A Conversation with José Iges and Concha Jerez

Alicia Murría

Alicia Murría: The no-man’s land idea seems to summarise a series of positions that you have held during these years that you have worked together, and also in your individual production. In this exhibition, which takes the form of a complex journey through real and virtual spaces, we find a sort of engine that drives the entire conceptual apparatus on the path followed by the visitor. Why did you use the game of ludo as the guiding thread of the Terre di nessuno exhibition?

• José Iges: Chiefly because it is a territorial game and because most people are acquainted with the rules. It contains safe places and others that are not, private and non-private places; and also because we were interested in that interactivity that the game supplies. There are four players and they can all interact with each other and not with a single option but with several. It has enough elements of complexity and of strategy relating to the idea of territory and it also has an attractive visual expressiveness.

• Concha Jerez: It could be said that from either the web page, which is another part of the project, or from the screen in the exhibition hall itself, the visitor has a chance to participate and to influence the development of the exhibition.

• J.I.: It also interested us because by having rules that are known we were able to break them. That transgression that brings about an abrupt change in the rules, that loss of footing and that disorientation experienced by the player, due to the manner in which we ourselves redesign this game, is one of the foundations of the project. In a word, we thought that it would be useful in putting across the idea of no-man’s lands.

• A.M.: I would like you to explain that other part of the exhibition that lies beyond the exhibition space, on the Internet.

• J.I.: Our project has gradually expanded though several phases. We began with the idea of building an installation space but we realised that the very discourse we were posing and its development called for an earlier stage, a parallel one that operates simultaneously, and another one after the installation itself. The spectator confronts the work, in the exhibition hall, from a spatial viewpoint, through a series of visual stimuli; his or her very presence changes what happens there –the images, lights, sounds– all this by means of sensors that are operated involuntarily, just by strolling through the exhibition space.

• C.J.: And, once again, the Internet gives us a wider scope. We wanted to interact with other places through links to different web addresses, to interact with other ideas about no-man’s lands.

• A.M.: You wanted to create a sort of expanding wave?

• C.J.: You might say that.

• J.I.: We also wanted to pose an approach to the world of media by using genuine and false news items, the confusion between them and the disorientation that this can engender. At the same time, the creation of fake news has always attracted me; one of my facets as an artist is that of writer, although I have no interest in being recognised officially as such, and I can speak the language of journalism, so some of the items I have written are completely fake, but they can be taken as genuine. In any case, the generation of false news is a resource often used by the secret services of many countries, and especially the United States, to manipulate public opinion for strategic reasons, whether political, economic, or military; now we know about these bureaux of counter-information since a story about them recently appeared in the press.
The problem of separating the true from the false is at the centre of the subject of information and of the communications media; it is a real noman’s land.

Bazar de Utopías rotas. 1998

• A.M.: As on other occasions, your work is aimed at a spectator who is prepared to get involved, to take risks, so to speak.

• C.J.: Of course. This interactivity is important for us. Spectators can build from the initiative that we place before them and the subjects that we want to pose. They are given an opportunity to reflect on a series of question that they may have never thought about before, or at least not from these viewpoints.

• J.I.: Underlying our work there is a critical stance, and this applies also to the use of interactivity. Back in 1997 we addressed this theme in the work Polyphemus´ eye, where there was a space for the watchers and another for the watched. The watched interacted with the space in spite of themselves, while the watchers were aware of the game. It was a matter of developing the idea that the more we watch each other the more secure and the more free we will be.

• A.M.: That’s an idea that is subtly sneaking up on us in our daily life through surveillance cameras or the monitoring of electronic mail which you have dealt with before.

• J.I.: Yes, and we addressed this question again in 1998 in La mirada del testigo /El acecho del guardián [The witness’s gaze / The guardian’s ambush]. But let me return to the subject of the spectator and interactivity. In Net-Ópera, with we developed for the Internet, but which also became an Intermedia installation, interactivity took place through a new system of sensors. In the exhibition room, the visitor took the role of orchestra conductor who played with some closed pages and was allowed to enter a territory anchored in reality. It worked like a stage set, and invited the spectator to open the curtains, to look for cracks through which to peep at the other side. So the elements taken from reality came from the media, from the news photograph. The spectator/participant moved within that reality.

