No Marked Path

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The project discusses the present conflict between road travel, as an experience associated with the feeling of freedom and exploration, and the new projections of reality close to the simulacrum provided by location technologies.

Road travel began to appear constantly in culture after the Second World War, always associated with an "initiatory journey" that expresses search, a desire for space and discovery. Our way of understanding travel has currently changed and the main reason for this arises from new technological tools that provide us with a relationship of dominance over the territory/environment. With access to new communication technologies, which base their performance on the creation of artificial and interactive environments, new ways of relating to the environment appear, shifting our attention from the landscape to the screen. Localization devices become the perfect tool to fulfill the post-modern simulacrum.

No Marked Path reflects, through the imaginary of popular culture "road movie", on the present conflict between highway travel, technology, and image. Starting from the idea that Frederic Jameson points out “our inability to achieve aesthetic representations of our own current experience”, I’m interested in examining how concepts related to the human footprint through technology, the screen as a catalyst for experiences, and the interrelation between map and territory are present in our environment and landscape. Composed of several chapters that include photography and photosculpture, the work combines materials and media, fiction and reality, strategically displaying visual and material details to confront the device with the image for its questioning.

The project aims to raise a series of questions: How does technology influence the way we travel and the way we represent our surroundings? How do we approach the idea of "the trip" and its imagery today? How do we express this new relationship with place and territory? To what extent has the screen turned "a new available territory" into a single "marked destination"?

I consider the horizon line as the indispensable part of the landscape that generates the need to travel, to explore and reach beyond. But also as a representation of condemnation, when we obsessively aspire to its line, which we believe to be the end.

I extract small details from films belonging to “road movie” genre and manipulate them. Barely perceptible fragments to generate a rhythm that refers to the horizon, to the out of shot. A fragment that places us in a corner, in the periphery of the image, leaving out the event it represented. Finally, I manipulate the images looking for a dirty aesthetic, of technological device, showing a relationship between symbols, car, landscape.
I consider the horizon line as the indispensable part of the landscape that generates the need to travel, to explore and reach beyond. But also as a representation of condemnation, when we obsessively aspire to its line, which we believe to be the end.

I extract small details from films belonging to “road movie” genre and manipulate them. Barely perceptible fragments to generate a rhythm that refers to the horizon, to the out of shot. A fragment that places us in a corner, in the periphery of the image, leaving out the event it represented. Finally, I manipulate the images looking for a dirty aesthetic, of technological device, showing a relationship between symbols, car, landscape.
I consider the horizon line as the indispensable part of the landscape that generates the need to travel, to explore and reach beyond. But also as a representation of condemnation, when we obsessively aspire to its line, which we believe to be the end.

I extract small details from films belonging to “road movie” genre and manipulate them. Barely perceptible fragments to generate a rhythm that refers to the horizon, to the out of shot. A fragment that places us in a corner, in the periphery of the image, leaving out the event it represented. Finally, I manipulate the images looking for a dirty aesthetic, of technological device, showing a relationship between symbols, car, landscape.
I consider the horizon line as the indispensable part of the landscape that generates the need to travel, to explore and reach beyond. But also as a representation of condemnation, when we obsessively aspire to its line, which we believe to be the end.

