in her case, as with many other artists, based on the need to experiment and to think of art as a process in that it is the only chance of survival for these forms. This, obviously, implies a certain doubtfulness and also indetermination in the career of the artist. Questioning the value of the current artistic languages and the possibility of a piece of art slows down and interferes with artistic production keeping in mind that said piece is not conceived as a simple multiplication of artefacts occupying a space set aside for them beforehand. In the process the assigning of meaning to a piece of art is not resolved but rather made more problematic while at the same time particular emphasis is placed on it since it is preceded by and impregnated with a reflection which relates and articulates the artistic value and the aesthetic value of its configurations.
The facility with which technological means provide us with virtual images characterized by their briefness often causes the user to forget that these images require a specific form of treatment which guarantees their semantic condition. In other words, the miracle of technology is not in itself equivalent to the miracle of art because the production capacity of a machine is not proportional to that capacity which develops the artistic artefact and allows it to adopt a particular condition or another. In this respect, Echeverria insists on linking together the five most commonly used technologies, the telephone, the radio, the television, electronic cash, and communication networks, in which he sees common structural characteristics and at the same time profound differences not only of degree but in terms of quality12. This belief leads him to indicate which technologies are capable of being applied to artistic production. The "machine", or the machines used in producing art, is a tool like any other, which receives and carries out the orders given by the user and consequently, regardless of whatever it´s capable of doing, is not capable of acting autonomously by itself. The individual that gives the order is for that reason responsible for the message that is given and for the way in which it reaches the receiver. This requires that the individual must possess a will to intervene, a will which cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence. In the environment that we are referring to here all of this adds some connotations to the loss of identity of the artist and sets in motion the disposition that tries to close the circle by virtue of which the hierarchy between the artist, his work, and the spectator is maintained until the obstacles that impede the incorporation of the latter are eliminated and in turn whose reaction becomes part of the work itself. One of the most paradigmatic projects of interactive work is "The Legible City"(1987-1991) by Jeffery Shaw; a city turned into words, sentences, paragraphs, in urbanized order and among whose streets one can travel as if along an avenue with buildings on either side. This project´s immediate antecedent was "The Narrative Landscape" (1985-1995), identical in nature. Among the other works which can be added to projects of this type we can include "Fax Station" by Marisa González presented at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Circle) a few years ago or a more recent experience, the CD Rom presented at the Arco 2000 art fair or the proposal launched on the Net in honor of this fair. Not all the art production which is based on the use of technological means is valid in itself, and even less so that output which is offered as mere practical exercises without even being aware of it. The difficulty in judging the artistic value and the aesthetic value of a piece of work lies in the definition itself of the product whose appearance is confused with that of any other artefact or thing. Indicators exist, however, which denote the presence or proximity of art and which transcend mere form. In the exact same way it is necessary to emphasize that in Marisa González´s work the message that goes beyond the appearance of the image is unmistakable and becomes a demand that she makes in order to follow the rules of the game. The artist is not interested in shaping for the sake of shaping, and therefore the duration of a process leading to the work of art or the final production is the result of an elaborate genetic process which requires its own time of maturation. With respect to the project which is presented here, this process preceded the corresponding organization of its components depending on certain results which would make the ingredients used in its preparation visible. This has been possible thanks to prior experience and to a work program which from the beginning has kept in mind the different areas at which the exhibition was aimed and the currents it would be susceptible to given certain conditions and the very concept of the project.
The "architectural aspect", to use a figurative term differing from the correct adjective, takes on great importance in her work as can be gathered from the images which we can contemplate, starting with the destruction of the factory and the adjacent buildings due to the deterioration of their installations and to a speculative plan designed to profit from the land seeing that the machinery, equipment, and services had also been declared obsolete. The artist´s trips to Bilbao to familiarize herself with the situation were productive not only in that they provided information but that they also created memories. The feeling of loss and a sense of lacking are behind the artist´s interest in making hers this impending event whose announced destruction only serves to further emphasize its destruction. This is the determining factor in the process through which an event which is repeated daily throughout the world takes on unknown dimensions. The factory, before being turned into a crowed pile of rubble, is emptied, and to this act we can superimpose semblances of semblances in which the mechanisms of memory and the forms of self which disintegrate and reassemble continually are activated in accordance with the development of a personal experience in relation to the world. The attraction of ruins is commonly associated with the irresistible fascination offered by that which overcomes us with its power of negation. This state is equally comparable to that which is produced in our inner being where the power of negation can acquire a destructive and deadly aspect disguised as melancholy. The power of the sublime comes from this symbiosis of various opposing sentiments, even though it may seem contradictory that fear, terror, horror, can have such a seductive effect favoring our inclination for death.
