Windward Mapping Project
Psychogeographic Data Visualization Series
Held and Bordy Family Gallery, Los Angeles
“Mapping the cities of Dakar, Panama City, Los Angeles and Amsterdam through DNA research, data analysis, and alternative mapping strategies, Guzman attempts to reimagine ethnic and cultural identities and societies, using the mapping and bridges as a place to envision an ideal global society.
Guzman work with students and communities in four continents to create a mapping of their identities from the physical and mental geographies they traverse in their everyday lives. Using the classic film The Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames as a model for broadening our understanding of where we exist in the universe, students of the Windward School will explore and aesthetically reimagine what it means to be a global citizen”. Art Department – Windward School
Psychogeographics Mappings Research is a study of the population demographics and transit of Amsterdam, Europe and other important cities around the world. After half a century of situationist maps in the districts of Paris, it’s time for a new generation to explore the cities. PSY will first attempt to explore the psychogeography idea of the city and it’s habitants, using new networks. Debord formulated the “unitary urbanism”: the theory of the combined use of arts and techniques as a means of contributing to the construction of a unified environment in dynamic relation with experiments in the behavior.
For the project I will be collecting photos and data of the habitants and their day city trips, their ideas and conceptions of the future of urbanization of the city and the effect of the real state in last the last years and future generations. The information the research will be use as a data visualization for the maps that will generate an idea of the way the cities are forming itself towards the future, the maps will demonstrate areas of transculturalism or homogeneous cultures, incomes and preferences.
Part of the project is supported & developed with the Windward School and the Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California
© PIERTOPOLIS ／ピアトポリス
Cities: Los Angeles, California
All works & photos © A.J. Guzman
2013
Piertopolis Project
Inspired by New Babylon of COBRA artist Constant, Piertopolis features an architectural design for an installation of a life-size landscape made out of piers and walking bridges. A pier accommodates the act of leaving, of traveling and embarking – it is a place where the gone and lost are contemplated. At the same time, a pier is a place easily associated with arrival and return, with reconnection, and with the fulfillment of hopes and wishes.
As children, we lazed and adventured on piers. Boats came and went, and we began to notice our favorite piers weren’t just thruways for the maritime activities we liked to watch; they were part of our imagination, launch pads for our wanderlust. Piers were the rustic, rusting vantage points from which we thought the thoughts that made us the vanguard travelers we become.
When experiencing Piertopolis you can see a long high angled platform with enough square feet to provide a meeting place. Piertopolis stands for a new society based on architectonic ideas of Fuller and Constant. I intend the installations of Piertopolis as a meeting place, a transit point, a public performance center, a refuge for cultural practitioners and working class heroes. Piertopolis is a welcome space to memories, real or imagined and a loop into new worlds and images.
PDF Piertopolis Interview for Gemak New Magazine
PDF “Piertopolis Journal Diary” by A.J. Guzman
PDF “Piertopolis” Japanese Text
PIERTOPOLIS ／ピアトポリス
青山通り即興パフォーマンス＆インターベンション／青山／東京／２０１３年 春
Cities: Panama – Aarhus – Bergen – Amsterdam – Antwerp – New York – The Hague – Paris
All works & photos © A.J. Guzman
2010 – 2012
the state of L3 & gravitational series
Exploring with multimedia installations as medium for new transatlantic networks and reflections on the Black Atlantic. The State of L3 It is an exploration of African aesthetics and space in relation to society.
Migration, or the condition of being a subject beyond borders, has always represented one of the most productive resources of aesthetic practices, contributing to the changing of settled cultures. My Pan African symbiotic research focuses on the issue of Pan African space and migration from very different perspectives, in order to explore what Mieke Bal (2010) has recently defined as “migratory aesthetics”, that is “the current cultural and aesthetic moment in view of the merging of cultures”.
The Gravitational Series were inspired by gravity, science and the late Los Angeles based Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader. The project refer to exile identities and they bring together thoughts, ideas, experiences, dialogues of different people around the world. Bas Jan Ader disappeared in an attempt to cross the Atlantic in a small boat from the US East coast to Ireland in 1975.
Cities: Panama – Dakar – Recife – Antwerp – Aarhus – Amsterdam – Utrecht – San Francisco
All works & photos © A.J. Guzman | In collaboration with Ton van Beers
2010 – 2012
Piertopolis Bridge Series
El Rompio, Panama | Aarhus, Denmark
Teams of divers on Zodiac attack boats were assigned to sabotage piers in the Panama canal during the U.S invasion of December 1989. The divers descended to the bottom of the canal and with bombs destroyed Panamanian gunboats and piers. The following days more piers across the country were destroyed during the operation. One of those piers was the pier of “El Rompio” located in the small city of Aguadulce.
Today after 20 years, the fishermen’s village still doesn’t have a pier. For project “Piertopolis” I created a small prototype pier to connect the Rompio to the pier at the end of my street in Amsterdam. Doing research for the project I realized that to travel to Panama’s Pacific in a straight line, one needs to pass the Chinese city of Qingdao. A city that is related to my DNA investigation project “Surrender to the Air” because the predominance of DNA A in the inhabitants, DNA A is also a common native American DNA in people living in the Panamanian Pacific.
Images of this intervention are part of the documentary “Regressions”.
