“Objects are closer
than they appear”:
The rearview mirror...
and Diego Gutiérrez

Toward the end of the twentieth century, contextual aesthetics gained momentum; some attempted to make the urban scenario their object of observation, although, by the same token, one result was an exercise of reconnection with the processes of art: a radical option which seeks to alter the social function of art and of its means of production. From this perspective, the concept of the work of art was substituted by networks of collective action, and the artist was transformed into a type of agent of articulation.
The approach of Six Documentaries and a Film subscribes to this attempt to essay other relationships and mediations which tend to disjoin the grain of art circuits and leave behind the notion of the isolated creator, absorbed within the spectacle of art. The first of these relationships is composed of an affective chain comprised by a community of creators which intervenes in the project under a system of kinship and enjoyment, removed from power dynamics. In turn, the old concept of the artist is rejected in favor of that of creator as mutable and as connector of initiatives and encounters. Concurrently, “el despacho” is born, an instance of hospitality which sheds the old notion of the studio, occupying a space in the office of a skyscraper, a home, or even, in the absence of an actual physical space, its only purpose is to serve as a mobile and mutable instrument.
Additionally, a new relationship is established on behalf of the viewing public towards the concept of a work of art, upon its involvement as contingent of authorship or as provider of significance. In summary, art or the artistic, goes on to become the binding force between dissimilar individuals. The result is an aesthetic of the experienced, an ethic of closeness, an art of shared processes.
The initiative is launched by Diego Gutiérrez, whose formative background in the Netherlands enabled a link with a structure of networks, RAIN (Rijksakademie Artist Initiatives Network), and with the creation of a stable team of collaborators: Jeannine Diego, given to the exercise of narrative and synthesis, as well as Kees Hin, professor and advisor to the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, with a background in documentary filmmaking. A grain of communities under constant transformation, replacing the idea of the local community and the hegemonic art center. As well, the project has involved visual arts students with whom the artist has established contact, such as Aldo Guerra from Tijuana, Baja California; or professional artists such as Patricio Larrambebere from Argentina, and Linda Bannink and Bibo from the Netherlands. The parameters of individual contribution become confused within the process, enabling the product to come into its own, rising above any singular individuality.
While on its exterior, the urban setting is transformed into an imagined community, within its interior, interpersonal networks materialize and become working circuits involving processes of intense encounters and the exchange of experiences. A dynamic sense of community is produced, , giving way to terms derived from Latin “communis”, words such as: “common”, “communal”, “communicate”, “communion”, and even “incommensurate”, all of which are present within the project. If one should ask why incommensurate, the answer is to be found in the immensity of an initiative which is never truly completed; a project in which each process is only one link, such that there exists no concept of a final work, such that its only constant is the lived experience, removed from the dictates of critique.
In defiance of the image industry, “el despacho” uses the video as an instrument controlled by the human hand, with a sense of skill that continues over into the editing process, with tangible materiality, as with a drawing. The video camera is transformed into a generator of distances and frames, rhythms and frictions, besieged by intimacy. The directness of anecdotal discourse evidences the will to increase reception.
The genre of portraiture and pose is part of an age-old pictorial tradition continued through photography, popular street photography included. It is within this lineage that the six testimonials can be situated, like a cycle of dynamic portraits, with the urban landscape as background. “Tita”, the story of a domestic worker transplanted to the urban chaos of Mexico City, an ode to kinship and to the heedless spirit of someone who has inherited the resilience of an ancient matriarchy from Oaxaca. The “Super Amigos”, an example of parallel solidarities like football soccer or the celebration of the image: elements which allow the members of a sign-making workshop to overcome the adversities of urban life. The notes of “El Rey” function as a musical ground to the proud bond which several generations of rowers from Xochimilco express for their land and their traditions. As does modernity, the dead return and drift among the channels and islands, those last vestiges of the pre-Hispanic city within a lake.
“Hernando” brings us close to a young anti-corruption entrepreneur, who reaffirms his dreams on the tennis court, and through his contact with the heirs of the future. Moreover, “Jorge” is the cool drama of the young man haunted by the image of his murdered father, whose story brings us closer to a world forgotten by the future, in a trip suffused with alcohol, speed and disenchantment. In contrast stands the protagonist of “Carlos”, who, despite his physical handicap, defies all obstacles with vital resolve, with a determination preserved amidst a nucleus of spontaneous affective relations and, above all, on account of the pride of being different. The film, “The Roofman”, is the fiction of the shared megalopolis.Six Documentaries and a Film validates its own creative process by means of human contact, in the same way that its methods of exhibition propose different dynamics. Far from the notion of an edition of numbered copies of a video in art, far from the fetish of the object, “el despacho” centers its most recent project on a product capable of capturing instants of life, while fulfilling its commitment to communication in making use of certain museums and public spaces, and at the same time incorporating the circuits available through public televised programming. The task of distribution is reinforced through hand-to-hand circulation, in addition to a relatively large production of duplicate copies.
“El despacho” combines originally opposing urban coordinates and distant conglomerations of life, which seldom touch one another. In turn, it connects heterogeneous audiences with dissociated mediators. The basic purpose is to bring these disperse elements together through video, inasmuch as it is to overcome the terror of coming into contact with others, to draw nearer with the camera, in search of the internalization which allows for the recognition of the other as part of the quotidian biography, to acknowledge the small great occurrence. To put aside the exclusive and the hermetic of art, in favor of the exceptionality of the everyday.