A demolition constitutes a situation which offers an opportunity for all kinds of projection of the self, aware of its separation and of the impossibility of embracing totality. The work projected by the artist did not reflect physical antecedents in her trajectory in that she had never really been interested in the processing of architectural images nor in architecture as a departure point for her work, the results of which can be seen now. Landscape as such had never been, until now, part of her exploration nor of her personal projection as she considered it distant from her interests and at the same time too close to a type of art whose anachronism is associated with its evolution and development until the arrival of abstract painting from the end of the XIX century on. While she may not have manifested openly an attitude of rejection betting upon its dying out, except for a certain concept of the landscape and the landscape artist and the very notion of the art whose conception is better associated with the practice of a kind of art than with the new perspective which photography offered it. Nor can we allege a radical change in attitude in the sense that the artist never excluded openly certain representative objects nor certain forms of expression except in the case that this implied a step backward in her trajectory.
Place, with its particular physical characteristics, became a territory which allowed the artist to act in another place and in another space, that of her own work, by means of positioning movements which permitted her to incorporate not so much objects as such but architectural constructions with their own life. In some way a kind of discovery is produced by which a real world is structured and then deprived of its material aspect and transferred to an imaginary world where it is recorded thanks to the photographic image. This discovery is associated with a differentiated perception of space as such which is superimposed on the notion of time without forgetting what Michel Foucault refers to as "fatal intersecting" between one another. This philosopher, in a conference given in 1967, referred to our age as a time of space. "We find ourselves," he stated, "in the time of the simultaneous, we find ourselves in a time of juxtaposition, in a time of the near and the far, of unity and scattering... Anyway, I believe that the uneasiness present today is fundamentally concerned with space, undoubtedly, much more so than time"13. The first action of the artist, before realizing fully the possibility of the project which serves as the basis for the present exhibition, was to undertake the compiling of the place names of the areas : exteriors, interiors, machinery and furniture, this latter section being limited almost exclusively to the former. The instruments she used were the photographic camera and the video camera with which she proceeded to organize the preparations to document the items faced with the imminent announced demolition. She chose to make the provisions she considered necessary and she went to the site to gather data which she then processed using the technological tools which she normally worked with. It is very probable that if the threat of disappearance, which effectively took place, had never existed, then perhaps this project which the artist created as the result of the overwhelming feeling of loss she experienced upon learning of the demolition, would never have happened. She associated the demolition with the fading away of the world of childhood, a world in itself, and with a kind of death or with many deaths which were linked to each other by this event. Although this event is external, that is, not controlled by her, it becomes initially a possibility which she investigates not only with the intention of recuperating but of fixing in her memory images of her concern which finds itself affected by an occurrence which takes place beyond her power of decision. This is not a simulation, we are dealing with a real event that no one and nothing can stop, and in which involvement is limited but at the same privileged since it allows the exploring of an area where entry is forbidden for all outside personnel. This is an aspect to keep in mind since the inventory she creates and its corresponding set of images could not have been made if were not for the facilities she was offered and which obviously were favorable in the creation of this project. The difficulty in entering the site is a circumstance which must also be taken into account when contemplating the origin of this project given its uniqueness.
