| Note |
Joanne Leow: I think I have two, I guess, specific questions about your process, then. One to do, first, with the found objects. So this idea that you’re saying there’s a material archive in these that need to be tapped. So like, one, I’m really interested in the work with the seawater, but two, what is that process for you when you’re thinking about how to almost make the archive real for your audience, because when most people look at a piece of debris from a construction site or look at a glass of seawater, they’re just like, “meh, this is just a thing,” it’s a material thing, but obviously you see so much more.
(0:29)
Guadalupe Martinez: Yeah.
(0:30)
Joanne Leow: And so what is that process like, you know, drawing that realization or that revelation from people who are involved in your art?
(0:37)
Guadalupe Martinez: Actually, I think that I use text a lot in order to create those kinds of poetical connections, so often—one, like usually the title of my work is very important; I see it as an element in the work and the text that kind like of accompanies the work in many ways. Oftentimes, in my performances, there is text that, in some way, is being used as poetical devices to hint different concepts into those materials. I think in general it’s, it’s quite successful in igniting…so I see like there’s all of this meaning embedded in, in materials—from the kind of material that they’re made of, and the kinds of labours that are embedded in that material in terms of production. Whether it’s a piece of a building, or if it’s soil that has been excavated, there’s so much meaning around it. I feel like, in general, it has been successful, like, the reception. I sometimes tend to use humour quite a bit to create this parody around the tragedy (laughs) of the politics around space and materials, and all the bodies, because I think that working with materials that have been disposed or turned down, it’s also a way to use those signifiers to speak about the bodies that are being turned away or discarded and erased. |