Doris Salcedo in "Compassion" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

Assistant Carlos Andres Granada:
This is one of the sites of the

furniture pieces that we’re building.

It has to look antique.
It has to look original.

It starts with Doris
making drawings.

Once we have the
furniture pieces,

I get to build models
in the computer.

We simulate every single aspect
of this furniture business.

So after that,
they create the plans,

and I come down here
and talk a little with Ramon,

explain him angles
and everything.

And then we start by
making the metal structure.

Assistant Ramón Villamarin:
I feel like I’m kind of the

engineer for Doris.

I help her solving some
specific problems.

I’m not an engineer,
but somehow,

I have a foot in each technical
and creative things,

so I can deal
with both things.

It was– always my task
mainly was how to

join those pieces.

It’s very difficult
things to do.

Doris always tries to make
something kind of impossible.

Assistant Joaquin Sanabria:
Carlos does the modeling

and worked with Doris in that stage.

With Ramón, eventually,
they have to link themselves together.

So virtuality to reality.

The piece works really
from the inside to the outside.

It’s all given so that the
surface of the piece is

structurally accurate in
every single millimeter.

So beginning from the inside,
we have a metal structure

that’s very rigid so that
it could hold in every way.

You don't see it.
You’ll never see it.

Finally, this structure would
hold the concrete in place

so that it doesn't stick out.

It doesn't crack,

it stays stable when
it's being cast.

The surface has to prevail
above everything else,

but, of course,
the poetic meaning is the–

which is in the surface,
it’s totally poetic.

Doris Salcedo:
My work is based not

on my experience

but on somebody
else’s experience.

"Experience" comes from
the Latin word experiri,

which means
“to test, to prove,"

from the Latin word periri,
which means "peril, danger,"

and also from the
Indo-European root per,

which means "going across."

So "experience" means
"going across danger."

So my work is about
somebody else’s experience

literally defined.

I come from Colombia,

a country where there's
nothing but ruins.

That’s what wars, imperialism,
colonialism left us.

So that marks my perspective,
and that's really the point:

I am a third-world artist.

From that perspective,
from the perspective of the victim,

from the perspective of
the defeated people,

it's what I’m seeing.

I'm looking at the world.

So I’m trying to rescue that memory,
if it could be possible.

But, of course,
I don't succeed.

So that's why my work
does not represent something.

It’s simply– it's a hint of something.

It is trying to bring into our presence
something that is no longer here.

So it is subtle.

I have a group of people who,
in the most generous way,

help me to make the pieces.

It is a collective effort.

I work with architects,
and this team of architects are

continuously giving me their creativity,
their ideas, their input into

the way the pieces
could be made.

Even though I have a
very precise idea of what I want,

they are the ones that are
making that image possible.

They are building it in material.

The process of making a piece,

it’s sort of a schizophrenic game
where you try to put your center

in the center of the person
you are interviewing,

of the witness.

And then you try to look at yourself
from that perspective.

For many years,
I’ve been talking to

victims of violence
after terrible events took place.

I will go to the sites and
interview people and

gather objects,

and my work was built
based on the words that

the witness have told me.

So I used to think of myself
as a secondary witness.

As an artist, I have a responsibility,

I have to look a historical evidence

and work with whatever material is given to me.

I don't work based on imagination or fiction.

In the process of making "Unland,"
I was embroidering hair on wood

and going across with a needle
through wood with hair.

Of course, it's an
insane gesture.

It's an absurd gesture.

And it is a huge, huge,
absurd waste of energy.

And we were working with
a team of 15 people

for three years nonstop
on those pieces.

So it remind me of
Paul Celan, the poet.

Paul Celan said that

"it is only absurdity which shows
the presence of the human."

In that sense,
but also it was related

to the waste of lives here.

It was the height of the paramilitary
massacres in Colombia.

It was my way of showing how
life could be wasted.

But at the same time,

you could build something
that was poetic,

that could give testimony to the
human presence and to the

humanness of these victims
and the fragility of life

and the brutality of power.

I think everything was therein that
gesture of sewing through wood.

Assistant Ramon Villamarin:
There were tables.

There were tables together,
very interesting joints with

the old furniture,
like many of the pieces of Doris.

My particular task was
how to join them.

I was helping to—
drilling those holes.

I was drilling and drilling
and drilling millions of holes.

And then it happens:
some shots in the streets,

and– and we– and we heard
pow-pow-pow-pow-pow,

and something happened.

I don't remember what it was,
but there was blood in the streets.

Something happened.
And suddenly you understand why

you have to make millions of holes,

and it wasn't rational,
but it make sense.

In that moment, it make sense
to make millions of holes, like–

like a monk, doing that all the time–
millions of holes.

Doris Salcedo: I was researching several
cases of people that

had been disappeared.

Finally I focus on one case,
and I learned that in art

everything is particular,
and the more particular

and the more intimate you get,
the more you can give in the piece.

If I’m working with poor people,
very poor people,

there are minimal resources.

So I limit my resources according
to whichever testimony I'm working on.