The first measure adopted, before beginning the work process, consisted of an examination of the area and a description of its contents. A classification method similar to that used in botany or archeology was employed to organize the existing elements and to know what was available. Nevertheless the inventory was affected by the nearness in time of the demolition of the factory building and which was scheduled to take place shortly. The disappearance of this symbol of the industrial development of the city and of its factory architecture was beyond doubt decisive in interesting the artist in this urban landscape and led to her decision to visit the site with photographic and video equipment to capture the passive and active aspects of what was there, as well as its disappearance among the excavating equipment and the wrecking-cranes. The buildings, machines, and furniture were torn down slowly in the persistent rain of grey days which covered the city with wetness. The artist witnessed a large part of the events, as evidenced by the material she compiled which constitutes a wonderful source of documents for anyone who wants to reconstruct the history of the factory or of the industry of the Basque country, and even any fragment of the history of the city and its society. Obviously, though, this was not at any moment the final purpose; her work would more likely be comparable to that of a writer who researches a place or places where the action will take place and become reality, and in which the plot becomes part of the landscape, the environment, or simple space with serves as the context. The images captured speak of the initial experience of the artist and help to explain the breadth of the exhibition which only shows one part of this process, as normally occurs.
The central part of the project is occupied by the demolition which can be understood as explosion, in a real or figurative sense, despite the fact that the system used was not that of controlled explosion, as is usually employed many times in great urban centers. Instead a much slower demolition technique, almost manual, was used, involving excavating equipment which acted at the site as if it were a series of strange giants or dinosaurs which fattened themselves on the rocks and debris. The artist has captured the fall which was a slow and awkward action, among the wreckage and debris which piled up mercilessly just like edible filth for birds of prey. The sense of devastation and death, so contagious on the scene and beyond it, through the simple act of contemplation, is one of the causes that allow us to sense the beauty of destruction, as has tried to be communicated through the images that are exhibited here, and that belong to the past, both historic, that is property of a collective memory, and genetic, that is to say belonging to an individual memory. In that sense, the association that Louise Bourgeois makes between memory and architecture, comparing the action of the former "The attraction of the ruins is commonly associated with the fascination offered by that which overwhelms us with it power of negation", with that of architecture in all of its dimensions is favorable for the relationship Marisa González establishes between the bread factory in Bilbao and her own origins. Louise Bourgeois states that memory acts as the architect of a project, drawing and building up, storing all of the data that is captured, turning itself into imagination when it reactivates production14. This relationship is made evident in her work because in the majority of her installations the architectural aspect carries out the unmistakable function of wrapping or covering, like a house, a coat, a second body, that protects and isolates from the aggressions of the outside world while at the same time locking in and imprisoning. The double meaning of her architectural displays is inevitable as evidenced by the patterns she creates and by the objects and the furnishings she places in their interior. Her closed spaces are perfectly distinguishable from each other but they have in common the fact that they are in turn replicas of individual cells in which a wandering self takes natural refuge and in that they shelter from the stormy world of objects of delicate memory whose fragility is paradoxically externalized among the walls of its own fortification.
The symbolic character that industrial architecture has acquired for Marisa González in this project allows for also establishing a kind of link with the symbolism Louise Bourgeois attributes to a woman´s body in which eyes and other orifices are turned into windows and mirrors. This identification of the human body with houses has been repeated time and time again in her works beginning with "Personnages" in the 40´s, in "Lairs", dens made of plaster, from the 60´s, in "Maisons fragiles"from the 70´s, and in "Cells" from the 80´s and 90´s. With all of this she is not trying to avoid the difference between the forms of architecture which she makes reference to in case after case, but rather affirm that the sudden interest in the architectural aspect of the former is due to the spectacular projection that the latter has seen made possible. If we view Marisa González´s work as a whole, this relationship between the human body and houses is also present between the human aspect she confers to dolls, lemons, strawberries, and the representing of spaces architecturally defined. It is not by chance that Louise Bourgeois states that memory is a form of architecture in that we compile associations in the same way bricks are piled one on top of the other to make a building. The mixture of feelings for the ruins of the factory and its components along with the environment surrounding it is the result of the work carried out prior to and after the conception of the project. More than two years of preparation and work on the contents confirm the degree of full-time dedication on the part of the artist who chose to participate actively in the process until its conclusion. The photographic records that she has accumulated from the very beginning and the extensive documentation she has collected on the subject which she has based her work on are only one part, although essential, of the developments the processing experience invested in the production exhibited here has suffered over the course of time
One of the most emblematic architectural figures from the very beginning has been the silo which she has physically transported to the exhibition hall in order to rescue a real element who material status provokes a series of subtle reactions in understanding the identifications it is subject to. The silo is a geometrical cylinder three meters in diameter, two meters eighty tall, used to store the flour. In the moving process carried out for the exhibition, the silo has become a kind of cell or booth comparable to some of Louise Bourgeois metaphorical constructions like those mentioned earlier. Its monolithic presence invites us to compare it to the cells produced by Absalón and in particular "Céllule n.2-Réalisation habitable" (1992-93), a large cylinder with a narrow entrance door and two windows, and "Céllule n.5" (1992) created as a prototype, and to the compact cylinder with a single opening very similar in shape to the silo that Mona Hauton used to create the video-installation "Corps étranger" (1994). In place of the "eye" that stares up from the ground in that exhibit, Marisa González has hung on the curved wall the dial of a clock she rescued from the demolition which analogically evokes an industrial period of time which is continually recycled. It is not a digital clock, but rather the ancient clock from the mill whose needles and metallic tick-tock marks the melancholic rhythm of a decline, which also corresponds to a more generalized decadence coinciding with the end of the century.
