nadaNuevo2 · book-catalogue Al aire libre /outdoor
It would have been extremely easy to have interpreted the lived landscape axiomatically, praising its magnificence, its singularity, and all those boring sermons that a “classic” consumer of graphic, audiovisual or literary messages wants to see and/or hear. We are all repositories of a landscape, past and present; we feel proud of: landscape grandeur. Thus, armed with the descriptive tricks we carry about with us in our saddlebags, we sense that the stylistic resources to pamper a hypothetical “local” spectator would be almost unlimited. However, right now, that is not the mission we are working on… for we are neither tourists, nor advertisers nor sycophants. Clear the horizon! There are no clearance sales. Therefore, no “two for the price of one”, and no “Week of the Canaries’ Landscape at El Corte Inglés” promotion or anything of the kind. No offence intended. When we accepted the commission, we put forward a couple of basic prerequisites to undertake it with the maximum of guarantees: the whole of this work would (1) not offer comfortable answers or (2) pleasant parallels or tangents to the linear sphere. On the contrary, we would leave countless enigmas and suggestions slit wide open. Beauty is not you, but your essence or condition. “Wherever you go, you will always find yourself” Fernando Pessoa, a friend of no-motion, once said.
A thoughtful entelechy, a logical fiction, a palpable unreality, or sober reverie, have been some of our prerogatives with regards to this superb compendium of diverse ecosystems. Leaving the desert to enter straight into the open sea. We therefore discard outright the recurrent postcard, the propagandistic confession, the recreation, the stylistic exercise or intellectual gymnastics. Handling the landscape of Gran Canaria as if it were an absolute abstraction so that, from the structural foundation, leaving crevices, dunes or specific crags aside, it could be extrapolated to any other place in any other latitude. Technically speaking, we have moved within a system that generates dramatic scenarios rather than images; atmospheres through which we may be able to simulate strict subjective options not exempt from intrinsic responsibility. A landscape acted out by us. A continuous customised cyclorama. An internal workshop open to the public. To cut a long story short, a higher, binding category we are interested in conveying incisively.
Gauged enclaves
Landscape contortions
Mare matrix
there is no other alternative than hibernating