Vis. Fuerza (in)necesaria_4
A multi-channel sound work by artist Luz María Sánchez which forms part of the project Vis. Fuerza (in)necesaria. El sonido del México post-nacional which used different artworks, media and processes to explore the effects of the many acts of violence exercised against the people of Mexico between 2006 and 2019 as a result of the war on drugs.
This pieces addresses one of the most harrowing issues in the country, that of forced disappearance. In 2019, the number has risen to over 40,000 disappeared persons. Due to the ineffectiveness and lack of action of the authorities in the face of this phenomenon, civil society has organized independent searches for family and friends. This work is based on a lengthy process of collaboration between the artist and the group Las Rastreadoras de El Fuerte, in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, with the support of the Research Group in Forensic and Social Anthropology. The group is comprised of family members of the disappeared, especially women, (mothers, wives, sisters, daughters), who frequently make journeys into the countryside around Los Mochis to look for signs of human remains or clandestine graves.
V. F[i]n_4 is composed of a multi-layered sound work presented at the Space for Sound Experimentation (EES) together with an installation in the museum courtyards. The installation is of a pile of the tools used in this search, and four loudspeakers that reproduce the sounds in the EES. The layers of the multi-channel sound work are based on the recordings made by the artists during the expeditions into the desert, and allude to different moments of this experience. It presents the conversations between the women during the search, which contrast with other recordings such as the metallic sound of the tools: spades and picks used to excavate sites where it is thought human remains may be found, and the two questions that guide the work of the collective: where? and why?
From a non-narrative perspective, Sánchez proposes a space of silence and overlapping of sounds to generate an experience of close listening that activates the layers independently or simultaneously. These aural traces suggest the determination of the collective as the last remaining refuge in the face of the destruction produced by the terror and the machinery of death.
Artist: Luz María Sánchez (Guadalajara, 1971)
Curator: Amanda de la Garza
Multichannel sound installation (2018-2019)