The ingredients that make up the exhibition were defined from the beginning because the artist structured her exhibit keeping in mind the area where it would take place. These elements clearly demonstrate the ordering of a series of ideas that relates data and organizes a syntax of effects whose reach is unpredictable despite the existence of control and the absence of arbitrary elements. The spaces of the exhibit have been constructed maintaining a sense of unity that precedes each of the installations which in turn constitute a paradigm of personal and collective memory not far removed from the patterns of industrialization of the country over the course of a century. The coincidences in different aspects are noted immediately through the identifications which are made virtually possible. The circuit can be oriented from any of its sections or stops but it is best to keep in mind that the collapse occupies the center of the exhibition. Even though there was no explosion, as has been described previously, but rather a slow knocking down of the corresponding buildings the truth is that its symbolism is such that it appears if an explosion did take place judging by the wreckage and the debris from rocks, bricks, chunks of building, iron bars, tubes and other remnants resulting from the intervention of wrecking equipment and cranes. All collapses can be assigned the tragic element identified with a disappearance, an end, a closing-up. Death takes over the site until it is expelled by the present which builds over it. The strength of death is such that it is made invincible and its negativity conquers even the miracle of life.
Evil breaks out when the threat of extinction and deliberate disasters enter the scene in spite of the beauty that the architectural images and the demolition suggest throughout the process carried out until its conclusion. The ways things occurs here correspond to some of the conventional descriptions of the sublime but the essential ingredients come from destruction, whose initial moment contains the fall. This movement is what causes the presence of non-existence in everything that was visible until then. It is accompanied by a cloud-filled sky, an intermittent rain, and a grey atmosphere covering a landscape in disorder which makes the change produced irreparable. The expiration of things is shown with an outpouring of symbols that affect and direct our feelings. Evil is definitely the artistic and aesthetic value which comes into play and determines the validity or not of the images exhibited here and the installations that have been placed in the same space. This element or aesthetic category is a concept from which the semantic interpretation of the remaining complements is organized.
The work procedure chosen includes the organization of folders, to give a name to the sections that make up the path, into which the inventory of the material used is added in accordance with the provisions made during the visit to the site. But first it is a good idea to clarify that the theme is not architecture for architecture´s sake, nor that architecture is at present frequently chosen as a recurring photographic subject, but the value for the artist any loss acquires individually when it refers to something she considers one of her belongings and which might disappear. The work she carried out implies a series of events in which the artist is personally involved in such a way that the result cannot be considered separate from her. The suggested comparison with Louise Bourgeois is very appropriate because this artist´s work has always been associated with her life, and in that she cannot understand art if it is not based on this encounter between self and not-self, and the other which is devoured by the former in an attempt to make the world only its world and nothing else. For her the artistic experience begins with this subjectivation of the sensitive world in which she explores the effects of the aesthetically created although she recognizes that her work is linked to the new technologies and their tools.
