CONTRA LA INERCIA AGAINST INERTIA - granada cultura

Paco Pomet: Demócratas, 2009 oil on
canvas,40 × 30 cm
enlisted soldiers on a day’s leave at a provincial photographer’s
studio, disguised as something that they
very obviously are not? To what sort of aesthetic or
ideological loyalty do these hole diggers pay homage
while so seriously observing a mere ditch in the
ground? Are they investigating a paranormal phenomenon
or is it perhaps the very last cry in the field
of Land Art and the ready-made?). In The Order of
Things (1966) Foucault revealed the cultural circumstantiality
of language and the ideological system
that supports it, giving rise to a relation of mutual
ratification that only some cultural discourses manage
to bring into doubt 8 . It was inevitable for him
then to focus on the work of Magritte, for in many of
his canvasses the direct relation between word and
reference, which had previously allowed us to set
references and situate ourselves in an affective relationship
with an object (let’s say, a painting), was
irreversibly broken 9 . Similarly, whether from the
image or from some point outside it, the meaninglessness
opened up by Paco Pomet has two effects
that can follow one another, combine or exclude
each other depending on the viewer. First, the piece
(whose photographic qualities immediately place us
before the recognizable) becomes dark, and protects
itself or closes in under the disguise of incongruence.
Second, it requires the viewer not only to reconstruct
the meaning of the image, but to do so foregoing all
pre-established categories, inviting him to entertain
a new perspective of reality, a vision far from any
convenient certainty and, therefore, more open, but
probably also more fragile, equivocal and multiple.
IV. short InVentory oF aberratIons
The mechanisms Paco Pomet uses to alter original
images make up one of the most personal and
singular elements of his work. It is normal for the
(8) “The fundamental codes of a culture –
those that govern its language, its perceptive
structures, its changes, its techniques, its
values, the hierarchy of its practices –
establish in advance for each man the
empirical orders with which he will be
affected and within which he will recognise
himself. At the other extreme of thought
the scientific theories or interpretations of
philosophers explain why there is an order
in general, what general law it obeys, what
principle can account for it, the reason why
this order is established and not another.
But between these two very distant regions
there lies a domain which, because of its
role as intermediary, is no less fundamental:
it is more confused, darker and doubtless
less easy to analyse. This is where a
culture, freeing itself imperceptibly from
the empirical orders prescribed for it by its
primary codes, sets up an initial distance
with them, makes them lose their original
transparency, ceases to allow itself to be
passively pierced by them, shakes off its
immediate and invisible powers, frees itself
enough to realise that these orders are
not the only ones possible, nor the best.”
Michel Foucault. Las palabras y las cosas:
una arqueología de las ciencias humanas.
Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2005. p. 5-6.
(9) “The exteriority of graphism and the
plastic, so visible in Magritte, is symbolized
by the non-relation – or, in any case, by
the very complex, very random relation –
between the painting and its title. This long
distance – that prevents one being at one
and the same time both reader and viewer –
ensures the abrupt emergence of the image
above the horizontality of words.” Michel
Foucault. Esto no es una pipa: ensayo sobre
Magritte. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1993. p. 53.
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