All works & photos © A.J. Guzman
2011
PSY Psychogeographic & Mappings
Guy Debord and the Situationists were pioneers of the interaction with the urban environment, using the mapping to reveal the subtle and psychic flows of the city. Guy Debord wrote in 1958. “From the point of view, cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.”
After half a century of situationist maps in the districts of Paris, it’s time for a new generation to explore the city. Paris Piertopolis will first attempt to explore the psychogeography, using new networks. Paris is the ideal city to continue the project Piertopolis as Guy Debord inspired Constant to create New Babylon. Constant defined New Babylon in 1966 as a social utopia? Urban architectural design? An artistic vision? A cultural revolution? A solution of practical problems of the industrial age.
For the residence in Cite de Arts I followed for weeks with a GPS, different Clochards (homeless) and Le Marais middle class Bohos, the result was the encounter with Foucault, a Martiniquais that live in Paris since the 80′s, He went from rich to poor in few months, he lost all during the dot.com crash of 2000. The Mappings are based in his life the last 20 years, places he lived and hang out. People could interact with the installation leaving messages and reactions on the walls.
Cité Internationale des Arts Paris
All works & photos © A.J. Guzman
2012
Inside the Vault
The installation transforms the old safe vault of Panama’s first bank into an space exploring paradoxes between currency, value and exchange. Inside the Vault conceptualize the economic consequences of globalization and hyper-capitalism in the once prohibited areas of the bank that were open for exploration, including a sound installation in the vault that revealed the original columns that were covered up by renovations. Visitors explored the original 1920s vault, which had been transformed for the State of L3 installation as a satellite event of the 8th Panama Biennial.
The Maquette Box is inspired by the infamous Door of No Return at The House of Slaves (Maison des Esclaves) a museum and memorial to the Atlantic slave trade on tiny Goree Island, 3 km off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. The Flying boat resemblance the Dirigível Santa Cruz build by the Brazilian journalist and abolitionist Jose do Patrocinio.
State of L3 seek new means of communication, a new experience on the track that previous generations have left behind and a new interpretation of the concept of African identity. The State of L3 is a transatlantic journal, an exchange of collective memories.
The objective of the L3 installations is to examine our perception of ancestry in the three continents in order to gain an understanding of how we influence each other in the global community, Creating an effective installation that uses transatlantic visuals from the perception of my origins and journeys.
Cities: Panama
All works & photos © A.J. Guzman
2009
D.A.T.E.D Happening (Live Stream)
Dusty & The Electric Dub – D.A.T.E.D (A.J. Guzman & Aurora Adams) is a multimedia performance duo based in Paris and Amsterdam.
For this project I assembled live my documentaries, The Day We Surrender to The Air and The Legend of Billy Maclean with vintage classic films and web films. Featuring singing and voice of American Artist Aurora Adams.
The Project is Inspired by the novel Rayuela (Hopscotch) of the Argentine Julio Cortázar (1914-1984).
The performance as the novel has multiple narratives, because the sequence of the sections and dramaturgy is not fixed.
Performances at Dimanche Rouge 2012 | Petit Ban & Divan Du Monde, Paris, France
Dimanche Rouge is a monthly contemporary art event based in Paris, France, showcasing experimental art performances by international artists. Dimanche Rouge has established both an international venue for experimental artists and an event with groundbreaking performances for the general and specialized public to discover.
All works © A.J. Guzman Photos © Eliane Akl – Gilles Gallois – Emilia Lombardo – Dimanche Rouge 2012
Church of Faust | Documenta Off
Kassel, Germany | August 2012
For Church of Faust we distribute flyers all over the city of Kassel an spread them in the reading points of Documenta 13. The flyers were printed with photos of Saint Joseph Church in Amsterdam, the Church of the Holy Saint Joseph in Amsterdam West it’s been closed for almost 20 years. The flyers also had a passage from Goethe’s Faust and a map describing a journey to Saint Joseph Church in Kassel.
Der früh Geliebte, Nicht mehr Getrübte, Er kommt zurück.
The man I loved in my youth, The man no longer tarnished, Is coming back.
People were invited to come to Saint Joseph Church on 19.00 Hrs. In the month of August a magnificent light strikes in one point of the church from 19.00 to 20 Hrs. The light and scenario resemblance the Etching from Rembrandt. In the early eighteenth century, the print earned the title ‘Dr Faustus’ and in 1791 Goethe used it on the title page for his publication of Faust. However, it is just as possible that this has nothing at all to do with Faust, but is a portrait of a scholar. It may be the ‘practicing alchemist’ to which references were made in the seventeenth century.
Saint Joseph church stands as a symbol of congregation, is not about the religion aspect, but about coming together to one place to meditate on symbols, space and light. Symbols has been used in the art world for centuries in the same way as in religions. Theologists today recognizes that even the materialist lives not by creature comforts, prosperity and success, but by his own symbols and images, his own myths and rituals. The conflict today is not between matter and spirit, but between two kinds of spirit; not between prose and imagination, but between a true and false imagination; not even, finally, between ugliness and beauty.
The DOCUMENTA (13) is the thirteenth edition of Documenta, one of the world’s most important exhibitions for contemporary art.
Saint Joseph Church – Panoramic Tour
All works & photos © A.J. Guzman
2012
