CONTRA LA INERCIA AGAINST INERTIA - granada cultura

Alexandre Trauner designed for the film set of The
Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960), but converted into
the scenario of strange episodes that break the greyness
and Taylorism typical of this space (Privado,
2009 [p. 72]; El becario, 2010 [p. 70]). In The break
(2010) [p. 69] an office seems colossal in comparison
to the tiny residential quarter beside which it has been
seamlessly represented, sharing an impossible space
in the physical realm, but one that is possible and
indeed palpable concerning the distribution of time
typical of our productive model. Can the inhabitants
of such dwellings take on such colossal tasks? Can
the workers in this office find any rest in such minute
houses? The theme of technological utopia appears
once more in association with the workplace. In the
series entitled Sizes (2010) we can see enormous
computers that appear to be used merely as seats for
two beautiful secretaries (their boss, his arms and
legs growing and shrinking in a ridiculous, magical
fashion, seems to be saying the bigger the better).
McLuhan’s communication and media utopia is
reduced to scene of engrossed veneration (Prácticas,
2011) or unnoticed dehumanisation (Cables, 2010
[p. 71]), when there is not a devastating view of the
role of mass media in the formation of a distorted
perception of the world in general and armed conflict
in particular (Internacional, 2008 [p. 81]; Breaking
news, 2009 [p. 84]).
Finally, there is one canvas that fascinates me in a
special manner. Its title is, indeed, La tierra prometida
[The Promised Land] (2010) [p. 105], and
it shows a broad lunar landscape where a curious
group of crewmen has just landed – a delegation of
pioneers that pose for the camera just like a large
family on a day of celebration. The spaceship (directly
inspired by Apollo 11), the helmets like spherical
fish bowls, and the unrealistic street clothes they
are wearing provide the image with a simultaneously
amusing, nostalgic and profoundly melancholic air.
The painting’s title appears to refer to the state of
Israel and its policies of territorial occupation, but
nothing in the image mentions this as such, so that
I cannot avoid linking the atmosphere of the scene
with Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles (1950).
This old science-fiction text and Pomet’s delightful
image synthesize the high point of modernity and its
utter falsehood by giving expression to a satire both
pitiless and brilliant. The imagery of the conquest of
space (in imitation of the conquest of the American
West) fuses the constantly renewed technological
utopia of the welfare state and the colonizing policy
branded with fire in the American collective unconscious
– the epitome of the western socio-economic
model from the 19th century to the present. These
lunar pioneers must be the same as those driving the
impossible hybrid of covered wagon and enormous
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