The viewing of the exhibition is completed, as mentioned previously, through a closed circuit, in which you move from one place to another as if you were passing through dwelling or passages conceived of as sequences of a narrative being acted out. The artist has carried out an attempt at reproducing moving scenes, in other words, those in which it is possible to imagine an event which manages to present itself in both static images as well as in those that are moving. Her expressed will has been to reconstruct the expiration process of what happened in images in which duration is shown as an unending state of transition of what exists or what is made to exist. The project has been configured keeping in mind the four major chapters or sections which the exhibition has been divided into. Each one occupies an area which can be adapted to the contents exhibited and ready for its articulation. The route includes four stops or stations : the Landscapes, the Archives, the Silo, and the Demolition all of which have been created as installations, even the landscapes, which are built around photography modified by scientific logarithms and which are equivalent to creating scenes which alternate the virtual image and the material object. The landscapes contribute especially to placing the events in context while the archives which the artist has named "Lamps" have been set up especially to create an environment which adds drama to its contents. The silo is a metaphor for the industrial architecture which admits the symbolic connotations derived from its physical aspect and from the clock which keeps time in its interior over a photograph of papers hanging from the wall with different annotations from the repair shop. The last element, the demolition shown through three videos which project onto three adjacent walls in a dark room to surround the spectator with the wrecking-crane, the debris of rocks, bricks, chunks of buildings, that cover the surface following the rhythm of the fall set by the demolition. The work, however, also deals with the procedures and means used to communicate the aesthetic experience corresponding to the feeling that is desired to be induced, reformulating the value of the new, of the structural, and the contribution a given message can offer. This can lead us to give priority to the reflection that Renato de Fusco offers when he points out the relationship that exists between the originality of an "aesthetic message" and the information that it contains, so that the greater one is the greater its efficiency and value will be "providing we admit the existence of a code shared by the artist and the receiver, a code determined by the social and cultural environment common to both"15.
The first of the exhibition spaces contains the digitally processed photographs of the room located in front of the facade of the building, all of which have been previously put in order from the exterior to the interior, from the outside to the inside, imitating the trip the eye would take. The building is a conglomerate of constructions very popular in their time which are lost in the urban jungle. These images have the power to situate us and introduce us to the place little by little while invoking the principle of reality which however had been falsified so that this reality will disappear and give way to a virtual landscape. The artist has made use of the technique of unfolding or opening up which she has used as the model to proceed to the decoding of the data which are initially received and in this way approach another possible form of creating reality. This action, which has been possible thanks to the digital manipulation of the images she selected to be altered in accordance with their capacity of meaning, translates the process of subjectivation of images taken from reality whose documentary or testimonial value fades away unit it disappears. Throughout this conversion process the artist has made discoveries which affect the transformation of the models which the camera had captured in situ. The technique of unfolding is a resource which has allowed the artist to change formats, transform spaces, design the simulation, and multiply unendingly certain motifs which appear on the objectivised surface. The operation has been preceded by an attempt at deconstructing the image identified with a kind of decomposition itself through which a few elements are rescued to strengthen them and proceed to their repetition. This last act can be identified with the concept of a series, as was mentioned at the beginning of this text, on which she has based the majority of her work such as the series dedicated to "La Negra (The Black Woman)", to "La Violación (Rape)", to "La Violencia (Violence)", or to the dolls and which solve the lack of narrative continuity as well as the impossibility of avoiding fragmentation.
The photographs represent exteriors and interiors of the factory as well as some artefacts that have the appearance of large sculptures and whose isolation especially reinforces their unusualness even though they are simply machines or merely part of the furnishings no longer useful. And so in this way through the photographic image a kind of inventory is created through which we are put back in the original context where the project exhibited here began. Nevertheless the artist´s intention is not to lead us to a real place but to organize virtually visible spaces in the direction opposite to that which presumably would be taken. The semantic load that these images transport sensitively should be attributed to a great extent to the corresponding digitization which they have been subjected to. But it is also transmitted by the desolation that invades abandoned places which the camera captures and by the loneliness of the spaces which is transmitted in all its gravity. The situation was that of an extremely rapid transition lasting a very short time due to the speed with which the destruction, a result of the economic speculation of the land. This contributes to our considering these images as privileged in that they could not have been taken by even those who passed by the factory and its surroundings on a regular basis due to the location of this factory group within the city and which made its dimensions imperceptible. The variations that the artist has captured are innumerable and this provides solidity to the images which were chosen in the end and in many cases mean sacrificing some which deserved to be in the exhibition. The syntax that these spaces articulate amongst themselves reminding us of their common origin is what imposes its logic and determines its meanings. The distortion and deformation of reality accomplished through its digital presentation is what determines in turn the power of meaning that these spaces take on in the audiovisual chaos due to the demographic density of images which co-habit on a daily basis in our everyday contexts.
