Within the framework of the meetings L'Oeil Pense de la Maison de l'Amérique latine, Paris, there will be a talk with Pablo Reinoso, creator of the installation "On the other side", in front of the MUNTREF Hotel de Inmigrantes, Buenos Aires. In addition, a film about the artwork, produced by BIENALSUR-UNTREF Media, will be projected uninterruptedly from 16 to 23 September.
This activity is carried out in collaboration with IESA, International School of Cultural and Art Market Professions.
About "On the other side":
In the words of Pablo Reinoso “this work is a metaphor for immigration / emigration phenomena under way on the planet and in the future.”
Arrival/departure, entrance/exit, inside/outside: these are all binary terms that allude, concisely, to one of the conditions inherent to contemporary life experience: the displacement arising from different kinds of travel, migration and exile. Displacement is also etched into the memory of humanity, whose history can be narrated within the logic of the movements of people, ideas, works and actions.
The inspiration or triggers for this work by Pablo Reinoso can be found in an abandoned dock, the remains of a harbor, estranged from its original purpose, which was to serve a city founded upon rich exchange, as has historically been the case with Buenos Aires, and a TVFrame at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine, in Paris, “on the other side”. The pier is closed, no longer in use, and can only be seen from the other side of the dock. The paradox of this boundary-cum-border condition is made manifest in these elements that also adopt a poetic and metaphorical role in this project. Both cities act as metaphors for the many port cities, harbors and borders which are today part of the itinerant experience of people as they travel, for whatever reason.
A morass of ropes, entangled and attached to pieces of wood, lies along the mooring: have they come unstuck or are they trying to be caught? At the other end, these rough sinews are intertwined with wooden logs of different origins piled into pyramids, collecting on the ground, moving forward in space, crossing the boundaries of the dock platform to slip beyond it. Lying on the other side, they have crossed the border. While some hang in mid-air, others interact or simply remain lying on the ground, or fall away from each other, in this quest to reach the other side.
Wood, ropes and iron are the main materials used for this work: rough wood, its blunt presence redolent of felled tree trunks; iron, symbolizing a grip that will never release, and the ropes which connect, catch and capture. All intertwined to convey a powerful presence of tension and movement projected on the access screen to the Maison.
The log-tree harks back to the tension of a life spent in jeopardy, nature under threat, embodying migrants of both past and the present. Their histories are tainted with the need to find their place through displacing themselves, seeking themselves elsewhere, becoming the otherness of an alien place.
Reinoso explores the assumption that travels, migrations and exiles are key to understanding the dynamics of the contemporary world and the challenge of inhabiting complex times which unfold in real, virtual and imaginary spaces. He uses these locations to show the paradoxical conditions of the present in different ways. Pablo Reinoso’s work fits precisely into the framework of these tensions regarding the ambiguity of meaning, to be exhibited in a real space at the Buenos Aires harbor docks and displayed virtually in Paris. This is a selected space in the middle of the emblematic metropolis, before a particular audience invited to remain still in the presence of suspended movement intent on reorganizing the landscape, slowing down the pace and raising challenging questions about the condition of a present marked by mobility and uncertainty.
It is worth noting that territorial delimitation, where marks, outlines, milestones, fences and walls are set, has always been how individuals living in societies, whether large or small, adapt to create an inside/outside situation. This is used to indicate ownership, belonging or the opposite. Such barriers, which are both physical and symbolic, are intended to define positions, establish points of view, and include and exclude at the same time. From a certain position, from within, we can see other places and people not physically included in our own place, despite the many references and constructions we have about them on both symbolic and imaginary levels.
So many diverse situations prompt significant movements of people forced to move away from their places of origin and migrate elsewhere in the search for better living conditions. However, this leaves them in a complex situation where they are neither here nor there, and between the outside/inside demarcations set by borders, these groups of individuals join a mass of people whom the states have trouble defining: are they migrants, refugees or exiles?
As images tend to take a stand, the way in which they present or represent space, the way it is occupied or empty alludes to the ways in which transit can be enabled or impossibility expressed.
Primarily people in transit, forced transit at times, searching for their place in the world. In a world permeated by an ever-more globalizing narrative, they have no place, revealing the twofold vulnerability of the situation which is as much their own as it is the others’. So the question becomes, on which side of these borders should the point of view be placed? Where is the “us” and where is “the others”? In the ebb and flow of peoples and conflicts, walls, fences and limits become mutually exclusive, particularly within the established logic of the discourse of transnationalization, which has already come up against an instance of paradox.
Fear of the unknown acts as a counterpoint to fear of desolation. The reality of the migrant is always about an open door, a duplicated identity, a multiple situation. Such is the dimension defined by this work: rather than confining meanings, it offers interpretations spiraling out from social and cultural domains to one of reflection, both social and cultural, upon the way in which the world can be inhabited, and in the area of environment as well. Pablo Reinoso’s project can be understood in poetic terms as the pursuit of alternative perspectives capable of permitting a glance at the “other”, with a view to contributing to the creation of a contemporary humanism.