• A.M.: We are accustomed to seeing a certain type of work where fictional spaces are created that are entirely cut off from reality; however, you are constantly merging the fictional with the real, in a way that expands both. This occurs in all your work in the different media.

• J.I.: Yes, it does. But what we pompously call reality is made up of many layers. In this exhibition, one of the no-man’s lands we are posing it in the land of information. The communications media thematise reality and this creates spaces between the true and the false, but it is radically different to create space of pure escape. We try not to contribute to alienation; we believe that the more an individual flees the more alienated she is. What we aim for is to translate to our work our view of the world, sometimes poetically, sometimes ironically, and sometimes playfully, regardless of how terrible are the aspects of reality that we are addressing. In terre di nessuno we intervene by changing the news we supply, but there is a parallel forum in which people can debate and it can be opened to different territories through new pages in which other gazes and other analyses are presented; spheres that are not necessarily artistic but that do lead one to other realities.

La mirada del testigo / el acecho del guardián. 1998

• A.M.: I think it is a refreshing development in your career that you are offering not just one viewpoint –your own– but rather the possibility of multiple perspectives.

• J.I.: Some time ago, in one of my sound works, I wrote that possibilities of failing to understanding can transform accessible facts into well-kept secrets. As Henry Miller wrote, I believe it was in the novel Tropic of Cancer, people are more different in how they fail to understand than in the way they understand, which may be only one.

• C.J.: I am very interested in all these matters, both in our joint production and in my individual works. I am referring to socio-political contents. I refuse to give a single and closed view of what surrounds me. Art is not social work, no matter how fashionable and widely accepted this idea may be. I am opposed to profiting from human misery as I see some artists doing. We always try to approach problems as ethically as we are able, as witnesses to a multiple reality. Jotting down aspects that may provide new viewpoints to those who come to experience our work, giving them food for thought, but not drawing definitive conclusions.

• A.M.: Going over the score of works that you have made together, we find a series of subjects that appear with greater or lesser intensity but which, in some manner, lend continuity to your productions, whether visual, audio, or Intermedia. I am talking about concepts such as inventory and memory.

• C.I.: As far as inventory goes, there does appear in our work a certain constructive idea involving the enumeration or the accumulation of objects or events at the service of the narrative proposal. But the inventory is never intended to be exhaustive. As for memory, the use of certain images, or of other visual or auditory elements, is an attempt to stop –or at least not to contribute to– the implacable ceremony of forgetting that is imposed in our age.

• A.M.: Another two basic and recurring ideas in collaborative and individual work, which arise from the conceptual terrain and are given clear form in the work, are those of interference and debris, which are sometimes interrelated.

• J.I.: They are two different subjects but, as you say, they sometimes appear related to each other. With respect to what might be called debris it is obvious that we often use cast-off items, kitsch objects, pieces of dolls, pieces of technology no longer used, waste from the consumer society which we think reflects it with great fidelity in some ways. This is the debris of the system, the pieces that no longer serve, the part that is not aestheticised or aestheticisable. And with regard to sound, I am extraordinarily attracted by residual sounds, mixed, unintelligible, but that contain a multitude of things. The same thing occurs with the textual, musical, and even gestural elements. There is an ethical attitude in all this. Personally, I can say that I am pretty good at creating sounds, at composing, but I am a bit reluctant to fling more things into the world; I think there are too many already and that everything we call debris is a material of enormous richness and that it reflects very well everything we want to speak about, seen in fragmentary and relatively iconic form, like traces of the individual and collective memory that are in danger of disappearing. They are fragments, so they allow you to show a discontinuity, both the physical and the auditory elements, but we don’t want to create totalities, but merely to build propositions.

