Allora & Calzadilla in "Paradox" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

JENNIFER ALLORA: Pass me the 
vacuum cleaner thing again.

This is definitely the spot for the trombone.

It’s going to be like that with 
that thing, with a hand here.

GUILLERMO CALZADILLA: Yeah.

ALLORA: And then we’re going to 
have to extend the mouthpiece

so you can actually sit there and play it.

CALZADILLA: That’s perfect. Cymbals.

ALLORA: And then a trumpet over there.

CALZADILLA: A trom...
ALLORA: It has to go like up and out like that.

CALZADILLA: Twenty feet in diameter. 
That’s great. That’s funny.

CALZADILLA: It looks like a gun.

ALLORA: We’ll cut this part out so you 
can get in closer, but for now at least...

CALZADILLA: Play...play it 
there to see. Really loud.

CALZADILLA: That’s the tuba over there...

ALLORA: Yeah, and then we have 
this one, an award tuba...

CALZADILLA: How do you call this thing?

ALLORA: Cymbal. That’s also good.

ALLORA: What we do often with our projects is 
it’s kind of an excuse to research something.

ALLORA: This here is the same thing, 
like see how it is like the cannons...

CALZADILLA: Yeah.

ALLORA: This is what the openings are for.

It was for the weapon.

It’s this chance to learn more 
about something in the world

and be able to formulate some kind of response.

ALLORA: Alright so, this was this one about the…

the sounds for the news networks and

what they use to represent 
the coverage of the war.

CALZADILLA: Now we’re making 
basically an archive of music of war

from different times and places in the world.

It’s called CLAMOR.

It’s about music of war, music as a…

as a sound weapon.

CALZADILLA: So for example, there you 
have a trumpet from the American Civil War

mixed up with a Japanese tuba,

basically sounds of all different 
eras until today making this montage

that is going to be part of two things.

One is going to be part of a sculpture,

in which basically is gonna be a concert 
but the band is going to be live musicians,

are going to be inside this 
object, this sculpture.

ALLORA: From the very 
beginning of our work together,

we’re interested in materials.

What are the meanings are connoted 
by the use of certain materials.

CALZADILLA: Certain materials 
talk or speak of their usage

and have like a practical function.

But you know there’s also this 
symbolic dimension that a material has.

ALLORA: In the case of CHALK we were 
just interested in the matter-of-factness

of what chalk is.

It is at once an ideological...

CALZADILLA: Tool.

ALLORA: ...something that 
you find in the classroom.

CALZADILLA: That is ideological.

ALLORA: But it’s also a geological substance.

It’s...chalk is something that’s 
found naturally in the earth,

and because of its nature 
it is ephemeral and fragile.

CALZADILLA: This idea of 
making these gigantic chalks,

you can write big words, physically, 
but perhaps also symbolically.

ALLORA: Our idea was to place the chalks

where the governmental 
buildings of Peru are located.

Every day if they would allow for protestors to go

and make a kind of lap around the plaza,

and that’s your opportunity to publicly 
voice whatever demands you might have.

ALLORA: The protestors, they realize 
it was like another way to vocalize

and to make visible their demands.

People were writing they’re 
for this political party,

and then someone would cross it 
out and write something else.

CALZADILLA: People writing declarations of love.

ALLORA: And it really became 
a complex sort of forum

that was all being registered on this floor.

CALZADILLA: It’s not like a 
sculpture that has one end

or is only used in one particular way.

You have all this multiplicity of positions.

ALLORA: That piece has the potential 
to actively disrupt what are

the norms of a particular setting.

CALZADILLA: A police squad, 
they arrested the sculpture.

They took all the chalk, they 
put them in a military truck …

ALLORA: (INTERRUPTING) They 
put them in a paddy wagon.

CALZADILLA: … and they took them away.

It shows the limits of free speech 
in a so-called democratic society,

but also talks about sculpture 
and about historical references,

about poetic dimension.

ALLORA: This thing that comes 
from...from Ottoman music.

It’s like this...we argued,

this is I think probably what 
it made most close to each other

and really defines our relationship 
as a collaborative and as…

personally is our fighting.

We just like have…

make it an art form to argue with 
each other, about everything.

But in a way that’s good because 
it’s kind of like going to battle

because finally at the end 
of the day when we both have,

you know, gave it our best with each other,
we settle on something,

what’s left over is what we both truly 
agree with and truly find in common.

CALZADILLA: Ah, but it’s more questioning.

It’s this endless...endless questioning 
of anything but why this and not that.

ALLORA: Exactly. I mean it’s 
not...not trivial or childlike.

But it’s constantly arguing.

ALLORA: Okay, let’s just try things out now.

