Damián Ortega

The Beetle Trilogy

Interview with Damián Ortega by Alma Ruiz
May 3, 2005, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

AR: Was The Beetle Trilogy born with its title in English?
DO: Yes. Recently I have been using titles in different languages, even though speaking them does not come easily to me.
AR: Is that because it is easier if you have a title in English when participating in international exhibitions, or because the work is born with its name in that language?
DO: The names of things change from country to country/ but often they also have different meanings. I think the reason has to do with an awareness of the location where the work will be exhibited, or where the work was conceived, so that it has a more direct connection to the site. For example, conceived Cosmic Thing for Philadelphia and thus the English title. I am very interested in the notion of language as a tool and in my awkwardness in operating such paraphernalia; the wrong word can redefine or create a new interpretation of a work.
AR: Where did the idea of the trilogy originate?
DO: I am interested in the notion of trilogies and triptychs. I realized that my thought process was not dual/ but that there was always a third view of a work, it could be a "perhaps," or a "maybe," something better, an afterward, always a third perspective that was more ambiguous.
AR: A third choice that could take the place of the others or complement
them?
DO: Yes, or contradict them. Like black/white and another foreign element, out of control.
AR: Is The Beetle Trilogy a single work?
DO: It is really three independent works. Cosmic Thing was the first one. It's a piece that I had floating around in my head for years. It's a VW sedan, one of the more common cars in Mexico City. For many people it offers the only possibility to have their own car and get around town. There were even taxis that used that model. I drive one of them too.
I liked the notion of creating something like a dinosaur displayed in a natural history museum. It's also a kind of assembly plan. You can see all of the elements that form the fragmented car, with its parts suspended, on display.
AR: Are the car parts exhibited hanging from the ceiling?
DO: Sometimes they are. But it's not just a portrait of a social tradition. It incorporates the notion of analysis, the power of taking apart and dissociating a solid, a complex object divided into parts.
AR: What year is the VW you used in Cosmic Thing?
DO: I'm not sure. I think it's a '93. Everyone was telling me it would be better to use my own, but curiously I've had a personal relationship, an affective one, with my car, and I was afraid to tear it apart.
AR: What year is your car?
DO: It's an '83. Awhile ago I found some paintings I had made in 1991 using the same system of fragmenting the car into a diagram, but that was just a pictorial representation. The idea of the object wasn't too clear, nor was the physical relationship with the space; they were paintings on white canvas. The project was to have the whole car taken apart in the paintings.
AR: So did each painting show a part of the car?
DO: Yes, the steering wheel was separate from the horn, and so forth. All the parts. I still have the pictures.
AR: Were you hoping to exhibit all of them together?
DO: When I started the project, my idea was to commission the painting from a professional sign painter, which is a common profession in Mexico, a craftsman who can be contracted to paint a landscape or a text to advertise any kind of store. Some are very accomplished painters. At the time, the idea was to bring a photo of a VW car and have the sign painter execute it to scale, life size, and then I would reproduce each of the different parts in various paintings. It would be a process of appropriation and subjective exploration. Each part would be broken down and, in the end, offer a general outline of the whole car. Clearly it related to this, but the notion of the blueprint was very much a part of it. I hadn't managed to get rid of the concept of representation in order to enter the notion of reality —yet. It was an interesting process that helped me to understand the final concept. The medium changed from canvas to sheet metal and from acrylic to automotive lacquer. I think I began to understand the importance of the relationship between technique and form, how the totality of the working process brings the final work together.
AR: So the notion of the deconstruction of the object predates the creation of Cosmic Thing?
DO: I think so. I'm not sure of what the exact reference might have been, but I think it began with the relationship I developed with Gabriel Orozco in his studio, trying to understand the notion of how to show an object, not just represent it, and also of technique, or the working process, as something fundamental, not neutral or insignificant.
AR: Were you interested in other artists?
DO: I think it had something to do with the sculpture of Tony Cragg, Ashley Bickerton, or Chris Burden. That type of work was a great discovery for me at the time.
AR: Do you mean the kind of works made from units, or fragments that are put together to form a sculpture?