• C.J.: I agree –I feel the same way. I find it quite easy to create new objects but I am much more interested in the baggage carried by all those re-used objects, like Iges mentions, or others that I have used in different installations, like used clothing, old shoes, or unused devices that can be recycled or simply piled up, and that contain their own memory and an important expressive weight. We also deal similarly with images, like Net-Ópera, which is a puzzle and, at the same time, a theatre.

• J.I.: I think that these questions also have to do with Concha’s illegible inscriptions, which are self-censored texts. It’s a way of saying: We’re going to take these bits and see if they explain the world to us, because the world certainly doesn’t explain itself; let’s look in the rubbish heap because there are so many things invented and that were not worth inventing, so let’s appropriate them, let’s re-read the fragments because there is probably something there that we are missing.

• C.J.: Returning to the other part of your question, concerning interference, we have both worked on this, together and separately. The idea of interference is linked to that of debris. That estrangement that occurs when very unlike elements are reorganised open the discourse in many direction. Interference comes with decontextualising and introducing a foreign element into a discourse, be it purely conceptual, textual, visual, or auditory, for this generates frictions and the possibility of new readings.

• J.I.: A I mentioned before, we build with materials by no means fine –electronic debris, as in Inventario; toys made in Taiwan, as in Utopías rotas and things taken from the media and the comic, as in Net-Ópera. For sound we have used all sorts of resources –voices from the world of the opera, urban and industrial noise, recombined and processed sounds, music boxes, as in Les amoureux au-dessus de la ville; or structures of sound sequences of disparate provenance that translate into the murmur of the world, as in Inventario. We construct, as I have written somewhere, with fragments and wastes taken from our culture, recombining them in different ways. It’s a kind of zapping in this Babel of consumption that we live in, and as we have said, the reconstruction of the fragments involves an ethical position and practice when it comes to taking on the world as it presents itself to us, especially through the media, and from there to generate dynamic encounters and collisions with evident narrative consequences, in the auditory, visual, or virtual spheres.

Inventario.1994

• A.M.: At some point you have referred to the concept of space between. I would like to hear an explanation of the sense in which you use this term.

• J.I.: This is a notion that interests us a great deal. The first time that we used it was in the work Laberinto de lenguajes; the Italian version was done in the city of Matera, in 1990. It was carried out in two churches carved from the rock. Concha moved around in those spaces carrying a radio receiver on a bandoleer –if fact she was acting as a sort of sonic torch. In the physical space, three narrators read a series of texts. All this was broadcast live on the radio that Concha was carrying.

• C.J.: Yes, I was the receiver and the transmitter at the same time.

• J.I.: That was a blatant manifestation of a space between. On another occasion this concept was given form in a work called Argot. It was made for a physical space and at the same time for the radio. The concepts used were between and through, in four languages –German, Spanish, English, and French. It also reappears now in these no-man’s lands which is the theme of the new exhibition. Here, although not explicitly, there appears the idea of the threshold, which was a recurring theme in the 19th and 20th centuries, from romanticism to the avant-garde.

• C.J.: The idea of the threshold not only as a transitional space but as a space of habitation.

• J.I.: I remember the title of a piece by a US composer, A Mirror to Live In. That would be a good definition of threshold. That idea of the mirror as a threshold appears in some of Concha’s works and some of our joint productions –a place of reflection in which, in some way, and almost always, we live.

• A.M.: Reviewing you careers I have had the feeling that the earlier works had a more enunciatory tone and that progressively the procedural aspects have gained importance, an aspect rooted in conceptual art which has been a sort of framework for you.

Punto singular. 1989

• J.I.: Yes. We are increasingly interested in procedural aspects. I think one of the germs was Net-Ópera, which was made for the Internet, and was progressively expanded, but, at a certain moment, there was a consensus that we should leave it just as it was. However, terre di nessuno is a work that can never be concluded because, even if we wanted to, the news items that appear in it, whether true or false, will always be changing because the world is continually changing and because the links we create to other pages will be subject to changes, changes that we cannot foresee. Perhaps in Net-Ópera there was still some hope, if not of an infinite numberable universe, a Borgesian concept that we use in one of our first works, then at least of a universe that can be shown and summarised in a series of signs-symbols. But I think that now we have lost even that hope –everything seems to be tremendously provisional.

