La Ribot

Panoramix

Translated by Lorraine Kerslake

To write is to let oneself be swept along by a tongue of black ink, that glides slowly without gestures or character, all the while imposing its will, giving away your self as if you were a murderer.

New York 1993

The Dying Mermaid is my first distinguished piece. Every day for almost a month, on my way to the studio, I have come across a dried sardine lying on the pavement. One day I decide to take a photo of it and when I arrive at the studio, I lie on my back and cover half of my body with a white towel and my head with a blonde wig. I stay in this position for hours. The next day the sardine has disappeared. I add to my pose the sound of the rubbish lorry recorded from the window, the white sheet of the hotel and the last death throes.

Salamanca August 1993

A woman pointing with her finger says, ‘Oh! What a beautiful tree’, and the tree sticks to her finger. Everything she admires sticks to her body.

A woman comes and says ‘goodbye’. She gets inside a plastic cover with a zip for dead bodies. Bim, Bam, Bum. Each bullet kills um!

A woman wrapped in a brightly coloured emergency blanket sits in a chair, she slides to the floor and remains lying there.

Title: The Last Cry.

A woman is covered in a brightly coloured emergency blanket. She holds a fan in her hand. She puts the fan on and sends the blanket upwards.

A woman sits in a chair. She picks up a walkman, puts it on and sings a well known song in an enthusiastic tone.

Title: In the Empire.

London July 1997

There is no more representation, only presentation.

There is no more magic, only reality.

There are no more surprises, only variable perceptions.

There are no more statements, only ambiguity.

There is no more stability only imbalance.

There is no more theatricality only plasticity.

London September 1999

Still:

1 tranquil, calm, static, motionless, silent

2 even, yet, meanwhile, therefore…

3 a static photograph

I would like to speak about presentation, rather than representation. The quietness can be seen in Still Distinguished as a means to speak about presentation; in the sense of being, or of feeling a corporeal presence and of contemplating inside a non-theatrical time, understanding ‘theatrical’ as something that starts and finishes. With ‘stillness’ I am trying to convey an approximate time that can break, change or vary depending on the necessity of each person. I am not enforcing an exact length of time, I am simply giving an approximation, a possible time, in which one must decide while living, doing, observing, changing…

Now the space belongsto the spectator and I without hierarchies. My objects, their bags or coats; their commentaries and my sound; sometimes my stillness and their movement, other times my movement and their stillness. Everything and everyone scattered around the floor, in an infinite surface, in which we are moving quietly, without any precise direction, without any definite order.

The spectator now works his space and has a relative period of time to use, a period of time that begins to be understood, and is made up by, each of us individually.

London15th April 2000

Obviously I am not trying to develop a character or a person, for this reason I am using my naked body, so that it has no meaning in a dramatic sense, but rather everything that this means in an evocative, visual sense. Of course, concepts such as woman, nakedness, cardboard, all hold intrinsic connotations… Bearing this in mind, I work close to this and allow that meaning to pepper my intentions and ideas, forming part of the fate of the creation of these capricious distinguished pieces of work.

As for my unavoidable way of doing and being, I can only try to neutralise myself, in the same way that I treat the body, its character and its specific personality. If I failed to concentrate on this neutralisation or so called ‘non meaning’ of the naked body, there would be no ambiguity, no questions, no irony created.

I am interested in proposing images, a series of things together, that act ‘impassively’ on my behalf on the onlooker: a rope, a magnetic band, a fuchsia heel, a naked woman, a title…

London 26th April 2000

In my opinion the different pieces in Still Distinguished , as well as in the preceding series do not respond specifically to different visions or states of the body. It is for me in fact a permanent exercise of association and relation at the same level with objects, bodies, meanings, colours, in order to present something as part of a non-visible system, that has expanded around space, in a horizontal, vertical, vaulted and multi-dimensional way.

I cannot speak about the body prison in Outsized Baggage since the same idea appears in Another Bloody Mary and in Chair 2000 . The same thing occurs with the manipulated body that appears in nearly all of these pieces. Pain, sacrifice, torture, blood, violence, air, water, sex, sweat, handicap, humour all appear continuously, in the middle of everything and in any place at any time. Without any order, impinging on each other, creating a continuous movement without any emphatic refusal, without an ending. They are not limited to here or there, for the forms and colours break into fragments with various meanings, scattering themselves, with oil and salt added to enhance them, and music to sing…

London November 2000

I do not aim to provoke in the least. I also try not to impose anything in a categorical way. I invite the spectator to live an experience where space and time, individual and collective thoughts are all in constant movement, escaping and remaining simultaneously there inside our bodies and our minds, without any specific imposition or direction.

I think of the water, a never-ending ocean full of drops, and each drop is a shoe, a bag, a piece of a chair, a body…

Dublin October 2001

The beginning has not yet started. It is a situation that is becoming more and more frequent in my life. Projects that go on in time, immediacy is disappearing, only to give way to something that I do not yet understand and that seems to have been projected beforehand. Very like Borges, by the way. The fragments themselves are now the actual project, a project that does not let me breath! And in this infinitesimal vertigo, only my hands remember where I am and in what scale my body is.

All of this just to say that I have launched myself into a new space in which my body is now only a part of it all, or something along those lines…

London December 2002

To understand another medium, another support different to that which we normally use, is to forget the fear that is produced when we do things wrong, and to forget again that you know it beforehand.

London January 2003

I would like to be as old as a rhinoceros, as long as a galaxy, transparent like a limb and orange like hope.

With Panoramix I have tried to complete a piece of work that I started years ago. The recycling of my own objects, postures, and actions accumulates in space and in memory. I repeat the same old things, dressing and undressing, falling on the floor, collecting, placing and throwing objects. The volume of all of this creeps up the walls like a climbing plant. In this way I am making with vertical and horizontal, oblique and tangential planes, a real building from my memory.

London February 2003