DO: I think so. It involves the creation of a system. In Cosmic Thing in particular, it's a system in equilibrium, in which all of the elements are interrelated. There is a physical and a mechanical communication and a conceptual one as well; there is a kind of shared function but, at the same time, a system where each object functions individually and is interdependent, but it's also part of a political relationship and a social system.
AR: Why the name Cosmic Thing?
DO: I wanted to give it a title that offered an open vision of the piece, something that would allow the viewer to recognize my interest in the notion of system —something both microcosmic and macrocosmic, collective and individual, global and local.
AR: Many of the people who have seen Cosmic Thing interpret it as a kind of cartoon, perhaps because they are surprised to see a VW expanding in several directions. Does this type of humor, visible throughout your work, derive from your experience as a political cartoonist?
DO: Of course. I greatly enjoy the takes on my work, and I think we are fortunate to see how each piece takes on a life and direction of its own. They can go places I have never suspected. I love the idea of a work being more intelligent than I am, it going beyond myself, taking on a life of its own. Therefore, I like the relationship it has with humor and cartooning.
AR: How did the public react to this work at the 2003 Venice Biennale?
DO: I think the reception was varied because the exhibition was attended by a variety of people, from a father who would use this life-size diagram to show his kid how a car works, to some interpretations of it as representing a "car bomb" exploding into a thousand pieces. I don't know —there's always something unexpected in interpretations.
AR: The biennale gave this work, which few people had seen until then, an international projection. It had an impact because of its strong presence in the ample and austere setting of the Arsenale. Going back to the origins of Cosmic Thing, however, did you create it specifically for the 2002 exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia?
DO: Yes. That was a very neutral space, a square cube; the lighting was perfect, and it seemed to me it had the ideal size to do this, in contrast with the Arsenale, in the Venice Biennale, which was a dark place, huge and full of history. It was a challenge to solve how to relate it to that space. The piece has certain measurements that can be adapted to different places, and one of the interesting things was to see how an explosion could work or take on a new meaning, according to the space where it is exhibited. At one point, it can be a vertical explosion, a horizontal one, or one expanding outward from the center.
AR: How did you find the car, and how long did it take you to take it apart?
DO: It was surprising, because getting it was a true odyssey, even though these cars are sold commonly in Mexico City. I went to a used-car dealership and asked for help in taking it apart. Three fourteen- or fifteen-year-old kids, using very simple tools, like wrenches, disassembled it in about four hours. They were expert car scavengers. Car theft and the selling of auto parts are a multimillion-dollar industry in Mexico.
AR: Is it because they use them as replacement parts for the cars that are still circulating?
DO: Yes. When they sell a new part, it's called an original; if it's stolen, they call it "made in Mexico."
AR: After taking the car apart, you had to put it back together, but in a way that was schematic. Did you use a manual as a guide to place the pieces where they belonged?
DO: I have a manual, and I participated in the disassembly, so I knew it well. The most interesting thing is how much it is like a puzzle, every piece tells you which one comes next. There is a system, a language, that takes shape and relates one to the other, and one piece is never fully independent from the next; it cries out for it. In a way, they are a negative and a positive, so you know the succession of the pieces. But there is also quite a bit of improvisation involved, because I don't have a clear idea of the dimensions. It's really a matter of getting in front of the space and deciding the distance between them. Estimating.
AR: The distance between one part and another?
DO: Yes. I think one of the interesting things is how it adapts to the space.
AR: How far from the floor is it suspended from the ceiling?
DO: I like the tires to be almost at floor level, about one foot, so that there is a real sense of scale to the car. I love how we can get a sensation of open space from something that was closed, offer an expanded view, and experiment with how you lose the sense of relating to the inside/outside of the car. When you move, the limits of what is inside or outside are diluted.
AR: Can you walk between the parts, or do you have to observe it from a specific point?
DO: The physical experience is very important. You can walk and move through the car, and it would be very difficult to document; photography or video could never create the same sensation as an object with which you have a physical relationship. It is a very different experience.
AR: Being able to cross it, penetrate it?
