Ernesto Oroza Workshop

Statement of Necessity, Alonso Art in November-December, 2008.

Potential house, 2008.

Potential house, 2008

Book documenting the exhibition Statement of Necessity by Ernesto Oroza, at Alonso Art in November-December, 2008. The book features the 20 color photographs exhibited. www.alonsoart.com

(english version):

Gean Moreno / Ernesto Oroza
Farside Gallery. Miami
by José Antonio Navarrete / Arte Al Dia International, July 2010

Decoy, the exhibition of works by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza, gathers together objectual constructions whose conformation and referential potential are the result, in each case, of interactions of varying degree and nature between different disciplines, models and systems of cultural production. I include as examples, in an incomplete list, urban planning, architecture, sculpture, design, interior decoration, museography, essayist literature and publishing activities.

The basic regulator of these interactions is the research work and reflection that both artists have engaged in during the past few years. Established as a methodology, the expansion and enrichment of that work has been put to the test, consecutively, in the different projects implemented within its framework. We would even go further in the case of the example we are addressing: besides shedding light on some aspects of the exhibition, “Notes on the Moiré House (Or, ‘Urbanism’ for Emptying Cities)”, the text authored by both artists and included in the tabloid that accompanies Decoy, represents a moment in the development of a line of thought whose elaborations, previously disseminated, also serve as methodological support for the strategies applied in the show. Likewise, the elements and structures physically displayed in the exhibition space already form part of or are on the way to become configured as a series of conceptual and material sys- tems and tools in an ongoing process of growth that Moreno and Oroza have forged, progressively, under the principle of diagram design. Theirs are, therefore, modelizations with a high level of pragmatic capacity, adaptable to very different installation and operation situations, and with functional possibilities of use outside the field of art, ultimately their place of origin.

In terms of artistic deed, Decoy features a close relationship with the problems of the contemporary city and the ways of inhabiting it, as well as with the production processes, the con- sumption flows and the new social behaviors that characterize the latter, but I would dare say that it communicates interstitially with one of the richest trends of the European avantgarde: the one that put into circulation the notion of the link between art work production life. It is true that, setting itself apart from the celebration of technique and of social redemption that nourished the approaches to the subject elaborated by the Bauhaus and by Russian productivism, what Decoy proposes as strategy is the use of any material and opportunity available for the popular invention of alternatives to the impositions of consumerism; however, of the demythologizing impulse of artistic practice associated to this modern trend, Decoy con- serves what was perhaps its most important trait: the interest in fusing (confusing) art into (with) architecture, design and, in general, the processes of material production.

Perhaps the notion of diagram central to Moreno and Oroza’s current discursive speculations, as we pointed out before might be fitting as metaphor to represent the research exhibition project that both artists are articulating jointly. In that case, Decoy would be something like one of the components or operations of that project: a place to situate oneself inside their diagram.

review (spanish version):
Gean Moreno / Ernesto Oroza
Farside Gallery. Miami
por José Antonio Navarrete / Arte Al Dia International, Julio 2010

Decoy, muestra de Gean Moreno y Ernesto Oroza, reúne construcciones objetuales cuya conformación y potencialidad referencial resulta en cada caso de interacciones de carácter y grado variables entre distintas disciplinas, modelos y sistemas de la producción cultural. Incluyo como ejemplos, en una lista incompleta: el urbanismo, la arquitectura, la escultura, el diseño, la decoración interior, la museografía, la literatura ensayística y la labor editorial.

El regulador básico de esas interacciones es el trabajo de investigación y reflexión que los dos artistas han desplegado durante los últimos años. Constituido como metodología, la expansión y enriquecimiento de este trabajo han sido puestos a prueba, consecutivamente, en los diferentes proyectos realizados dentro de su cauce. Diríamos más, atendiendo al ejemplo que nos atañe: “Notes on the Moiré House (Or, ‘Urbanism’ for Emptying Cities)”, el texto con autoría de ambos incluido en el tabloi- de que acompaña a Decoy, además de iluminar algunos aspectos de la exposición se inserta como un momento del desarrollo de un pensamiento cuyas elaboraciones previamente difundidas también sirven de soporte metodológico a las estrategias que se aplican en ésta. Por igual, los elementos y estructuras dispuestos físicamente en el espacio de exhibición ya forman parte de o se encaminan a configurarse como una serie en crecimiento hasta el presente de sistemas y herramientas conceptuales y materiales que Moreno y Oroza han fraguado, de manera progresiva, bajo el principio del diagrama. Se trata, en consecuencia, de modelizaciones con una elevada capacidad pragmática, adaptables a situaciones de instalación y desenvolvimiento muy diferentes y con posibilidades funcionales de uso fuera del campo del arte, su lugar de origen en última instancia.