It is impossible for us to formulate a definitive discourse because we are increasingly certain that it does not exist in the philosophical sphere. Perhaps this is why we originate works like Les amoureux au-dessus de la ville, much more lyrical or poetic, if you like, since at times we must escape, and catch a breath of air. As Schoenberg said, one should breathe the air of other planets.

• A.M.: The changes taking place in the concepts of the public and the private are defining our times and are probably what are bringing the transformations to people’s lives. You have reflected on this in a number of works but perhaps now with more intensity.

• C.J.: In our works the public/private dichotomy is present in different forms. I think that the invasion of the private by the public occurs above all by means of communications techniques. The individual’s privacy is invaded, and something more: his very identity. I recall the debate in the Spanish Parliament of a bill, later made law, which allowed video recordings made by surveillance cameras in public places to be used as evidence in court. When we were working on Polyphemus’ Eye, in 1997, one question we asked people was whether it bothered them to be watched by these cameras in public places. But our interest in this theme goes back further, to our works for radio.

We conceived radio space as a public space in two senses, first because we were posing questions of a private nature there, as we did with Argot, with our reflections about our role as artists, reflections that we discussed openly, but also viewing radio as a way of invading the privacy of the listener. We interfered, intruding into people’s daily lives, as they drove or engaged in any other activity. Also in the work Tráfico de deseos, our discourse was projected into a public space –the street-with a series of reflection on intimacy. In the street, a place where time is shared with others, we posed private matters.

• A.M.: The new technologies are undeniable the factors that are contributing the most to the modification of the traditional relations between the public and the private. In parallel to this there is a shrinking of the public sphere, the space we share, community space. I think this is one of the great problems faced by developed societies today. What is your view of this?

• J.I.: This is something that has been happening fairly recently, and is relatively less important in a county like ours, in the south. But it is obvious that we are increasingly shut in, no matter how well connected we may be to the outside world via the Internet, and no matter how much information we collect. We have not dealt with this subject from the viewpoint that you mention, but, to return to the radio, when you broadcast you do it for an individual and demand the individual’s attention, his involvement in your concerns, and you invade his privacy. It is in this sense that we are concerned with that solitude that allows a person to assimilate a musical or metamusical experience.

With regard to what you say, it is becoming a problem to defend a space without brand names.

• A.M.: In fact, when you drive a car through a city you receive more than 100 advertising impacts per minute.

• J.I.: Amusement parks are also supposed to be public spaces when they are really private. As for urban planning, the garrison aesthetics that predominates in the city brings increasingly strict surveillance.

• A.M.: How have you organised the Terre di nessuno exhibition?

• J.I.: Once the concepts were formulated the problem was to move them into different physical spaces. The exhibition is divided into three individualised spaces plus a fourth which is for moving through. In the downstairs hall, which is closed, and we will call space one, the game of ludo is a ubiquitous presence: as a vanishing point we use the mirrors that multiply the images in infinite regression to the abyss –this is a space of introduction, and also of disorientation. This not knowing where one is has a different character in each space, and obliges one to cross different thresholds. The ludo screen changes –there are six screens and each one takes you to a different place. The mirrors act as witnesses both of the image itself and of the spectator that has entered the scenario and is becoming involved in what is happening there.
Space two, on the second floor, is completely different. While the colour black dominates in the first, here white is the dominant colour. Here the light, the image, and the sound are overwhelming and the spectator again feels disoriented. The images are projected on the walls and even on the floor. Flashing light sometimes make it impossible to see the images. The two different atmospheres are closely related, though the spectator does not realise this at first.

