Terre di Nessuno: Arenas Movedizas (No man’s land: Quicksand), 2002/08
Jerez, Concha & Iges, José
Interactive installation
Truth is the least certain of things. It has reached the point where it is nothing but an empty aspiration, lacking content. Instead, we talk about whether something seems plausible: about news that has created a flow of opinions, for instance. A judge seeks evidence of the truth, but everyday citizens who receive information only ask that it seem credible. They have lost much of the certainty that used to drive them to take actions, to do something in favor or against something or someone, based on certain evidence made public.
Our work places the user before true news that seems false and false news that seems true. But that is only part of how our field of uncertainties is set up. The setting is produced by the display of a set of signs that led to disorientation, at least, if not outright distrust: quasi-verbal gestures, meaningless blabbering; flags that correspond only to an indeterminate place called "terre di nessuno" (no man’s land) accompanied by impossible anthems, a remix of genuine anthems that still sound strange to the listener; instructions to the player that encourage a non-competitive attitude if not an openly disconcerting one; limiting the installation space with video scenes that overlap diverse physical spaces, abolishing the allusion to a real space of reference, but also provoking an ambiguous, calculated sensation of spatiality in the installation.
And all that accompanied by the selected Web pages and blogs that change from time to time, added to the torrent of information the game offers us. The game is a way of randomly choosing information. We have converted the fierce territoriality of the original Parcheesi into a game of delocalized information. This way, the visitor is offered a mine field and submitted to a flow of data which, in spite of their sometimes contradictory and sarcastic flavour, do have something in common: the intention of leading one to doubt. This is, as we said, a setting for uncertainty. And that is a small step toward independent thinking.
Video recording: Concha Jerez Video editing: Concha Jerez, Pedro López Edition and audio mixing: José Iges Game page design: Concha Jerez, José Iges, Pedro López
Project produced with the grant of Ayudas de la Dirección General de Bellas Artes del Ministerio de Cultura