I extract small details from films belonging to “road movie” genre and manipulate them. Barely perceptible fragments to generate a rhythm that refers to the horizon, to the out of shot. A fragment that places us in a corner, in the periphery of the image, leaving out the event it represented. Finally, I manipulate the images looking for a dirty aesthetic, of technological device, showing a relationship between symbols, car, landscape.
10 photogrphs: archival pigment print. Size: 50 x 70 cm each.
Expanded image (photosculpture) obtained from google maps.
Laser cut on metal and car paint. Size: 110 x 70 cm each.
Jorge Luis Borges related in a short text “On Exactitude in the Sciences” the ambition of an imaginary group of imperial cartographers who in their desire for perfection came to make a map of an empire that was the same size as the empire. According to Borges, this perfect map turned out to be useless.
As in Borges’ story, every day Google Street View cars travel thousands of kilometers capturing our roads and streets, expanding the areas where it is already available.
Taking as a reference different Google Street View maps, I was interested in the places that escape to their control, the gaps that form the layout of their cars. I have made a series of pieces that trace this “Borgesian map” of the world.
Expanded image (photosculpture) obtained from google maps.
Laser cut on metal and car paint. Size: 110 x 70 cm each.
Jorge Luis Borges related in a short text “On Exactitude in the Sciences” the ambition of an imaginary group of imperial cartographers who in their desire for perfection came to make a map of an empire that was the same size as the empire. According to Borges, this perfect map turned out to be useless.
As in Borges’ story, every day Google Street View cars travel thousands of kilometers capturing our roads and streets, expanding the areas where it is already available.
Taking as a reference different Google Street View maps, I was interested in the places that escape to their control, the gaps that form the layout of their cars. I have made a series of pieces that trace this “Borgesian map” of the world.
During several trips on secondary roads, I photographed the landscape that appeared in front of my car’s window. The GPS obstructs the view and presents a new perspective in the reading of the territory. At a glance, the real environment and its technological representation appear. The landscape appears out of focus showing the predominance of the technological device over the natural environment.
During several trips on secondary roads, I photographed the landscape that appeared in front of my car’s window. The GPS obstructs the view and presents a new perspective in the reading of the territory. At a glance, the real environment and its technological representation appear. The landscape appears out of focus showing the predominance of the technological device over the natural environment.
During several trips on secondary roads, I photographed the landscape that appeared in front of my car’s window. The GPS obstructs the view and presents a new perspective in the reading of the territory. At a glance, the real environment and its technological representation appear. The landscape appears out of focus showing the predominance of the technological device over the natural environment.
During several trips on secondary roads, I photographed the landscape that appeared in front of my car’s window. The GPS obstructs the view and presents a new perspective in the reading of the territory. At a glance, the real environment and its technological representation appear. The landscape appears out of focus showing the predominance of the technological device over the natural environment.
24 photograph: Archival pigment print. Size 110 x 55 cm each.
The work is composed of 48 photographs
The conquest of the "wild world" implied the development of a technology of representation that would also allow us to take possession of space, in a symbolic way in this case. The world was considered as a great virgin landscape to be appropriated and the photography witnessed the advance of the colonizers in their journey into the unknown, prolonging the myth of the frontier in the twentieth century.

I am searching online library archives for photographs of old processes now digitised. The work is made up of manipulated histograms of old photograph by Timothy Osullivan or William Bell and other pioneering photographers from the far west, plus photographs taken by me according to this canon. Finally, I merge the result creating a new fictions landscape, where both mountains converge and where the analog and digital worlds are mixed.
The conquest of the "wild world" implied the development of a technology of representation that would also allow us to take possession of space, in a symbolic way in this case. The world was considered as a great virgin landscape to be appropriated and the photography witnessed the advance of the colonizers in their journey into the unknown, prolonging the myth of the frontier in the twentieth century.

I am searching online library archives for photographs of old processes now digitised. The work is made up of manipulated histograms of old photograph by Timothy Osullivan or William Bell and other pioneering photographers from the far west, plus photographs taken by me according to this canon. Finally, I merge the result creating a new fictions landscape, where both mountains converge and where the analog and digital worlds are mixed.
The conquest of the "wild world" implied the development of a technology of representation that would also allow us to take possession of space, in a symbolic way in this case. The world was considered as a great virgin landscape to be appropriated and the photography witnessed the advance of the colonizers in their journey into the unknown, prolonging the myth of the frontier in the twentieth century.

I am searching online library archives for photographs of old processes now digitised. The work is made up of manipulated histograms of old photograph by Timothy Osullivan or William Bell and other pioneering photographers from the far west, plus photographs taken by me according to this canon. Finally, I merge the result creating a new fictions landscape, where both mountains converge and where the analog and digital worlds are mixed.
The conquest of the "wild world" implied the development of a technology of representation that would also allow us to take possession of space, in a symbolic way in this case. The world was considered as a great virgin landscape to be appropriated and the photography witnessed the advance of the colonizers in their journey into the unknown, prolonging the myth of the frontier in the twentieth century.

I am searching online library archives for photographs of old processes now digitised. The work is made up of manipulated histograms of old photograph by Timothy Osullivan or William Bell and other pioneering photographers from the far west, plus photographs taken by me according to this canon. Finally, I merge the result creating a new fictions landscape, where both mountains converge and where the analog and digital worlds are mixed.
6 photographs: 1 archival print + dibond + 1 methacrylate print
Size: 24 x 30 cm each.
The image refers to two issues that interest me within the “road movie” genre. “The myth of space and the space of myth” and “the prevailing technology of the time”. In most of these films the protagonist embodies the values of the romantic hero, values that I use to link the “destiny of the hero” with the “marked destiny” imposed by the location technology.
The image refers to two issues that interest me within the “road movie” genre. “The myth of space and the space of myth” and “the prevailing technology of the time”. In most of these films the protagonist embodies the values of the romantic hero, values that I use to link the “destiny of the hero” with the “marked destiny” imposed by the location technology.
The three images refer to two issues that interest me within the “road movie” genre. “The myth of space and the space of myth” and “the prevailing technology of the time”. In most of these films the protagonist embodies the values of the romantic hero, values that I use to link the “destiny of the hero” with the “marked destiny” imposed by the location technology.