• C.J.: The two spaces are also interrelated through the interactivity of the sensors that the spectator unwittingly activates. The third and fourth installation spaces are deployed on the two floors that are joined by a real column at the entrance of the hall and that support the building. Next to it we have placed a series of false columns that continue on the upper floor. Upon them is traced the fragmented image of the ludo board that is recomposed by means of a surveillance camera that electronically joins the fragments together and shows the entire board on the monitor. The spectator walking between the columns shatters this image on the monitor, producing a disorienting microcosm.

The ludo board is like life: we are, involuntarily, a part of the game. The trick, as we might call it, is also produced by the columns. Only one of them is really holding up the building. The others end at different heights on the second floor, and upon them rest a series of images. Everything tends to deceive the senses, to create this space of no-man’s lands –the visual and the auditory components.

There is another element marking the access to the exhibition, a ludo board with some rather odd instructions. The visitor is invited to play. If the invitation is accepted, there commences the first interaction on the walk through the exhibition. The rules are heard through earphones and they are not those of orthodox ludo –they already begin to suggest a space of de-regulation. It is a purely mental game. For instance, Demonstrate your democratic attitudes. In the next move, the marker to be moved will be chosen by a consensus of all the other players. At certain times the rules change, and all players must change their movements. It is totally unlike the territorial situation of conventional ludo.

• J.I.: We wanted to reflect the tremendous indeterminacy in which we find ourselves today through a series of dichotomies that we have established in Terre di nessuno. Among them, the true and the false, the real and the virtual, which bring us to these conflicting, complex, and latent realities. And we also wanted to introduce the theme of control and electronic surveillance, of the public and the private, along with the invasion of private space by the reality of the media; again the true and the false, with those no-man’s lands that penetrate into you own home. At the same time, if the ultimate no-man’s lands are those separating the combatants in their trenches, the zones that separate them, it is wise to recall are probably mined. Full of traps.

Something similar happens in everyday life. You often think you know how you should act and when you are sure you understand a situation you find you are wrong again, since, once more, the rules have been changed. Or when you see how a country goes under, having followed the advice of the IMF, and you don’t understand a thing but then you find out that they have changed the rules again. It sounds harsh to say it in these words, but in space one of the exhibition there is also a metaphor for these minefields.

• A.M.: It seems to me that you are posing these no-man’s lands as a lawless territory, and thus as a place where dissent can be articulated. Do you really believe that we have that much manoeuvring room left? Isn’t that too optimistic? Mightn’t that sense of disorientation you mention just be a smokescreen that conceals the real mechanisms behind events? Of course I am talking about particular political and economic interests. Personally I don’t believe we have that much scope, although we should act as if we did, just in case.

• J.I.: You are completely right. But we’re talking about individuals. The exhibition is aimed by individual people at individual people, though, naturally we are talking about a social individual. But if we are talking about system, we should remember that they also generate chaos and de-regulation within themselves. Gödel’s theorem says that any perfectly ordered system contains its own absence of regulation and the seeds of its own destruction. This is to say that all systems carry the germ of their own incompleteness, of their own imperfection. This is mathematics, and no Secretary of State can change it. It is a process that also takes place whenever two systems confront each other –between these super-ordered realities there is a space of conflict, a space of disorientation, a no-man’s land, a place, where, starkly speaking, the rules are not clear. What is certain is that we are invaded by questions that we can’t understand, that come to us from the outside, whose logic escapes us, and which we see as de-regulated situations. Although it may well be as you say, that at certain levels everything is perfectly regulated. But we want to hold on to the hope that we may be able to change some things, and, of course, to try to understand how they work.

• A.M.: These may be the premises for building the tools of resistance.

• J.I.: Probably, but of an active and optimistic resistance. Don’t forget that we have based this exhibition on the image of a ludo board, and that ludo is above all a game. This game-like aspect indicates that, ultimately, it is all a play, a tragicomedy. There are other worlds, but they are in this one. We aren’t certain why we are here; everything is very dubious, and this work leave room for doubt.

• C.J.: Our works are always propositions and are intended to encourage people to talk about, inhabit, and complete these propositions.