Bienalsur: all the ideas that fit in a hopper

From July to October, Martín Marro 's project is part of Fragmenting Obsolescence: Matter in Conflict at the Centro Cultural de España in La Paz, Bolivia, as part of the latest edition of Bienalsur. Curated by Clarisa Appendino , the exhibition also features artists Florencia Levy, Alejandra Delgado, Raúl Silva, and Gary Vera.

Perhaps the Hopper is an example of what the philosopher of technology, Gilbert Simondon, pointed out as necessary for the connection between human and machine. "The first condition for the incorporation of technical objects into culture would be that man be neither inferior nor superior to technical objects, maintaining with them a relationship of equality, of reciprocal exchange," he asserted.

Marro's project, which is being realized for the first time at this Biennial, consists of three stages that develop in parallel and are interconnected, uniting territories. In this union, the sociability between humans and machines is embodied in participatory actions , workshops, and research.

While in Bolivia, three images will be displayed as photomontages, arranged in a "U" shape, depicting the machinic genealogy of the Tolva, accompanied by robotic prose. In Luque, a territory in the agro-industrial plains of Córdoba, the three stages that are also part of the project will unfold . The first ("Habitat") portrays a workshop for the production and reflection on art, culture, and the environment; the second, a community-based participatory action with research and memories related to the territory; and the third, the creation of site-specific artworks.

“In 2022, after a post-pandemic move, I began a draft-outline project based on photomontages of harvesting machines inserted into the plain landscape and the image of Tolva,” Marro explains about the project’s genesis. “While I was doing that, I began to think about introducing actions that would merge with the plot of the beings that inhabit the local space. This new process transforms it into a hybrid, transdisciplinary project that pours through the cracks of the digital works . This is also how disjointed prose emerges in the synthesized voice of a robot that, altering the senses, describes Tolva.”

Like an intuition, the landscape of the agro-industrial plain typical of Luque (Córdoba), where the artist grew up, gives shape to this idea with the images of cuttings on the plain, the machines in this same space. From agriculture to agro-industry, with the Industrial Revolution, the most significant change to date in the form of human production and its connection with technical reality occurs. In this change, in the landscape intervened by a machine that is beginning to be automated, lies one of the meanings of Tolva .

“Agribusiness reorganized the connection between humans and their food. New production logics emerged that are more extensive, faster, and more efficient. Work became mechanized, processes became interconnected, and the previous landscape of ancient native forests was transformed into a system,” Marro explains to Ñ .

With a proposal that has been developing since its inauguration at the end of July in two different territories, the reflection on the territory offers a look at the landscape and the machinery associated with a region as closely linked to agro-industrial production as the Argentine central plain. When the potential social connection with machines is most evident is when they become essential to producing the amount of food necessary to feed the population. “The transition from nomadism to community life was a gradual process that began about ten thousand years ago with the agricultural revolution. By domesticating plants and animals, humans stopped depending solely on hunting and gathering, which allowed them to settle, build shelters, and accumulate goods. Communities thus emerged, with an identity, social structure, rituals, symbolic language, and a strong sense of belonging tied to the territory,” the artist states.

In turn, the image of the Hopper, of the dismantling of the hopper and its parts, refers to the torso of a combine harvester, a machine that marked, in the 20th century, the most drastic change towards agroindustry . Perhaps in participatory reflection based on art on agroindustry, exagriculture, it is possible to imagine social relations in a space in which machines and human beings form inseparable, interconnected technical wholes , characteristic of present lives and a prelude to future ones.