DO: Yes
AR: In the past, other artists have suspended their works from the ceiling. I am thinking of Brazilians Mira Schendel and Helio Oiticica. Some of Schendel's pieces were made with rice paper and Letraset held within two layers of Plexiglas; she would suspend them from the ceiling because she wanted light to enter the works. Transparency was important to her, as was the fact that the work didn't hang from the wall. Oiticica's Penetrables are monochromatic panels suspended from the ceiling so audiences can walk around them. They were also sculpture/paintings — that is, a hybrid created to counter the formal elements of both disciplines.
DO: Yes. You could also mention Venezuelan artists Gego and [Jesus Rafael] Soto.
AR: Of course. Gego wove her metal constructions in space, hanging them from a single point in the ceiling. Had you seen some of the work by these artists before creating Cosmic Thing?
DO: I had. Especially Oiticica's. He has been an important reference for me because of the Penetrables and the relationship between formal geometry and political positioning. Other artists have done it too, like Cornelia Parker, whose work I didn't know at the time. Honestly, I don't think of it as my invention. It was a gradual investigation developed from that pictorial plane where I wanted a white, neutral space with floating objects. I had also explored it on other occasions simply by trying to place objects on the floor. It was a fairly natural process for understanding the work in three dimensions and also acknowledging the importance of not choosing any other machine but a VW.
AR: Why a VW specifically?
DO: I must confess that it was a very intuitive thing derived from my proximity to it. But sometimes a personal experience is the result of a political phenomenon, and other times that personal experience becomes a political phenomenon. I think that it's a very powerful symbol of an era, and speaks of a moment in contemporary Mexican history when there is a shift from one technology to another, and the former is declared inadequate despite being so common. The technological change obviously implies a political and ideological change. There is a change in the means of production and distribution that transforms social relations. The shift is from a self-repairing technology that was discontinued in favor of another based on consumption and specialization. The illegal auto parts market damaged the system of consumption because it was very cheap to buy used parts and change them yourself. That is why cars lasted for so long, and thousands of people could afford to have one and travel in it. It was really a car of the people.
AR: The second part of the trilogy is entitled Moby Dick. Why did you pick a title with such a strong literary referent as Herman Melville's Moby Dick?
DO: I consider these three works a narrative, an evolutionary succession. I often write down my ideas in a notebook and then develop the third one first, then the first one. I don't follow a specific order with the trilogy. I don't remember if the first piece was Moby Dick or Cosmic Thing. I wanted to use the name Moby Dick to create an obvious reference of the white car as the white whale, like a cartoon.
AR: Why white, and not gray, or black, or blue?
DO: It's just that my car happened to be white, and there is something cartoonish about thinking of it as an animal, a fabulous reflection of the power and vastness of nature, the aggressiveness and force of an enormous, out-of-control beast having a domestic, banal, inconsequential relationship like that of a driver in his car, don't you think? Perhaps Moby Dick is the more humorous part of the trilogy.
AR: Was MobvDick created as a performance?
DO: It was born as an experiment. I think there is a tension of forces at play, the constant contraction and expansion that takes place between an object and a person, between an animal and a machine. Traction as an instinct or an impulse, in balance. I think these ingredients could also be at play in an academic sculpture, a theatrical play, or in any technical process. That is why I believe there is a sculptural relationship in understanding how matter works, how it reacts, and how it can be activated in nature in order to channel or convey energy.
AR: Personally, I see Moby Dick more as a performance than as a sculpture.
DO: I don't know. As a project it surprises me, it makes me uncomfortable, and it pleases me because it gets a bit out of control and, at the same time, the work is more than the final product. It's not that in the end I show a car tied up, or the pictorial value of an oil stain on the ground, and it's not just the video, either, which is the medium I use as documentation. I think it's the combination of everything together. Somehow, it's an experiment.
AR: Including the accompanying music?
DO: I also like the notion of music as a process undergone by the band. It begins to find the sound, the song, so there is a preparation to that; they tune their instruments and search for the relationship among the guitar, the drums, and the bass. They start a dialogue until they reach the sound they sought. There is a process of restraining, a process that is an attempt to tame the energy, to control or manipulate it.
