Land studies project (2010 - 2013)

Land studies is a series of ongoing actions based on language and voice that intend to be a study on the notion of land, using different cultural objects and references from Colombia. For every action, i engage my own body and voice when needed.

Land studies (landscape)
Words cut off a copy of the book
Landless Servant Ed. Panamericana (1998)
Sculpture / projection
2013

Landless Servant is a book written by Eduardo Caballero Calderón in 1954, where he depicts
the unsuccessful efforts of a peasant that wants to buy a piece of land from his landlords to cultivate. But the social, political, economical and cultural conditions of the context -a non stated civil war- based on the persecution against political beliefs different from the party on power, prevent him to achieve his gold. This book deals with the question of the land in relation to a very particular form of political war in Colombia. Moreover, is a book one reads at school, because it makes part of the official educational curriculum of the country.
(landscape) consists in the cutting of all the words of my school copy of the book, related to the semantic field of the word “Land” to make a little mountain. With the help of a camera, a desk light and a projector, the mountain changes its dimensions.

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Land studies (presentation)
Screening and public reading
2013

Screening of the educational documentary-film « The Home Garden » produced in 1947 by the Colombian government, narrated by the first lady of the nation, Bertha Hernandez de Ospina.
Parallel reading of the 4th chapter of “The Years of the Fight” written by the journalist and sociologist Alfredo Molano in 1985. This chapter is based in the testimony of Ana Julia, a woman that since 1947 had to escape from her town with her family because of political persecution supported by the state.
The video is on loop and it will be screened until the reader finishes the chapter.

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Land studies (scream)
Video documentation
2010

I scream the word « Land » in a downtown square in Cali - Colombia , where official buildings like the Justice palace are located. As i repeated the scream, a group of voices from the people in the square, spontaneously started to react more and more emphatically to this sound alteration.

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Land studies (rehearsal)
Video documentation
2013

I formed a punk band while living in Beirut-Lebanon. The songs we play are re-interpretations of Colombian traditional songs composed during different war periods (1890, 1950, 1960) that depicts specific situations of violent displacement. Changing radically the rhythm of the songs, the band explores the violence contained on the lyrics.