ISSP 2019 Publication - Photography and the World

people open up to transformation. The action is
really important because it is everything, but then
what happens after is not that important for me. It’s
important what happens in them, but not what I get
from that, in terms of physical work or imprints or
documentation.
053
If you want to multiply that
experience, at least up to a
certain extent, through documenting
it - how do you feel
about the process of documenting
itself? Do you think
it takes a bit of immersion
away from those people who
are directly participating?
That’s a big question for me. That’s very related
to the documentation of the work and how it
is narrated. And the thing is, I don’t think they
have to be documented. Documentation should
be very invisible because it shapes how things are
happening. But I keep forgetting everything I do. I
forget and forget and forget... And I go back to my
projects I did maybe 5 years ago and I don’t remember
the details of them. So I have to have a way to
remember the knowledge that was produced during
Should I embrace doubts?
earlier projects. And it’s not the action, it’s just all
the thoughts, the strategies, the things and all the
relationships that were created. And the tensions.
054
You’ve said that on some occasions
you think documenting
your art in the form of a film,
but rather than film the action
you would document a reenactment.
That would mean that
in the original work the action
would be a central result.
Then the action would be like if you were making
a film but never filmed it. You did all the scenes:
the horses were running, fireworks were exploding,
people were flying. But you never film it. What do you
do when creating a film? You have to shoot each shot
seven times, so it is never live, always fiction. For me
filming a reenactment would be related to that and in
fact, would hardly have anything visually in common
with the original action. It would be about documenting
the knowledge and the information that was
important in the original action, and not about the
real experience. The reenactment would be about the
knowledge that was produced through the experience.
How do you know when
something is just personal
therapy and not a project?