In "Atrabiliarios,"
I had placed myself with

many more resources
in working with the most

despicable material you can think of,
something that we all feel repelled by:

cow bladders, on one hand,
and old shoes.

We don't like old shoes.

But nevertheless,
every time we see a shoe on the street,

we wonder what happened there,
since it's the wrong place for that shoe to be.

I wanted to make that private
pain into something public

because it is not a private problem.
It is a social problem.

That’s why I made many
niches in one space.

Assistant Joaquin Sanabria:
In the political realm of Colombia,

since 1948,

there's been a period
called “the violence," la violencia:

war, destruction,
people being displaced,

people so poor that they
don't have any other option

but get involved into narco-traffic,
all these bad things.

Doris Salcedo:
I was witness to the seizure

of the palace of justice,

where many, many people were killed.

I was working two blocks away.

The limits of violence seemed to be
lost at that time in Colombia.

The whole idea was to follow the
tempo of the battle, of the seizure.

We started at 11:35 a.m. sharp,

‘cause that was the time
when the first person was killed.

We had different objects flowing
down the façade at different tempos.

It was the timing of it.

It was very, very, very important.

It was something that was
happening through time.

And time was certainly an
essential element of this piece

that lasted only 53 hours, which was
the same time that the seizure lasted.

Assistant Joaquin Sanabria:
The set of plans was

about 300 or 400 pages.

Each paper was a time duration
for the specific pattern.

We were really performing through
the directing of Doris that day.

She was downstairs in the street talking to us,
and we were upstairs making it work.

Everything was labeled,

and there was a numbering
that we had to follow.

Like in a musical piece, well,
you read music, and you perform it.

I was a small kid
when this happened in 1985.

My memory of it is very blurred,
but somehow through this piece,

it has become part of my own
biography or biographical memory.

Assistant Carlos Andres Granada:
There was a little crack on

the floor of the Tate,

and Doris noticed it from
the first visit

and decided to make it the
origin of this piece.

This is the complete drawing that
Doris made of 160 meters.

Every single centimeter was
drawn by hand by Doris.

We did our research on cracks,
how a crack behaves.

We were examining
how is the edge,

how is the interior,
of cracks on ground,

on concrete,
on buildings.

At the beginning,
we looked like a bunch of

crazy people in the street
staring down at cracks on floor or walls.

Next step, try to figure out how to
make a prefabricated crack

and then export it to London.

So we came up with the idea of
making a metal structure,

just like you make a typical
slab of concrete but with

the shape of the rock.

So here are the guys molding steel,
following the exact precise shape of the stone.

Then we would pour concrete.

The final result would be the cast
with the mesh embedded with his twin,

opposite twin.

We constructed 320
meters of concrete,

'cause we had to do it
both of the faces of the crack.

It went pretty much
as we planned,

but the image,
the result is something that

you cannot imagine
until you see it.

Doris Salcedo:
When I went to visit the space

before I thought of the piece,

what struck me was the attitude of
people that were walking in the space.

Everybody looked up,
and they felt like it was

an amazing space.

And I was thinking,
"It's not that extraordinary.

It's an industrial modernist space.
There are many, many more.

It's not like you are entering
Hagia Sophia or you are

in front of the
pyramids in Egypt.

"But people had that impression,

and I thought it was
unbelievably narcissistic.

So what I wanted to do was
to turn upside down that perspective,

and instead of looking up,
you have to look down as way of seeing reality.

So I wanted to inscribe in this
modernist, rationalist building

an image that was somehow chaotic
and that marked a negative space,

because I believe there is
a bottomless gap that divides

humanity from inhumanity or
whites from nonwhites.

So I wanted to address that gap.

And I thought that gap was
mainly perceived in the history of modernity.

When you read the history of modernity,
it is narrated as an only European event.

Nobody else participated in that.

And the ideas of colonialism,
of imperialism,

are marginalized
to say the least.

So I wanted this history of racism
to come up because

I believe the history of racism,

it's the untold dark side
of the history of modernity.

That’s why I wanted this crack to
break the building and to

intrude in the building
almost the same way

a nonwhite immigrant intrudes in the
sameness and consensus of white society.

"Shibboleth," it's a word that I took
from Judges in the Bible.

They describe this war
between two Israeli tribes.

The tribe that lost the war
was attempting to

cross the Jordan River to escape,
and as they were crossing the river,

they would request to
pronounce the word "shibboleth."

They could not pronounce it like that,
and they pronounce it "see-boleth."

At that point, the Bible describes
a huge massacre.

42,000 people were
killed right there.

So I used the word because
I was referring to the experience of racism,

of the experience of crossing borders,
the experience of the immigrant.

So what it is to die making this attempt
at crossing a border.

A word that defines my work
is impotence.

I am completely impotent.

I feel that I am responsible for
everything that happens

and that I simply
arrive too late.

I cannot give anybody back
their father or their sons.

I cannot fix any problem.
I can do nothing.

It's a lack of power.

But then as a person who lacks power,

I face the ones who have power
and who manipulate life.

It's from that perspective of
the one who lacks power

that I look at the powerful ones
and at their deeds.