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Altazor’s poem says: The Four Cardinal Directions Are
Three: North and South.
JLB: Exactly what are you looking for in terms of what happens
to the visitor?
RLH: It’s too dualistic, but the interpretation of interactive
art has two basic modes: one is the ludic mode, that is,
people say “this is a game”, it’s a bit infantile, a bit of fun, a
special effect, and the other interpretation is that it’s a little
Orwellian, dark, predatory. These two poles don’t actually
exist as such, as there’s great scope within the range of
possibilities offered by interdisciplinarity, which is something
I’m interested in highlighting. In a review in Le Monde,
Christopher Donner said I was a megalodemocrat, that what
interested me was the idea of self-representation to the point
where the piece doesn’t exist without the interaction of the
public, which is true. But it’s also true to say, as Donner hits
upon, that there are problems with this almost emancipatory
idea, as if the interaction of the public, their presence and
activity, were to suddenly create a piece that had greater
value just by being interactive.
JLB: Which is to invest too much enthusiasm in the piece,
don’t you think?
RLH: Sure, exactly. This is a problematic issue because it’s
true that many of my pieces address self-representation,
but the case of rooms 1A and 1B has nothing to do with
this. What we’re doing in these rooms, rather, is working on
questions related to the idea that the artwork is attentive,
conscious and undertakes a police-like tracking of the body.
That is, we’re not looking at technologies of emancipation
but technologies of control, that’s beyond doubt. If we consider
what Snowden discovered or what Wikileaks brings
to light daily, we realize we’re living in Orwell’s panoptical
state, only far beyond what he himself could have imagined,
don’t you think? So, the idea of this section is to put forward
this slightly more dystopian image of the use of technology
by means of a theatrical approach, and all this to wind up
speaking of a certain politics, a politics of detection.
AL: As if there were no means of escape in either of the two
rooms, don’t you agree?
RLH: It’s true, that’s real.
AL: There’s a certain kind of omnipresence: in a romantic
sense, or in the sense of persecution, either way there’s nowhere
to go in either of the two rooms, is there?
RLH: Exactly. Well, in the case of Vicious Circular Breathing
you do have the choice not to go in, and that’s an important
choice in this piece. Actually, I should say I’m sure that in
Mexico we’ll have to restrict entry for minors. I saw people
in Spain taking their children in and I really can’t accept
that. It seems being a father of three has changed me. You
can only get access to that piece if you’re over eighteen and
don’t have a weakened immune system, as we explain in
the warning notice hung outside so people have some basis
on which to decide whether or not to go in.
AL: A warning to the public, good.
RLH: Moving on: at the end of the passage you pass through
this little door and you come across Pan-Anthem (2014), a
work that, as you know, represents global statistics through
national anthems from almost two hundred countries—including
many that are no longer countries (such as Yugoslavia)
and future countries (such as Scotland or Québec). These
national anthems are played through speakers arranged
in columns according to a statistic, and I’d like to convince
you, though I’m open to other possibilities, that we should
do GDP—Gross Domestic Product per capita. When you
enter, there are some laser sensors on the lower part of each
of these columns that tell the computer there’s someone in
front of it, and all the national anthems on that particular
scale begin to sound. If you’re on the left of the piece, you
hear the national anthem of Burkina Faso, Haiti, El Salvador…
and as you walk over to the right you can hear the
slightly more buoyant anthems of other countries, until you
get to the extreme right where you can hear those of Norway,
Qatar, Monaco, etc. It’s a physical as well as symbolic
representation, as the archetype of the national anthem, even
190 RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER, JOSÉ LUIS BARRIOS & ALEJANDRA LABASTIDA
CONVERSATION ON THE LAYOUT OF THE EXHIBITION 191