Sebastian Diaz Morales “The Way Between Two Points (Terra Incognita)”

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Lands End / Artists

Sebastian Diaz Morales, Argentina: “The Way Between Two Points (Terra Incognita)”, 2009, 2-channel
synch. video

In the newest work by the Argentine film and video artist Sebastian Diaz Morales a blue collar worker roams the streets of a no-name city till he gets to some inhospitable, windy area full of the debris of past mining operations: scrap iron, puddles of oil, ruins of houses, streets patched up with tar. The protagonist wanders this worn out place of exploitation, comes to terms with the history in an almost bodily way, touches seemingly carelessly left rusty bowls and old stones. As blue collar worker he is part of this zone, in a way works through it and changes it into something that could be some kind of “Terra Incognita”: a zone we do not know that way, which we do not want to know anything about because it does not yield anything any longer.

Diaz Morales chose an area in Patagonia, in the Argentine south, which, during the past 100 years, changed from an inhospitable stretch of land to one devastated by the effects of 20th century industry. The artist turns the time around in slow, poetic pictures and sounds, and lets us, in a new dimension of perception, view the end-time landscape as some archetype landscape. The roaming as well as the view from the plane draw new maps of the area and convey a new identity to it.