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JLB: Of course.
RLH: So, Pan-Anthem carpeted, Pulse Room not. And that’s
perfect because all the little bulbs reflect on the floor, which
looks lovely. That’s over there, people come in and go out,
and on top of that it’s going to have sound, like it did it in
Bogota—this piece always has sound now—but it’s quiet,
unless you want me to do a performance at the inauguration,
in which case we could do one with a lot of noise, but
if not, it’s very subtle... And then, you leave Pulse Room and
you come across a piece with large-scale shadows. It’s going
to be called Al Aire (2015), which means Airborne [sic.].
We’re going back a little to this idea of the atmospheric text,
which we alluded to with Babbage. Now, you’re seeing three
projectors that come from my studio, but we’re not happy
with them yet because they’re vertical and I think after a
month or two they’re going to get damaged. We might be able
to borrow some very powerful projectors again for that whole
wall. As you can see in the image you have, the image doesn’t
cover the whole wall. Here what would be spectacular...
JLB: To cover the whole wall.
RLH: To cover the whole wall, and cover it not with three
projectors, but with two. Al aire is going to be a world
premiere, though it’s very much based on Airborne. If you
see Airborne in Virginia, it’s very similar. The difference
is that if it’s a triptych—or a diptych, it doesn’t matter—the
text appearing on the screens comes from Notimex; from the
EFE agency; from Reuters; from Alternet, which is alternative
news, that is, news that isn’t aligned with the mainstream;
and, there’s one more, I can’t remember which… So current
news appears on the screen because we’re connected via internet
to Reuters or Notimex, to what’s happening in the moment.
The only thing you see is the news with the logo of the
respective agencies, and when you cross in front of it your
shadow is projected, creating swirls of smoke that cover the
whole news item and render it atmospheric and turbulent.
JLB: Like in the beginning.
RLH: Like in the beginning or like… Do you remember the
piece in the Laboratorio Alameda, the projection of shadows in
the hall? It’s like that but with text instead of particles of smoke.
JLB: How beautiful.
RLH: Finally, you go into Zoom Pavilion (2015), a series of
twelve projectors that the MUAC already has and that project
a mosaic on three walls, with four projections on each
one. When you go in there are twelve industrial cameras
and the only thing you see is the raw image from the twelve
cameras—but huge, and, as you enter, the systems of facial
recognition detect your face and zoom in. Your face is then
projected on an architectural scale. Then, if someone else
suddenly enters, what the camera does is zoom out so that
your face and his or hers are included in the same photogram.
The transformation of these two screens is constantly
zooming in and zooming out on the facial features of the
people passing in front, and what’s interesting about this is
that we’re not conducting a surveillance of the subject here
—which is always the case—but here it’s a surveillance of
relationship, of the meeting, because the cameras don’t just
zoom in on your face but on the relationship of your face
with others.
JLB: On any face.
RLH: Yes, in effect: if you two are there and are sharing the
experience, your faces will appear in the same square. And if
you move closer to each other, the camera zooms in to include
both your faces. The result is that if someone comes with
their husband or wife or whoever, and they’re very close or
embracing, their image is amplified extraordinarily. If, on
the other hand, you come alone and you’re walking, your
face will appear in relation to that of the other people walking
in that area. It’s a very vertiginous and fun piece, but at
the same time a terrifying one, because it’s the surveillance
of relationship.
JLB: It goes against freedom of association.
218 RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER, JOSÉ LUIS BARRIOS & ALEJANDRA LABASTIDA
CONVERSATION ON THE LAYOUT OF THE EXHIBITION 219