The photographs that Marisa González has taken for this exhibition are photographs of architecture which Terence Riley16 distinguishes from architectural photography, that is, done by professionals. The former is photography which derives from the discovery of architecture by artists. According to this art critic, towards the end of the 19th century, the photography that professional photographers practiced in this area had as its final purpose the documenting of an architect´s work. A change was produced in the second half of the 20th century as evidenced among others by the photographs of industrial buildings done by Bernd and Hilla Becher in 1996. The recent exhibition organized by Gloria Moure for the Centro Andaluz de Arte (Andalusian Art Center) in Seville, included works which are very representative of this type of photography which views architecture as a model to which Machado´s concept of hyper photography can be applied. Works by Balthasar Burkhard, Andreas Gursky, Gunnard Asplund, Thomas Ruff, Candid Höfer, Günther Forg, Jeff Wall and Hiroshi Sugimoto were included; works in which the artist moves from documentation to creation17 depending on the intentions he wishes to display. However, it is with Günther Forg that Marisa González would be able to establish a greater degree of affinity. Forg in an interview held because of this exhibition18 states that his photography is never abstract and that it is marked by both the personal and the emotional element. He refuse to have his photography interpreted as a kind of testimony which he replaces with a discreet approach to the model and when he explains his procedures the comparison seems to be reinforced above all when he says that his photographs are made as snapshots and show an uncomfortable and deteriorated aspect of the buildings.
The Archives which the artist refers to as the installation of the lamps is a reading room in which the word takes on a fundamental role in that it narrates and names. The word written on the ground is an intangible sign made of light and has been extracted from the annual reports of the company´s Board of Directors. The action takes place at the turn of the century and more specifically in the environment of the IGM : the state of the company is mentioned, the labor conditions that affect the workers, the threat of a general strike, and the economic crisis that characterizes Europe dominated by the breakout of war. In a time which is becoming more and more separated from the act of writing, the presence of the written word recovers a function which it is often denied allowing us to comprehend that we write to communicate something to those who are not present. These latter are the senders and the receivers of the written word and live together in the loneliness of the page temporarily. On the back wall of the dark room the open pages of the stamped family documents of the workers are projected in which the name, the age, the marital status, and the identity number are recorded. The turning of these pages is synchronized with the reading out loud of the aforementioned information by anonymous voices. The dramatic climate resulting from this staging is underlined even more by the stationary words projected on the surface by the lamps from the factory which is the origin of the theme of the exhibition. It is a kind of File Room in which one can enter freely under the dim light of the lamps mentioned earlier, although, paradoxically, this space represents the exercise of economic power as control and repression. The artist was interested in denoting the existence of a narrative strain that favors memory and history neither of which she tries to elude.
Through the two openings of the cylindrical structure of the silo we can examine the interaction between a virtual space and a real place, a space that represents a partial view of the inside of the factory and which is designed to attract the viewer. The only real element that this space contains is the clock which adds the movement of time to a static element such as the aforementioned structure. This structure becomes a key element of interest in deciphering the story told by this descriptive photography in that it goes beyond the documentary or testimonial aspect it can be attributed with. I am referring to a silo from the inside of the factory which is different from those that make up the great metallic structure located in the open air and which reaches a height of seven stories and whose fall leads to the symbolic downfall of the group of buildings which make up the group. The artist not only captured the event with the photographic camera but also with the video camera which she used to trap motion as can be seen in her video installation where she has tried to synchronize the images on the three screens present in that area of the exhibition. Taking pictures in situ requires a prior examination of the site and it is here that the creative experience begins since we are not dealing only with the gathering of data or the organization of an inventory, something which would not have been necessary to do in situ. This site was not just any site, but rather a space apart, that is more or less on the outskirts, but physically located in the very center of the city. Only by wandering through the labyrinth of its buildings could she discover for herself the various surfaces in which the traces of the missing could be seen in the state of abandonment of the places touched by the threat of disappearance. The painting "Die Ruine" (1994) by Sigmar Polke seems to sum up the idea of a before and an after that is ending; in it we can see a fragment of a neoclassical facade of a city building whose decadent state could be attributed to a fire or to the action of time and the wearing down effect it brings. But more than this is it a defense of aesthetic sentiment whose darkness favors the rareness and the irrationality which characterize it. Baudrillard alludes to its need, faced with the desperate attempt at making sense, to make everything visible, explicit, warning us of the danger that meaning may overwhelm us and we will perish in it19. The format of Polke´s painting (500 x 300) seems to reinforce the symbolic aspect of the representation of ruins, an idea which fits the narrative of Marisa González´s project since she is dealing with ruins caused by the destruction of a building and whose rapid replacement eliminates their becoming a monument. The artist makes use of hyper photography which she understands as a result of digitally processed photography through which the presumed objectiveness of photography is cast aside allowing her to create the poetic opening-ups achieving a similar effect.