AR: The music that accompanies the work has the same name and was made famous by the group Led Zeppelin, right?
DO: Yes, they composed it originally, and it was made famous by John Bonham's spectacular drum solo in their live performances. There are some recordings, and it is really cathartic, brutal genius, to see Bonham playing drums with his hands, or with different types of sticks. It was a battle with the instrument. There was a very pleasant relationship between him and his drums.
AR: In Moby Dick, is the artist trying to tame the car or to establish a harmonious relationship with it?
DO: I think that this is a work that pleases and contradicts me; it makes me uncomfortable, because there is always a wish to take nature toward something domestic, something known, a kind of cultural or technical intransigence. I always thought that hitting a rock with a tool was an imposition, but at the same time I understand that it is a natural, human impulse to inhabit, to transform, to create a memory, or to establish a living relationship with things.
AR: Does Moby Dick reflect man's desire to control his environment?
DO: I think so, and at the same time, it reflects how nature transforms the individual. There are some works, other works of mine, that speak of that, like Regies e instintos (Rules and instincts), from 1997. That is a piece where there was a white space, the neutral space of a gallery, and what I did was reproduce the architectural blueprint of the place, but using water channels and food. There were seventeen white rabbits inhabiting that white space, and they lived there for one month. They ate and drank and defecated as much as they could, and they started transforming all that space through their ingestion and digestion of the architectural blueprint. There was a mimetic relationship between the
white of the site and that of the rabbits; a living space that was eating and digesting the very building where it was on display. I find a connection between that piece and Moby Dick.
AR: Moby Dick was made in Mexico City and then re-created in Los Angeles. Where in Mexico City did the original performance take place?
DO: It was in a parking garage that is three levels underground. It's a location that interested me because of its dimensions and how firm the columns were there. It's a supermarket parking lot, so the idea excited me. At first I didn't understand it fully, and I found a relationship between the heroism of the hunter and the domestic act of going to the supermarket to buy a packaged and homogenized product. There was playfulness in it that caught my interest. The initial idea was to suggest a sort of cavern, a primal, essential ritual of survival, that of the hunt.
AR: Like those religious rituals or ceremonies still practiced today in some cultures?
DO: I think so.
AR: Let's talk about the performance in Los Angeles. Where did you stage it?
DO: On Lower Grand Avenue, a spectacular place because of the architecture and its size. The avenue runs under a bridge, and they have filmed some Hollywood movies there, with car chases and crashes; it's also where they hold Harley-Davidson parades.
AR: You said one of the reasons that led you to restage the piece was that you were not satisfied with some elements of the original. What did you change?
DO: I think the most important thing was trying to confront an approach and a process that I hadn't mastered yet. I think I've tried to work with materials and techniques that are unique to the sites where I am invited to show my work, spaces with an established artistic tradition, like that of glass-blowing in Italy; there is a local craftsmanship, and there are some great masters. It's something that flows naturally; I wanted to make a proposal along those lines, and it worked. Angelenos have the music and film industries. There is a movie theater, a drugstore, and a rock band on every corner. I thought it would be interesting to join that flow of experiences and professions.
AR: Because of your approach to your work, and how you take advantage of what every location has to offer, your artwork shows an excellent use of local resources. Was this something that began earlier in your career, or did it emerge as your work became better known, increasing vour chances of exhibiting outside of Mexico City?
DO: I guess it all follows a similar logic. When I was at home, penniless, and had a lot of free time, I felt I had to use anything available and try to transform it — a very basic operation, but sometimes the notion of how things ought to be becomes a surreal means of repression. I was forced to make do with what I had, and that generated a dialogue with my lifestyle and its context. Now it's different because things have changed, and I find very pleasant working conditions in different cities; I've tried to incorporate people and means of production that are an extension of the resources available to me at this time.
AR: I had the chance to witness the performance in Los Angeles, and the epic dimension of Moby Dick impressed me greatly. Seeing you and the other participants of the performance fight the car, struggle to bring it under control, and end up huffing and puffing, was like watching a gladiatorial bout.
