Sant Romà de Sau (2013)
Audiovisual
2 videos, 3′30″ each
BA Collection
Inventory No.: 2013.254.2
The Sant Romà de Sau project emerged from researching the historical construct based on contemporary creation as a knowledge and transmission method. The invisibility of the village, its history filled with mud and sludge and nearly forgotten, is approached by detecting and compiling the elements needed to tell its development from its earliest days. Starting from the idea that art can write history in another language and offer new readings of events, the project envisages an urban reconstruction based on memory rather than archives; at the same time, it simulates the continuity of life there, by creating possible alternative historical realities while continuing to show the village’s actual disappearance.
Two people who lived in Sant Romà de Sau were therefore located and their accounts documented. Both of them drew the village’s street plan from memory, producing urban layouts that become the cornerstone of the project. Based on the memories, they worked on visiting the village from the water surface, using the church tower as the reference point; the possibility of the streets having lit lampposts was recreated, and simulating the life and activity that could have been found there.
One of the videos of the projects shows how, at dusk, dozens of lampposts come on under the water, simulating the possible activity and life that could occur there. The cross of the Church Sant Romà de Sau, which rises up out of the water as a raised fist, acts as a symbolic axis for a visit using the drawings of the former residents. A second video, shot from further away, records the moment when the lit village seems to come alive at nightfall. The energy and the history of its submersion thus become a poetic excuse to use light and the language of art to restore the village’s activity and memory.
Juan Pablo Ordúñez / MawatreS is artist who started in the world of graffiti and post-graffiti at a very early age. Concerns linked to memory, intervention and the notion of commemoration, contemporary art and the common space are the backbone of his artistic exploration in both production and mediation. His productions in different languages and formats seek to generate approach contexts to foster the embracing of new ways of telling past chapters of history.