In the work the artist presents, the process of the demolition of the factory, the capturing of the demolition on film, and the development of the project of this exhibition constitute three sequences whose continuity make them inseparable. Nonetheless, the razing of all the buildings taken together becomes, because of its impressiveness, the principle on which the argument of the work is founded. The culminating moment is seen in the slow falling of the silos, and in the movement produced by the wrecking-cranes and the excavating equipment. The spectacle of destruction is prolonged in time while disorder reigns and it appears possible to transport onself to a world in ruins. The landscapes of the destruction are of an unearthly beauty only comparable to the melancholy present in some images from romantic paintings and poetry, timeless, and in which life is represented as archeologically inseparable from death. The vividness of the negation represented by the debris piled up on the ground, blocking the way, before being devoured by the machines, takes on an extensive symbolism that corroborates the power of the image and the intensity derived from its immediacy. Jeff Wall, comparing dirtiness and cleanliness to the raw and the cooked, in relation to some photographs of architecture dealing with cleanliness and household chores, explains that he likes his room to be orderly, just like a garden in Kyoto, but he adds that he also like dirty sinks, abandoned things, or dried up puddles full of sediment20. The pictures taken by Marisa González take on in these landscapes the dimension they deserve, because the negation that they incorporate in representing the architectural destruction of an expired world exercises an attraction to which you can hardly offer resistance since it brings closer the chasms of artistic and aesthetic experience that the artist and the public share.

1. Arlindo Machado, Machina e Imaginario, Pontificia Universidade Catolica, Sao Paulo, 1993.
2. Paul Virilio, Aesthetics of Disappearance, Anagrama, Barcelona, 1988.
3. Dieter Daniels, Passatges inaginatius. Art. Connectivity. Multimedia. Conference on Art and Technology, La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona 21-22 January 2000.
4. Stephan Morawski, Fundamentals of Asethetics, Peninsula, Barcelona, 1976.
5. Pierre Francastel, Art and Technology in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Ed. Debate, Madrid 1990.
6. Ganni Vattimo, The End of Modernity, Ed. Gedisa, Barcelona, 1986
7. Román Gubern, Electronic Eros, Taurus, Madrid, 2000.
8. Edmund Couchot, Art in the Electronic Era, conference presentation, Barcelona, 1997.
9. Jacques Derrida, Marges de la Philosophie, Ed. Minuit, Paris, 1972
10. Paul Virilio, cita.
11. Javier Echevarría, The Lords of the Aire. Telepolis and the Third Environment, Ed. Destino, Barcelona, 1999.
12. Javier Echevarría, cita.
13. Michel Foucalt, Des espaces autres, conference presentation, March 14,1967.
14. Louise Bourgeois, exhibition and catalogue, Memory and Architecture, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, November 14, 1999-Febrero 14, 2000.
15. Renato de Fusco, Architecture as a Mass Medium. Notes for an Architectural Semilogy, Anagrama, Barcelona, 1970.
16. Terence Riley, Architecture as a Subject in Architecture without Shadow, Gloria Moure, edition, Andallusian Center of Contemporary Art, Sevilla and CCCB, Barcelona.
17. Jeorg Bader on Balthasar Burkhardt in Architecture without Shadow.
18. Günther Forg interviewed by Iñaki Abalos and Luis Enguita en Architecture without Shadow.
19. Jean Baudrillard in The Other by Himself, Anagrama, Barcelona, 1988.
20. Jeff Wall in Architecture without Shadow.

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