DO: Well, it was also quite simple, like a television game show. Or an end-of-the-year school show.
AR: Or a work in the Romantic tradition: its form is subordinate to its content: it glorifies nature, the common man, and freedom of the spirit.
DO: I think I would describe it as more like a poorly staged magic trick or pulling a donkey's tail as a practical joke.
AR: Have you thought of the format you'll give Moby Dick when you present it in the REDCAT space?
DO: Certainly, I like the tension that the ropes and the car created. I like the notion of a sculpture as the tension of forces. At the same time, I am interested in the specific moment... or when the work acquires meaning and becomes a sign, thus becoming a part of memory. Like a change of language, from experience to idea. I think the relationship between the video projector and the screen creates a kind of tension similar to the one I felt in the parking lot before the car. There is a geometric triangular shape, like a baseball diamond. Somehow, I'm going to build a small screening room that is shaped like that. At the end is a frozen frame of the film, traced with strings that go from the projector to the screen, a kind of physical, material line traced with light. I am interested in the notion of setting, or freezing one image from a flow of events.
AR: Escarabajo is the third work in The Beetle Trilogy and, I understand, completes the life cycle of the car, which begins at the Puebla factory, where it was assembled and where it returns after many years in Mexico City. Could you tell us a little about this part of the trilogy?
DO: I started to do some reading on mythology, and I love the story that is common to many cultures, and repeated at different stages of history, in which the hero leaves the native land to explore the world and finally returns to die at home. I was thrilled by the notion of re-creating this odyssey, this mythical voyage, where a car could leave, have its own
life in the streets, just like a heroic character, and finally return to Puebla, where it was produced, or to Germany, where it was conceived. It is a voyage of return to the origin.
In some pre-Columbian graves, the dead are buried in a position inside clay pots whose interior is painted red. This is clearly preparation for rebirth, and the earth represents a return to the womb. A seed.
AR: This Mexican VW. or little Ulysses, if we want to compare it to the mythical hero, is going to make its return voyage to Puebla?
DO: Yes, in order to go back to where it was built. It's a car that is in pretty bad shape. I hope to stay on the road until the car stops running or I find a place where I can bury it.
AR: As far as the car will go?
DO: Yes, I'd like for it to be that way, and that is interesting, because there is also a relationship with the name Beetle. A beetle is lost in the soil. The car will be buried upside down, with the tires facing up, in the position in which insects die, and in the end only part of the tires will remain visible.
I love the special relationship that one develops with the piece, because you can notice the volume of the whole car, even though you are seeing only one part. You can recognize it, or infer it, thanks to the four points of reference of those tires that are pointing 01 from the ground; you can assume that there is a car buried there. That creates a whole mythical relationship of the object —of an imagined space, not a physical space.
AR: Instead of the cross that is used on the roads to mark the spot when someone lost their life, in Escarabajo the tires will be the markers that show where the car is buried.
DO: Yes, like four tombstones on the ground.
AR: Do you have the car already?
DO: It's my own.
AR: The one you use every day?
DO: Yes, yes, well, but it's very old already. It's like a pet.
AR: A pet you have kept for many years and you know doesn't have much time left?
DO: There is something very sad in all this, isn't there?
AR: It's very human to show emotional attachment to things one owns, and a car is no exception. When will you be traveling to Puebla?
DO: I don't know exactly, but it will have to be soon.
AR: Are you going to document it?
DO: Yes. I'll photograph it or record it on video, but I don't know exactly what the final presentation is going to be like. I am talking about an experience, and I don't want to define the piece now and be prejudiced. I'd rather derive it from the experience and make all the decisions afterward.
AR: Considering that we both come from cultures that are basically Catholic. I think it's pertinent that we should relate each of the parts of The Beetle Trilogy to three important elements of Catholicism: life, death, and resurrection. Here Moby Dick would represent life. Escarabojo is obviously death, and Cosmic Thing, with the reconfigured vehicle rising toward heaven, could be seen as the resurrection. Do you agree with this interpretation?
DO: I sure do. It's very good . . .
AR: The trilogy closes with the death of the car before the new year. Have you thought of any other work in which you will be using the concept of three?
DO: Yes, there has been something very advantageous in the use of a trilogy or triptych. Generally in photography I always work with series of three. I am interested in narrative, and I think it's the minimum number required to describe any process that involves an origin, a transformation, and a conclusion. Then you have a story.
AR: Do you have any plans to use this format in large-scale works like The Beetle Trilogy?
DO: No, actually I don't have any plans. I always have many projects in my head, but there is nothing set. The VW trilogy has taken me to different pieces, and these, in turn, lead to others, and you can't create a system of sets. If I made a diagram of the pieces, it would be similar perhaps to Cosmic Thing, a work that branches out into another, and so on until it creates a network, a three-dimensional figure.
AR: Like some kind of organic forking or ramification?
DO: Yes. It's interesting how centers are created, and then, when it seems as if one piece were the main one, it leads to other ones, so that the one piece, which was the origin, is displaced, and another one becomes the new center or we find several simultaneous centers. I like the notion of a rhizome, a figure without a center of gravity.
AR: Could we talk of some pieces that had their origin in the trilogy, such as one that might have been inspired by Cosmic Thing?
DO: Cosmic Thing created some expectations, and I was a bit scared because I had many ideas but did not want to be boxed into a style, compete against myself, or repeat myself. So I let them rest for a necessary period. I think that Cosmic Thing is related to Materia/energia (Matter/energy, 2003), a piece I made at Galeria Fortes Vilaca in Sao Paulo. It consisted of a group of ceramic bricks organized in three different configurations: as a solid, forming a cube; as a liquid, spreading at floor level; and finally, as a gaseous element, with the separate tiles suspended with wires from the ceiling. I liked the vastness of bricks, which are a basic unit of construction and can be turned into anything by a creative imagination; it offers an infinite array of possibilities because it incorporates all states of matter. That work was the result of being in the gallery for a week, making one piece, documenting it, and destroying it, and then building another, documenting it, and also destroying it in order to build another one afterward and, in that way, changing the piece every day. It was a waste of energy.
AR: What other works have come from Cosmic Thing or Moby Dick, the two works you have completed up to this point?
DO: Another one that developed from Cosmic Thing is a piece called Spiral of Violence (2005), which I just presented in the exhibition The Uncertainty Principle at London's Tate Modern. Spiral of Violence is also a kind of political cartoon. It consists of a window suspended from the ceiling, with sixteen panels of glass placed as if they had exploded outward from it. Each glass panel is in the position that corresponds to it in the window frame, but is projected forward 40 centimeters [15 ¾ in.], the first from the frame, then each from the previous one, creating an expansion in space, and following a spiral that goes from the outside inward. It has to do with how to break down a plane and unfold it in space. Each windowpane was cut in parts, as if in a process of progressive fragmentation.
AR: Were the glass fragments outside the frame, hanging directly from the ceiling of the gallery?
DO: Yes.
AR: When the viewers entered the gallery, did they see the work only from the front, or did they have a chance to walk around it?
DO: They could walk around it and observe its details. One glass pane was cut in eight pieces, forming a shape similar to the Union Jack, and on it, I placed a sticker with the British flag, like when a child puts a sticker on the window and, twenty years later, it is still stuck there.
AR: Did you think of the flag as an homage to the site where the work was shown?
DO: I think it referenced the location and the moment of its exhibition. I was interested in it also as part of a continuum, a flow of events, the specific moment when the story stops and becomes an aesthetic definition, you take an ideological position, you assume an identity, or you create a religion. It's a moment when memory is made, but it is also part of a broader process of transformation. I am captivated by the moment when the notion of identity emerges, or devotion to a flag, to its colors, or to cultural values that you are educated to identify and to defend. They could easily have been any other set.
AR: Is it as if the process became momentarily frozen in time, and then
DO: Yet one has an aesthetic notion of that reality, and of things. It's like the story of the knife whose handle, all of a sudden, becomes useless, so you change it, and later on the blade dulls, and you change that too, and then you have a totally different knife, but you still think that it's the same knife.
AR: I see you've managed to keep the idea of the explosion of the object, adapting it to other works without it becoming formulaic, or a style that is repeated frequently because it's successful.
DO: I would love to defend that position. I am the owner of this idea, I am the owner of the piece, I want to learn from it, but I don't want to devote my life to it. I feel this need to recover it as a concept and as a work process, but without letting it take over my life or control me.
AR: Is it a way of trying to maintain control over objects and not allowing them to control you?
DO: Well, sometimes they also lead me to things I never imagined.
AR: Going back to Moby Dick and the kind of evolution your pieces undergo, could you mention a recent work that derived from your experience with Moby Dick?
DO: I don't have a very clear one. I'd have to think about it. There might be some antecedents. For example, at one time I tried to work with certain anthropomorphic analogies between tools and animals. Pico cansado (Tired pickaxe, 1997) was a pickaxe that might resemble a snake. Pato Bosch (Bosch duck, 2000) was a sender that could resemble a duck swimming in a lake; Capullo (Cocoon, 1991) is another work related to that, consisting of metal rings that formed a sort of caterpillar, or cocoon, that I could fit into. It's like we said before, somewhat intransigent, somewhat natural, halfway between mechanical and organic.
AR: Working on this exhibition, I realized that there isn't yet a book that explores your work from the beginning up to this point.
DO: I am a little scared. It's like what Georges Bataille said about his books: he did not like to have them published because that didn't allow him to continue editing them. He felt that it was too categorical to have something published; something out of his notebook stopped being part of his intellectual process and became something definitive.
AR: We could turn around Bataille's notion and say that it is important to culminate the process in the publication of a catalogue because it gives you the chance to explain your work and to discuss other interpretations of your oeuvre.
DO: I think that ambiguity is always a part of mythology. It's an interpretation by many, and that creates a collective ghost, or a memory that is no longer one thing or another. That excites me sometimes. I have an idea about the pieces, but I don't think it's the only one. I can appreciate how some of my friends don't like to read catalogues or have works "explained" to them.
AR: However some artists prefer a single interpretation of their work. Do you think that is too rigid a position?
DO: I think it's very boring. It's also the equivalent to fighting everyone, because we don't have such strict control over things. Chaos is more real. It's something I have been exploring recently; I try to bring to the work the end result, but also the process. The sculpture and the tool, the architecture and the grit. The piece as an end result, but also the constructive mistakes.
AR: Have you created any pieces that incorporate that system?
DO: Yes. There is one piece, Modulo de construction con tortillas (Tortilla construction module, 1998). The work is on a pedestal, and in the back, a bit hidden, is the trash, like when you try to sweep it under the rug, the leftover pieces from when the work was constructed, we could call them the mistakes. I also exhibited Constructive Failures/ Three Stones (2005), which consists of a pile of unfinished wooden chairs, connected chaotically at right angles, an irregular swarm, and in the middle of it are some finished chairs that are part of the same building system. So it's a kind of crystallization, in which only one part of the piece makes sense, although everything that surrounds it follows the same constructive logic. You recognize only one part, and that is useful, but truly it's part of a connected whole.
It has to do with making one mistake after another, and in the end, something emerges that has meaning, even though it could be one more in that same line of mistakes; it plays a role in your memory, and it's something we recognize. Gabriel Orozco says, "You see only what you know." Within that chaos, you can recognize something, but in reality, the work itself is that whole array of possibilities, like a language of which you understand only a few words but don't know the others.

This interview appears in Damián Ortega: The Beetle Trilogy and Other Works (Los Angeles: CalArts/REDCAT, 2005) available at www.redcat.org.

More on Damián Ortega

	Related Texts
CV
Bibliography
Matters and Mytheme: A Proposition by Eungie Joo
Moving Parts by Mark Godfery

	Related Links
http://www.tate.org.uk/mode... Tate Online
http://www.icaphila.org/exh... Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
http://www.redcat.org/exhib... REDCAT, Los Angeles

Back to Damián Ortega

• Terms & Conditions
• |
• Copyright Information
• |
• Privacy Policy
• |
• Sitemap