The strange life of dead waters
Video: 5’ 30’’
2007
This work involves the employment of video to map out an itinerary in the city of Madrid with historical resonance, in search of some traces from the past that were completely erased long ago. Based on a methodical task of documentation, the video trails the disappeared tributary streams of the Manzanares river, which during the Muslim era ran through what is now the city centre. The bucolic sounds of wilderness evoke in the spectator’s mind how that territory must have been back then, thus producing a temporal gap between image and sound. In this superposition of past and present, the current vision of the contemporary metropolis contrasts with the remote echo of murmuring water reverberating in the air; which reminds us of that idyllic state of paradise lost, an archetypical symbol present in the origin of myriad traditional legends, from both East and West.
Document
—— Drawing. Map of Muslim Madrid.
Video stills
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