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From a Common Walk: Plaça Prim- Poble Non Barcelona to the Mediterranean October 27.2005 Noontime
Some questions Maria Nordman & Ferran Barenblit
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Closely linked to the conceptual art of the 1970s, the work of Maria Nordman has always searched for ways of relating artistic practices and the public domain. Dissatisfied with the lack of energy of most of the scenarios of contemporary art, she is committed to involving her projects in processes of collaboration, openness to the public and connection with nature.
Thus, for example, the pieces she has presented in the CASM are conceived to be paraded around the city, as she did with a tree in Pasadena last January, repeating an earlier action she had carried out in the seventies. With this promenade with a tree and the parading of sculptures around Barcelona as a backdrop, Maria Nordman has resumed a temporarily interrupted conversation with Ferran Barenblit, and the exchange of ideas and the resolve to go beyond stereotyped structures have turned that conversation into an intervention by Maria Nordman herself.
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Maria
Nordman: We're meeting here to talk about
a new exhibition that already began long before
we all got here, and that is even now in change.
This work has another beginning date that even reconsiders
the counting of time at its start: by force of circumstance
there' s a tremendous humor & precision in the
timing of Miguel von Rafe Pérez's and your
invitation to me to arrive in Barcelona--exactly
in the midst ofthe annular eclipse of the sun by
the moon experiential on the earth, occuring here
only every two decades.
From this condition, the dates
of your exhibition with my working time here is
circa 33,000 000 000,000,000,000,000 BC to 12/11/
05-.
In Barcelona when I am already there at 8:45 on
10/3/05 on La Rambla, a celebration is going on
in a rather subtle manner - people walking-
find at their feet the exact inter-rotation speed
of the three bodies that are the enablers ofaesthetical
presence earth-sun-moon & the named &
unnamed visitors. This walk is enacted by the instantaneous
sharing of eye protective filters between people
who have never met before.
With Barcelonans & their visitors, we're walking on the arced shadows projected through the tiny openings between the leaves of the plane trees. Then a member of your team from the department of cultural affairs focuses the image of the sun directly onto the ground with a lens, and there at the door to the art center, people meet instantly by chance and start speak together. This also takes place on La Rambla.
I become an anonymous member of an event that is scaled with the presence of all the actors and with their time specific spontaneity - diachronically it is a point within the continuous 2 decade sequences of annular eclipses & synchronously it includes every person present with the three major actorsenabling what is the base of culture.
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| Maria Nordman. Entrance Blue Panel |
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That is - the present moment as the condition of the body of memory being sculpture.
On 26/1/05 you're present at a performance/reading in
Pasadena California at the Art Center Art School which
includes one of the first works on the street realized
between the personal & interpersonal conditions of
site. (historically this is sometimes named public &
private) This includes the 12 S. Raymond work made in
1972. That's the building where made an interventions
of a public work into a semi-private building-asking a
group of artists if l could have a room for a month in
their cooperative studio and another room that reaches
the sky. They make both rooms available-one for living
and one for opening to the visitors invited by an open
door and by letter.
That work connects directly to one that's now in a UNESCO site: La Primavera -(Essen Zeche Zollverein, - parking lot tower ). It continues with a related work in the atrium of the Landesmuseum Münster: Le Printemps , kumquat tree accompanies me on the walk (I am holding its trunk and pushing it forward while its roots are in a pot with omni-directional wheels) This work is made on the afternoon of the performance when when the tree & I walking together are filmed on the street. During that evening performance and the reading the book called MANIFESTO APERTO OPENHAND ON SCULPTURE , the tree is receives a new name. FORTUNELLA MARGARITA SAPlENS SAPlENS. l wonder how you see this interperformance with the tree & myself? |
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| Maria Nordman. Steel Project (detall) |
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Ferran Barenblit : I was very interested that you were doing something that connects directly to something you started thirty-three years ago - and how you opened that work with a very simple, concise action. You spread that work around you with your specific way of looking at the city and nature (in the present tense). What I remember of your lecture is exactly this: that there's a way to make a work travel around the city, that is also a living presence in itself.
Also, in the lecture you were reading at the same time as a film of yourself and the tree in the city, - was being projected onto you and the tree in the lecture hall. Could you explain how the tree and yourself were doing the reading?
M.N. The tree shows me that a sheet
of paper could also be regarded a leaf in the air -.
sometimes I just wrote letters on a leaf of paper -
other times words. Each leaf stands for itself as each
letter or word; I tend to see the whole development
of language as sculpture itself.
F. B. Then there is also the fact of
your giving a fruit of the kumquat tree to each person
there - I remember especially the smell - it was very
intriguing. This presentation is again a new spread
(opening of a condition) to the public .
M.N. Giving everyone a fruit has to do with being able to incorporate the tree's memory. -- that's questioned in the book Manifesto Aperto OPEN HAND ON SCULPTURE.
F. B. By the way, what's happening now with the tree?
M.N. They are taking very good care
of it, and I am requesting that it becomes part of an
arboretum that also collects art & books. I would
like the Kumquat and the Manifesto Aperto -which
is both a book & a sculpture - to be together in
a museum of Pasadena called Huntington Gardens with
the book and the tree being together a work in continuance
FB. I think this project with the tree and the walk in the city would be completely different here. One of the things that surprised me, is how land is organized there how people relate to each other in the city. And what I wanted to point out also, is that your project has had a very concrete -let's say - a very definite reading because of the urban space that is already there.
M.N. Each city I'm invited to work in - shows very different precise conditions. Looking at our Barcelona project, the question is, with the drawing at the beginning of the exhibition from 1977-79 in which the square appears in two conjunct forms on the paper, where does it find its place-- it could still be related to the formal aspect of minimalism -- but the paper is hand-stamped PUBLIC SQUARE.
Exactly on the lines of the squares on the other side of the paper are positions of specific trees - which in growing build walls open in any direction to the passer-by. In fact people meeting at the two-sided drawing could actually decide together & curate finding a place where such a work could be built with two rooms open to the passer-by. In this case, the trees are pines and palms. It has happened, that one of these drawing has engendered discussion and decision-making that brought about the building of a neighborhood park in Bakersfield..
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I consider language as sculpture-- it begins between the named and the unnamed, with all the ancestors behind every word, also enabling coconstructions in the open place.
New words can be made any time & existing ones reconsidered from all sides.
F.B. I agree with this.
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This book is now at the entrance to the exhibition.
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