Delfina Margulis & Martin Heredia

Summary: Visions of the way is an audiovisual essay that intends to generate a reflection about the different ways of approaching and perceiving the urban space we inhabit.

Keywords: Perception, urban space, bonding, tourism, culture, inhabitant, collective mapping.

Delfina Margulis and Martín Heredia

The artists studied several types of perception that unfold from the different experiences and bonds experimented by the individuals in the urban space. In order to do so, they collected the visions of individuals with varied degrees of involvement with the city: inhabitants, occasional tourists, resident foreigners, returnees, among others.

Throughout their stay the artists also intended to demonstrate that tourist spaces are not always the most representative ones of the culture and lifestyles of a city.

To execute the project and demonstrate their hypotheses they collected images, sounds, interviews and route videos recorded in Figueres city following instructions from tourist guides, routes based on advice from inhabitants, etc. The diverse collective experiences that emerged from the project were useful to encourage participants to reflect upon the space they inhabit.

Delfina Margulis Darriba was born in 1990 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2015 she graduated as a director of photography from the ENERC (National School of Experimentation and Cinematographic Production) in Argentina. Her interest and bond with popular culture led her to delve into sociology and popular education. She works as a photographer and audiovisual developer focusing her artistic production in these arenas. In her work as an artist she reflects upon the importance of the visual culture as the starting point to generate transforming motions.

Martín Heredia Troncoso was born in 1989 in Villa Dolores, (Córdoba), Argentina. After graduating as a director of photography from the ENERC and as a producer technician in audiovisual media from the UNC (National University of Córdoba), he would start his career as a filmmaker and audiovisual projects developer. His ambition for improving as an audiovisual communication professional would lead him to complete photography, image treatment, post-production, and sound and edition courses, among others. He would develop diverse short films as a director of photography and he would participate in renowned cinematographic festivals such as the Sao Paulo Latin American Film Festival 2014, the Mar del Plata Independent Filmmaking Festival 2014, the Fusagasugá International Film Festival 2014, Pantalla Pinamar 2015 or the UNAM International Film Festival 2015.

Margulis and Heredia work in tandem by forming the art and investigation ensemble Peralada/34 revolving around the use of public space, cities and urban representations and worldviews.

Delfina Margulis
& Martin Heredia

VISIONS OF THE WAY

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BIOGRAPHY

INTERVIEW

Through the eyes of two foreigner visitors in a city, Figueres, it is intended to find the multiple existing representations about it and to acknowledge the clash that can be originated by what is shown to tourism as opposed to what its inhabitants and artists tell about it through their own accounts and works of art.

«Current tourism practice depends mainly on communication rather than the trip. The main tenet of communication is immediacy

while, on the contrary, travelers take their time, conjugate verbs, wait, remember» #01

«Bonds with a given place condition and determine our vision about it. Tourism determines the must-sees of cities, places that can´t be missed and then, foreigners shape their visions of a city according to those supposedly representative places» #01

However, when a touristic place belongs to our everyday life it acquires, or inherently has, an emotional value that depends mainly on personal accounts, uses and practices.

REPRESENTATIONS

Artistic manifestations whose analysis or sensitive interpretation enable a way of thinking in which authors perceive reality from their subjectivity. Every language through which we represent our surroundings implies a cut in itself. Every single representation entails a vision. The dialogic interaction of different representations about a single space reflects its plural nature.
Perception of every single representation might imply the emergence of a new way of viewing.

LIVING PAINTINGS

Live painting of tangibility,
modifying,
picturizing reality.

TRANSPOSITIONS

When representation
interchanges
cwith view.

ROUTES THROUGH FIGUERES

Representations that
shape
our movements.

PORTRAITS AND ACCOUNTS

Live portraits are our own representation of those who gave us their voices to reveal their visions of the city where they live.

«For the existence of landscape not only view is needed but also conscious perception, judgment and, finally, description.
Landscape is the space where a human being describes another human being»

MAPPING

«We all have the capacity of “elevate” above our own territory in order to perform a “bird flight” which, from our memories, allows us to reflect and signal diverse themes»

Mapping is a tool that allows to rethink our relation with the space we inhabit and to question the hegemonic maps by understanding them as ideological representations. Mapping is a means and not an end in itself. It is a starting point to generate collective reflections and debates that allow the construction of new representations of the space we inhabit.

Facing the map means to transfer our vision in more than three dimensions to a black and white sheet conformed by lines.

Everyday space perception is not always related to a grid. Space use by wandering is more related to practices, habit memory and preferences; spatial references are usually sensorial experiences.

Tracing usual routes on the maps enabled us to visualize and, in this way, think the use of the space;

placing the most representative and substantial city places on the map to reflect upon the city for the outside and the city for the inside, the culture for tourism and the culture for inhabitants.

Are the most renowned places of the city the most meaningful ones for its inhabitants?

WORK IN PROGRESS

Teaser del documental Visions of the Way documentary

Audiovisual language is a combination of diverse representation devices that make it an excellent tool to generate a dialogue among these multiple visions that coexist within the same space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AUGÉ, Marc. El tiempo en ruinas. Gedisa, Editorial. 2003, Barcerlona, España.

ICONOCLASISTAS, RISLER, Julia y ARES, Pablo. El uso de mapeos, recursos gráficos y visuales para la construcción de conocimiento colectivo. Publicación web urbanbat.org. 2014, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

ICONOCLASISTAS. RISLER, Julia y ARES, Pablo. Manual de Mapeo Colectivo. Recursos cartográficos críticos para procesos territoriales de creación colaborativa. Editorial Tinta Limón. 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina.