Last July, the Eye’s Walk Digital Festival in the last edition of 2017, entitled Ermoúpoli: Inside Out hosted for the first time the Atelier Morales in the capital of Syros, Greece. (…) The works created by Teresa Ayuso and Juan Luis Morales were for three summer days acknowledged by a heterogeneous audience, from a new approach: video mapping art. (…) in cooperation with American artist Katy Kavanaugh, inaugurated the first night with video art from the photography series Arqueología, homenaje a Eliseo Diego (Archeology: Tribute to Eliseo Diego). (…)
The randomized images shown from Arqueología presented the interior of deserted houses in Havana, properly integrated to the exterior of the monument in the Greek capital. With this concept, Cuban images are taken away from the original context. While showing them on the walls of the Aegean University, this interior– exterior work was animated, transferring the interior from another continent and another culture to the Mediterranean.
This digital composition is benefied by the common fact that Greece and Cuba are both islands. (…) Simultaneous to the projection of photographs of old Havana houses on the neoclassic wall, the soundtrack of sea waves and birds captured the streets of Syros, together with the voices of Fillia Milidaki, Katy Kavanaugh, Yannis Adoniou and Juan Luis Morales reciting in Greek, Spanish and English the poem Arqueología, by Cuban poet Eliseo Diego (…). With this poem recited and projected on the Greek monuments, Arqueología explored new artistic tracks, surprising passersby and stimulating the senses of those watching this ephemeral nocturnal work. The audiovisual performance searched for the essence of video technology based on sound and visual phenomenon. The images contrasted with the screen/wall and the sound, as transmission element. The silent composition and the human absence from the images conveyed grief and concern about the neglected patrimony.
Teresa Ayuso and Juan Luis Morales, both Cuban artists, trained architects, and living in Paris since 1993, have previously worked on patrimony adrift, as demonstrated the series Bohíos (2003), Los ingenios (2004), Los balnearios (2007) and recently the series Varaderos. (…)
Other participants, including fiteen artists from across the world such as: Fred L’Épee, Olga Guseva, Camille Turlot, Eric Szerman, Pani Pawlosky, Ana Perola, Zavier Ovidio; were able to exchange twenty-eight electronic images with an audience interested in numerical culture. (…)
How did the idea of Patrimony Adrift emerge, why that concern?
In Cuba we witnessed the loss of some architectonic heritage, not valued at all. We decided to document, study and classify that patrimony, and to show it so that people (in or outside Cuba) might be aware of the existing patrimonial wealth, not only that of colonial architecture which has been prioritized over others. (…)
What is the new project Varaderos about?
First, the word varadero means the place where vessels are dry docked to be protected from waves or to be repaired; it may also be a project that makes no progress. The series Varaderos (with an“s”) started at the beginning of last year. We visited Varadero beach (…) and we inventoried destroyed houses, demolished houses and others in devastated conditions (…) It is a contradiction since many hotels have been built near the coast and we want to show the patrimony of houses built at the turn of the century from the original stones, wooden houses, now devastated. The architecture in the area is disappearing and we decided to make a series about coastal architecture, about marinas, about recovering the marinas, to tribute the marinas by Mario Romañach. (….)
