The video shows a live feed of a Mexican Market. It is a voyeurist window to the interaction and exchange that happens between Mexicans in their own space. The market is one of the eldest cultural icons. Colors, Smells, language, and objects like Piñatas, tunas, nopales, molcajetes, virgenes de Guadalupe shows us where we are. But it is not in Mexico, it is 8 miles away.
Work metadata
- Year Created: 2011
- Submitted to ArtBase: Tuesday Sep 16th, 2014
- Original Url: http://gouvrit.org/index.php/work/mexican-market/
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Work Credits:
- florencegouvrit, primary creator
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Artist Statement
La Michoacana is a little piece of Mexico. As a Mexican I do not seek for Mexican grocery stores just to buy groceries, I go to speak and be spoken in Spanish, to go even for a few minutes back to my own country. Familiar brands, familiar fruits, familiar smells, familiar faces. People I have never seen before, people I don’t know their names, but I recognize as my own people.
This piece, conceived in the spirit of telepresence art, is an installation about familiarity, and presence. A live feed video shows the life happening within their walls. When an American enters the store, the language shifts to make it recognizable to the foreigner, in this case the American foreigner. The observer alters the observed. But when the American is not there it becomes again a Mexican space, not recognizable by the foreigner. The interactive system allows the person in the gallery, standing in front of the live feed to be present without altering the space, transforming the gallery viewer in an unobtrusive participant.