That’s the...that’s the point.

CALZADILLA: All right.

ALLORA: At the end those things that we 
both can’t argue with each other about,

are the things that we tend to then, you know,

use as starting points to move 
forward in some project of ours.

CALZADILLA: Humor can be beautiful, 
can be horrific, can be political…

can be poetic, can be transformative.

ALLORA: It can be transformative 
. . . and it can be critical.

CALZADILLA: But what I like is that physically,

it’s a physiological transformation that 
this thing there still has affected you.

We finding each other laughing at the same thing

was a recognition that we 
both identify with this thing.

ALLORA: And that became a way for us to find 
things in common and identify with each other.

(SOUND OF HORN)

ALLORA: Sometimes, though, we see 
things that aren’t like a joke,

but it’s rather just this sort of incredible,

absurd, unusual juxtaposition 
of something that just seems

totally out of place but at the same 
time seems perfectly sensible and right.

ALLORA: We were interested in the activity 
that was happening in the Island of Vieques

which is off the mainland of Puerto 
Rico used as this bomb testing site.

CALZADILLA: This was filmed the 
week that they opened the land

that was previously occupied for sixty 
years by the military to the population.

You have people who their entire 
lives that have never been able to

go around the entire island.

So this is the first time 
that this entire land is open.

ALLORA: And it felt like some sort of 
commemorative sound should accompany that,

be emblematic of that popular struggle

which in common terms is 
usually understood as an anthem.

CALZADILLA: So we looked into 
the etymology of the word anthem

and we find something that we like much more,

which is the sounding in answer.

And so we call it RETURNING A SOUND.

CALZADILLA: The acceleration of the 
motorcycle and all the accidents in the roads,

the bumps, generated a score,

a musical composition that 
was completely accidental.

ALLORA: It was really interesting 
to see the reaction of that work,

and I remember there was one person who,

he was like screaming when the land came open

and he liked the fact that the 
trumpet in a way was like a scream.

ALLORA: In Vieques in fact, 
while there were so many people

who had one thing in common,

get the military out of Vieques,

the majority of them are in complete disagreement 
about every other aspect of the island.

CALZADILLA: So we somehow wanted 
to mobilize this discussion.

ALLORA: Through the metaphor 
of the discussion table

we arrived at this work which 
we call UNDER DISCUSSION.

(SOUND OF OUTBOARD MOTOR)

ALLORA: We used this person 
to take the discussion table

into the areas whose fate is uncertain.

There is something in that antagonism or tension

that could be understood anywhere in the world.

While their actions are absurd,

like taking the discussion table 
of the island and making it a boat,

it’s like a way to confront something which

may seem in general overwhelming

and finding a way to own it 
and then contribute something.

ALLORA: You know that’s kind 
of the nature of making art,

is to do that, is to kind of 
turn something upside down

and then when you see it upside down,

then you start to see it completely differently

and new meanings come out of it.

ALLORA: Both of our backgrounds was 
informed by studies in the sciences.

Forms like geology, biology, light, we 
look at through the lens of an artist.

CALZADILLA: Our scientific 
interest comes in filter,

I think, through absurdity or pure nonsense.

ALLORA: SWEAT GLANDS, SWEAT LANDS was one of 
the more complicated video projects.

CALZADILLA: Come Christmastime, 
everyone fries their pork,

you have to fry that pork 
for hours with your hands.

CALZADILLA: That piece of metal 
in which the pork is fried,

we had welded to the back wheel of a car

when you accelerate and the pork rotates.

ALLORA: And understanding the logic 
of the spit as a kind of connection

between these two systems...

CALZADILLA: They had a symbolic dimension.

ALLORA: The guy, he’s not really doing anything,

he’s just sitting there kind of overseeing this…

this activity.

He’s smoking himself so he’s being 
smoked while the pork is being smoked.

CALZADILLA: This is a very violent image.

ALLORA: I’m interested in that violence of it.

I’m interested in the 
grotesque and vulgarity of it

because I think it speaks to a kind of 
excessive overheating of society and violence.

ALLORA: So just to reiterate, 
they were the first thing was

to use your instruments to 
make a kind of abstract sounds

that are very strong and loud,

like a siren or an ambulance

or any other kind of reference 
you want to think about.

CALZADILLA: For us it’s very important,

the idea of having a work that have 
all these contradictions in itself.

How can you put all these things that 
have nothing to do with the other one?

Well, you use glue.

You use an ideological glue.

(LIVE MUSIC)

CALZADILLA: This frustration, this absurdity,

this nonsense, this paradox,

all these things constitute 
part of the meaning of the work.

(LIVE MUSIC)