
INSTALLATION
Mexico City
30 C-Prints 60×60
Break Dancers:
Agni Won
b-zey
Funky Maya
soulB
b-zey
Photos:
Jair Cabrera
Juma Hauser
2010
No es lo que quiero is a novel told in different ways. On one level the plot unfolds as a three part sound-installation around a video projection of a city panorama; other elements of the fictitious story are visualised in a multipart photo installation mounted on the floor. The main concern of the project is an examination of the construction and visualisation of narratives and their impact on the body, everyday performance and thus, social and political realities. Realised in Mexico City during the year of the nation‘s independence anniversary, the project is structurally drawing upon two main sources:
The Telenovela has been having an enormous influence on society throughout the last decades. From the late seventies on, the recognition of these effects has been leading to an understanding of archetypes of a collective unconscious nowadays serving to educate public imagined communities with the help of Telenovelas. Those concepts have been traditionally based upon so-called value grids triggering popular patterns of affection in order to communicate social problems.
The second source is derived from the city itself and reflects its structure/s from large to small scale. The perhaps most ubiquitous structural element, the (remains of) grid layouts, is still organising large parts of local societies in their everyday movement.
Close black and white areal photographs show persons moving on a Plaza‘s floor. Moving close to the ground, the often twisted, seemingly falling, communicating bodies belong to a group of break-dancers, improvising in/with the space. The photo installation consists of 20-30 pieces (ca. 40x40cm each) mounted on the floor of the exhibition venue where they are rhythmically, at times densely, arranged in the space, so that the viewer gets almost in need of touching the surrounding material floor as well in order to engage with the pictures/scenes.
A projection screen at the rear shows a city panorama taken from a viewing platform and through a glass front. From there three different stories can be heard through separate speakers. Starting with a drastic attempt of an actress to escape her Telenovela, the stories reflect the histories of three female characters – between life and death, dreams and potential getaways.



