Ernesto Oroza Workshop

Objeto 3. Gasolina con espuma de poliestireno (poliespuma). Gasoline with polystyrene foam. 2013

La fusión de gasolina y espuma de poliestireno (poliespuma) se ha usado en Cuba por muchos años. El combustible consume cada molécula de oxigeno derritiendo el plástico hasta convertirlo en una masa grisácea que toma diversas contexturas en relación a la proporción. La voracidad de la gasolina en el proceso produce, al observarlo, cierta fascinación, metros cúbicos de poliespuma son absorbidos hasta desaparecer en un instante. La mezcla se utiliza para sellar peceras y fisuras en las ventanas y muros, reparar espejos, hacer lámparas uniendo fragmentos de vidrio. Recuerdo una guitarra reparada, unos espejuelos, un botón de un televisor, álbumes fotográficos que exhalaban al abrirlos, con las memorias, olor a combustible pues las fotos fueron pegadas con esta super masa. La preparación de la mezcla, además de oxigeno consume tiempo. Lograr una cantidad útil toma semanas. Miles de envases con unos pocos mililitros de gasolina (dos o tres dedos) se acumulan en los balcones y patios de toda la isla por meses. Cuba es un agujero negro que puede devorar en segundos toda la poliespuma del universo.
Esta primera aproximación y producción incluye espejos, lámparas, percheros, enchufes y tomas eléctricos, cabos de cuchillos y de punzones, joyas, envases, celosías, una gruta, textos volumétricos y otros elementos de difícil definición y usos.

Objeto 1. Gasolina con espuma de poliestireno (poliespuma). Gasoline with polystyrene foam. 2013

Objeto 4. Gasolina con espuma de poliestireno (poliespuma). Gasoline with polystyrene foam. 2013

RIKIMBILI. Une étude sur la désobéissance technologique et quelques formes de réinvention. 2009
Ernesto Oroza
(Préfacier) Marie-Haude Caraës
Traducteur: Nicole Marchand-Zanartu
67 p.
format : 165 x 215
ISBN : 978-2-86272-527-7
Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2009
Cité du design
BUY

"PLOUGHSHARES AS TECHNOLOGICAL DISOBEDIENCE (CUBA)
Cite du design is a broad church. Whilst hordes of courtiers flocked around the Minister like starlings at sunset, copies of a subversive new book, by Ernesto Oroza, were being distributed by Cite's publications team. Rikimbili - "a study of technological disobedience and other forms of re-invention" - describes how Cubans have adapted and recycled industrial objects during fifty years of US sanctions. The book's title, Rikimbili, is named after a two-wheeled vehicle that started its life as a bicycle. The book is subversive because, for me anyway, it describes the kind of design we'll be doing in the coming age of scarcity industrialism (a phrase of John Michael Greer). Design shows filled with shiny objects, by contrast, are best perceived as historical events about a pardigm that has passed. Write direct to obtain your copy of Rikimbili to: emilie.chabert at citedudesign dot com."
John Thackara
from: doorsofperception.com

FREE ENTRANCE

Grand Hornu (Belgique) le 22 et 23 mars 2013 de 11 :00 à 19 :00.

En mars 2013, DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION célèbre le 40e anniversaire du premier choc pétrolier (mars 1973), qui marque l’entrée des pays occidentaux en crise permanente. Pour le moment, rien n’indique une rémission. Il est donc essentiel d’imaginer la pauvreté autrement, soit pour s’en accommoder, par manque d’alternatives, soit pour en faire un lieu d’expériences.

DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION questionne le rapport ambigu qu’entretient le design avec la pauvreté.

Exprimidor de naranja / orange squeezer
Aluminium cast.
Holguín, Cuba. 2000.

Little Havana Lamp shade. 2007
Scotch tape

Little Havana Lamp shade. 2008-2009
Clear silicone.

In 1994, in a factory in Los Pinos neighborhood in Havana, after a black-out, a Japanese machine used to produce medical instruments in acrylic got clogged with the hot, melted material inside. The factory's chief of production quickly ordered all the acrylic, still in a liquid state, to be removed. As the workers pushed the material out, they created a fine cascade of melted pink acrylic that began to accumulated on the floor. Some of the workers, molding it with their hands, began to improvise the shapes of lamps, ashtrays and decorative bowls.
In a few weeks, this technical principle extended throughout the island and individuals began to assemble in their own homes machine that repeated this productive process in which hand gestures were fused with industrial technological principles.

I am interested in how immigrants interpret new technologies and the universal and standard stock of materials that can be found in stores like Home Depot. And how these "technological goods," available to recent arrivals or to individuals formed in a different a "technological age," start to insert themselves as possible variants in the home and within the immigrant's dynamics of survival, in places like Little Haiti and Hialeah. In this sense, I am interested in investigating the meeting of this universal stock with local cultural demands, be they decorative impulses, constructive understandings, or simply religious practices. Processes of hybridization have the potential to open access to innovation, destroying and creating logics and sense, provoking excesses, invasions and reciprocal contaminations that have important repercussions in the city where they happen.

Collected lamp. Los Pinos-Havana. 1995

With this lamp project I revise some of Gaetano Pesce's ideas regarding hybridity of productive processes. Pesce proposes that new technologies are more open to intersecting with variable elements that change their course. He has said, for instance, that computerized production systems should be invaded by viruses, algorhythms capable of inserting distortion into the repetition of mass production, material elements and mechanical forces that will always producing objects that are always different.

Technical info:
Technological Disobedience’s series: Lampshades, 2009
The lamps are produced in two sizes. Two or five tubes of clear silicone (10.1 Oz) are used, respectively.
The material is applied on geometric forms such as shoe boxes and bowls.
The object is completed with electric parts.
Prototype 1: 18”x12”x11”
Prototype 2: 10”x7”x9”

Little Havana Lamp shade. Ernesto Oroza for Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery 2009. Photo: Oriol Tarridas

Little Havana Lamp shade. Ernesto Oroza for Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery 2009. Photo: Oriol Tarridas

Jeudi 20 mai, espace Viénot 2, à 18h30
Ernesto Oroza, designer cubain, RIKIMBILI est sa dernière publication.
Thursday 20 May Viénot 2, 6:30PM at ENSCI, Paris.
ADDRESS:
48 rue Saint Sabin, FR-75011 Paris, France
Phone +33 1 4923 1230, Fax +33 1 4923 1203
Website http://www.ensci.com/

RIKIMBILI. Une étude sur la désobéissance technologique et quelques formes de réinvention. 2009
Ernesto Oroza