Аллора и Кальсадилья

Under Discussion

source: whitechapelgallery
(…) returning a sound, 2004 and Under Discussion, 2005 were both filmed on the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico, as part of the artists’ ongoing involvement with the island’s history. Occupied between 1940 and 2003 by the US Navy, who expropriated land from the islanders forcing them to resettle, it was used throughout this period as a military base, a weapons testing site and for munitions storage. 200,000 square miles of its surrounding waters were appropriated for naval exercises and successfully hired out to foreign governments, as a ‘unique’ opportunity for live military exercises. Vietnam, Korea, the Bay of Pigs, the Balkan wars, Somalia, Haiti, the Gulf Wars as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have all been simulated in and around Vieques. The islanders, meanwhile, had to contend with sound pollution from constant explosions, the destruction of land and sea habitats, fishing nets shredded by navy ships and soil contaminated with napalm and uranium. In the face of constant civil disobedience campaigns the US military eventually relinquished its bases in May 2003.
Returning a Sound documents a local activist celebrating the departure of the US Navy, by replacing the muffler on his scooter with a military trumpet. As he accelerates or slows down the exhaust fumes breathe into the instrument and fill the air with a mixture of abstract jazz sounds or melancholy single notes. The route he follows leads out of the island’s capital and across the areas previously delineated as off limits. “We were interested”, the artists have stated, “in composing an anthem as a commemorative structure, but we were not satisfied with the conservative connotations of the word. We preferred the more open set of associations that its Greek etymology offered: antiphonos, meaning sounding in answer, or in return.”
After the departure of the US Navy, ownership of the land passed into the hands of the US Department of the Interior, who declared the former military bases wildlife reserves and conservation zones. Under US law this designation exempts the government from decontaminating the land. Under Discussion follows the son of a fisherman active in the Fishermen’s Movement in the 1970s, as he attaches an outboard engine to an upturned conference table and sails it around the island. Combining the languages of diplomacy and direct action, he follows the fishing routes – contested by the Fishermen’s Movement and severely depleted after decades of military exercises – around coastal areas that are still littered with military waste. In the meantime, the rest of the island is being heavily marketed in the travel industry as an unspoilt idyllic landscape and sold to wealthy property developers, who have enacted a new form of land expropriation by pricing the islanders out of their own market. In January 2007 the travel section of The Guardian newspaper ran an article describing Vieques, its troubled history comfortably behind it, as an “amazingly unspoilt Caribbean island” that offers “eco-friendly luxury and access to miles of pristine beaches”.
Allora & Calzadilla’s interest in the impact of competing political, economic, social and environmental forces in an era of globalisation find different expression in Sweat Glands, Sweat Lands, 2006, a collaboration between the artists and the Puerto Rican reggeaton singer Residente Calle 13. Darker and more mysterious in setting, the video depicts a pig roasting on a spit that is attached to the back wheel of a car, and turns to the rhythm of a revving engine. Delivered with forceful intensity, the lyrics reflect on the impact of globalisation on society and the environment.
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source: lissongallery

Through sculpture, photography, performance, sound and video, Allora and Calzadilla’s works have been informed by questions of mark making, traces, and survival in a way that is simultaneously conceptual, metaphorical and spatial. Their understanding of material and metaphor as a couple is crucial; for them a material is never simply self-evident in its meaning, it is always marked with histories, cultures, and politics that are at once irreducible to and indivisible from the material in question. Another recurrent trope in their work is that of animality, and its unstable relationship to the realm of the human. Most recently, they have created a series of works that explore the interplay between militarism and sound in the context of today’s global state of war.

Allora and Calzadilla live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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source: curiositedequaliteblogspot

Jennifer Allora (née en 1974 à Philadelphie) et Guillermo Calzadilla (né en 1971 à La Havane) forment un cas unique, je crois dans le domaine de la photographie d’art.
Ces deux créateurs travaillent en couple et signent leurs réalisations en duo depuis 1995.
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source: wikipedia

Аллора и Кальсадилья (англ. Allora & Calzadilla) — творческий дуэт художников Дженнифер Аллора (Jennifer Allora, 1974, Филадельфия, штат Пенсильвания, США) и Гильермо Кальсадилья (Guillermo Calzadilla, 1971, Гавана, Куба).

Дженнифер Аллора получила степень бакалавра в Университете Ричмонда в штате Вирджиния (1996 г.) и степень магистра в Массачусетском технологическом институте (2003 г.). Гильермо Кальсадилья учился в Escuela de Artes Plásticas, Сан-Хуан, Пуэрто-Рико (1996 г.) и Bard College (2001 г.).
Творчество

Аллора и Кальсадилья сотрудничают с 1995 г. Они живут и работают в Пуэрто-Рико, где карибская культура смешана с колониальным наследием и влиянием Соединенных Штатов. Несмотря на тропическое местоположение и красоту окружающего региона, Пуэрто-Рико представляет собой место, где развита тяжелая промышленность, а ряд мелких островов в течение долгого времени использовались США для военных испытаний. Это необычное и противоречивое разнообразие отразилось на темах, которые затрагивают в своем творчестве художники.
Аллора и Кальсадилья подходят к визуальному искусству как серии экспериментов, направленных на изучение таких идей, как авторство, национальность, границы, демократия, глобализм и общество потребления. Их гибридные работы часто являются смесью скульптуры, фотографии, перформанса, звука и видео. Опираясь на исторические, культурные и политические метафоры, художники затрагивают комплексные ассоциации, связанные с объектом и его значением.
Аллора и Кальсадилья создали ряд работ, посвященных критическому анализу того, как власть, милитаризм, война кодируются посредством звука. Работы посвящены различным способам, при помощи которых музыка используется на протяжении истории, а также созданию новых форм музыкального выражения. Этот ряд включает такие произведения как «Clamor» (2006 г.), «Sediments Sentiments (Figures of Speech)» (2007 г.) и «Wake Up» (2006 г.), «Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on „Ode to Joy“ for a Prepared Piano» (2008).