We tried to incorporate formal characteristics of the hotel described by Smithson. For example, Smithson constantly talks about the path of the snake: “circulating from one side to the other…” Through the grid and through the tables, we try to recreate the snake passing through the space. In a way this should happen in the whole exhibition. There is a gallery that has Pre-Hispanic pieces on display, and for the vitrines we created a corridor that replicates again the path of the snake.
Describe examples of the works on display.
The show opens with Robert Smithson’s Hotel Palenque, but in another gallery you will encounter Alex Hubbard’s Hotel Palenque St. Louis, which is a documentation of Smithson’s piece in a display in a museum. Hubbard’s piece is a “double” of Smithson’s. They are alike, but they are not at all the same thing. Now we are displacing a third location to the CCS: the museum where the Smithson piece was documented. As I already mentioned: You are in a different point of the circle. Other pieces in the show, such as Around of Ulla von Brandenburg, represent directly the problem of circular movement without advance. In the film you see a group of people shot from their backs while performing a circular movement. The camera follows their movement, but the viewer’s point of view never changes.
How do these examples “complicate the relations between circular time/progressive time?” Do you mean cycles as opposed to chronologies?
Yes, but not closed cycles; not resolved cycles. What happens when you encounter, as Smithson did, buildings that are simultaneously being demolished and constructed? There is no linear progress, but something that comes and goes (the snake?). Pablo Sigg’s film I, of Whom I Know Nothing is clear on this issue. There is apparent circular time, but formed by several circles, not just one that repeats itself. This film addresses the problem of memory as well. The characters in the film constantly forget fundamental and regular things in their lives.
What does “in-differentiation/differentiation” mean, and how is this expressed in the narrative?
It means that you cannot separate things as clearly. You cannot differentiate things as clearly. You have to break the hierarchical system and from there try to relate with the space and with the work. John L. Stephens, when arriving at the ancient ruins, was in shock because the natives didn’t have the historical drive to preserve the ruins and differentiate them from the depredation of the jungle. He thought this was a negative characteristic of the natives and that they didn’t deserve their inheritance. On the contrary, I think this indifference offers a possibility of coexisting with your surroundings that does not necessarily respond to the need to produce history. I think that Smithson values this characteristic as well.
In each corner gallery of the museum, there are white paintings by Luc Tuymans on the white wall. You cannot separate them from the architecture of the museum. Some visitors might not notice them at all and might think they have encountered an empty room, but they haven’t. These pieces also relate to another problem: It is quite difficult to recognize precisely the shape of the paintings, but they are representative of existing things. Your memory is constantly trying to locate the reference, but it is quite hard to do it. It is also difficult to remember them afterwards.
The narrative also refers to the “lack of memory/history” – meaning false histories? Meaning that all history and memory is relative and there are no absolutes?
Meaning that there is the possibility of experiencing things outside a historical notion. In the exhibition is a group of seven photographs by Adrian Lara. The group is formed by the same image printed seven times – as if the artist or curator didn’t have enough memory to recognize that the images are very similar, or as if we assume the viewer will immediately forget what he/she has just seen. Things can be just things, and should be valued as such.
Was the exhibition conceived as a complement to the symposium on November 6 to 9?
I have been very interested in creating new settings for dialogue, as well as the system that produces them… This has allowed me to establish strong collaborations with specific people, such as Pedro & Juana, Pablo Sigg and Josiah McElheny, among others. Tom Eccles and I discussed the possibility of an exhibition that departed from Smithson’s Hotel Palenque and could include a pavilion (in collaboration with P & J) as a space for discussion. When Tom came up with the idea of organizing, with the LUMA foundation, a symposium, we thought that “Hotel Palenque Is Not in Yucatán” was the ideal setting… The input that Pedro & Juana and I bring to the conferences is to establish the setting and the way in which people have a discussion. There is a long table for everyone to be seated at to talk. We try to indifferentiate hierarchies.
Have you been to Palenque?
Yes, I have visited the Mayan ruins at Palenque several times, and last month I visited the Hotel Palenque. The hotel has suffered several renovations and it is quite transformed, but one can still find elements described by Smithson.
The ruins are wonderful, but I guess I was more interested in the constructive possibilities that Smithson thinks he finds in the hotel. According to him, this mode of construction dates back to the ancient Mayans. Presenting these constructive possibilities brings plurality to the discussion as well as enlarges it.
What is your goal? How would you like people to respond?
I hope that everything I am describing here finds its parallel in the actual experience of the space. I hope that visitors can access this fictional world and start relating the different pieces and different elements that conform to the exhibition. I hope that our pavilion changes the relational dynamic for sharing ideas.
Please explain your other projects, the research Project Petra and Misfeasance?
Petra is a curatorial and research project that Pablo Sigg and I had in Mexico City. We use it to organize exhibitions, film programs et cetera.
Misfeasance? was a project I did from 2007 to 2013. It started as an exhibition, continued as a book and ended as a seminar for the CCS. It is a project that inquires about the relation between law and power. It takes as its point of departure a comparison between the main character of Twin Peaks, Dale B. Cooper, and Oedipus Rex. It included a mixture of fiction and reality. In some cases these related to very terrible realities, such as the documents of the “Archives of Terror” of Paraguay. These are the only secret police documents that survived from the dictatorships of South America.
Describe some of your other curatorial projects and how they fit into “Hotel Palenque Is Not…”
The latest project that relates very strongly to this exhibition was the “Symposium for the Art of Future: A Banquet in Honor of the Société Anonyme,” which I did in collaboration with Josiah McElheny. We created a whole system for a discussion around the Societé Anonyme. We proposed a four-hour event in which the antique practice of the symposium recovers its original meaning of exchanging intellectual ideas while eating. The discussion unraveled while speakers, moderators and participants share a meal, seated around a large table.
The participants were Francis M. Naumann, George Baker, Lynne Cooke, Michael Govan, Jennifer Groos, Molly Nesbit, Pablo Sigg, Pedro & Juana, Richard Meyer, Tom Eccles, Josiah McElheny, myself and a group of 20 guests. Pedro & Juana were also fundamental in the collaboration, and this is a clear precedent for the pavilion we are doing at CCS. For some time now they have been doing their “architectural repast” the Little Pig, which is a temporal event in which a pig is cooked while discussion and exchange happens. They collaborated with us in the Symposium, creating also the spatial and social structure for the discussion. The cooking of the pork will happen again in “Hotel Palenque Is Not in Yucatán,” the first day of the conferences.
“Hotel Palenque Is Not in Yucatan” & Spectres, November 6-December 19, international curatorial symposium, November 6-9, Thursday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free, Center for Curatorial Studies & Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, www.bard.edu/ccs.