En tanto hecho artístico, Decoy se postula en relación estrecha con las problemáticas de la ciudad contemporánea y los modos de habitarla, así como con los procesos de producción, los flujos de consumo y los nuevos comportamientos sociales que caracterizan a la última, pero me atrevería a decir que se comunica intersticialmente con una de las tendencias más ricas de la vanguardia europea: aquélla que puso en circulación la idea del vínculo existente entre arte trabajo producción vida. Es cierto que, a distancia de la celebración de la técnica y la redención social que alimentó los enfoques sobre el tema elaborados por la Bauhaus y el productivismo ruso, lo que Decoy propone como estrategia es el aprovechamiento de cualquier material y oportunidad disponibles para la invención popular de alternativas a las imposiciones de consumo; sin embargo, del impulso desmitificador de la práctica artística asociado a esa tendencia moder- na, Decoy conserva lo que quizás fuera en ella más importante: el interés por fundir (confundir) el arte en (con) la arquitectura, el diseño y, en general, los procesos de la producción material. Tal vez la noción de diagrama central para las especulaciones discursivas actuales de Moreno y Oroza, como señalamos antes podría ser apropiada como metáfora de representación del proyecto de investigación exposición que ambos están articulando conjuntamente. En ese caso, Decoy sería algo así como uno de los componentes u operaciones de ese proyecto: un lugar para situarse en el interior de su diagrama.

RÉACTIONS EN CHAÎNE

Interview with Ernesto Oroza
By Baptiste Menu

(The english version of this interview was published in the special tabloid printed for the exhibition Ernesto Oroza. Architecture of Necesitty, INOVA, 2011) (French version)

Baptiste Menu What you call “technological disobedience” is questioning the life cycle of western products, by multiplying the industrial objects’ length of use up to the limit of their possibilities of use. This system is now possible thanks to the reconsideration of the industrial object under the hand-craft aspect.
Which forms of organization does this creative re-conquest of industrial objects take?

Ernesto Oroza I think the fact of reconsidering the industrial product from a hand-craft perspective encourages shrewd practices in contrast with the artificial voracity and activates more human temporary relations, like the repair, can authorize questions about the obtuse nature of the contemporaneous industrial object. When you open an object to fix it, there is a crack in the authority system which is set up. We see the internal organs of an authoritarian logic that imposes itself not only through a product but also through a system sequence : the objects integrate authoritarian families, share an infinite succession of reinforced generations. And this domination even precedes the arrival of the object at home; indeed its first domination takes place in the mass media. That’s why I used, in the ‹Rikimbili. Une étude sur la désobéissance technologique en quelques formes de réinvention› book, the image of Fidel Castro on the national television selling to Cubans a Chinese product used to boil water. The image couldn’t be much redundant and excessive in terms of imposition. When I talk about authority, I want to link it with all the logics these products induct, starting with the imposition of their scheduled life cycle.
Concerning your question about the forms of organization that qualify and diversify the hand-craft revision of the industrial in Cuba, I would comment one of them, which is fundamental to me: the accumulation. It seems to be a passive act, not creative, but it is literally the organizational starting point of the phenomenon. I grew up in a family where we kept everything and everything seems to have a potential. Each object accumulated by my mother can perfectly be useful in a situation of future shortage. The accumulation is in fact an emergency exit from an inopportune crisis, but it becomes a habit, because of distrust. The accumulation is regularly the first gesture in the production process and it has an absolute manual nature. That is to say that from the accumulation yet, you begin from a hand-craft point of view to be disrespectful to the life cycle integrated in the western industrial object. You infinitely postpone the moment of its waste by separating it from its assigned route. I think that the fact of accumulating things inserts an alteration, a notion of time, in the Cuban vernacular practices and this new own time organize them, give them the form of a parallel and productive phenomenon. I also said that the fact of accumulating is not only the suspicious fact of piling up objects. Well, when you do that you accumulate ideas of use, constructive solutions, technical systems and archetypes in general that can flourish when the situation gets worse.

Illustrations from: Con nuestros propios esfuerzos. Editorial Verde Olivo, 1992

BM I have the sensation that an important concept runs through your work, the material-object notion. Can you develop this idea, please?

EO I’ ve been writing recently on the issue related the re-use of generic objects as buckets or milk crates in precarious contexts like in Little Haiti, in Miami. Even if the situations are different, Cuba is characterized by a profound shortage and the US by an excess of products. In each case, there are social groups living in bad conditions. I met in each territory similar patterns of behaviour. It seems that people in these circumstances generally perceive their material universe in a discriminative way. They are just interested in the physical qualities of the objects that surround them. It’ s a diary process, an appropriate activity. When we look at the object from the exterior, we can understand it as the potential and real re-conversion in raw material of all the elements that integrate the environment of the individual. This process begins by erasing the objects’ and parts’ meanings present in our culture. That is to say that an individual recognizes in a bucket a kind of cultural profundity. But, when he is in a situation of need, he will just perceive it like an abstract compilation of materials with forms, edges, weight, structures. We can make a very familiar parallel with the relation of use we have with the natural world. It is normal to take a stone to hold a door or a branch to reach a fruit. The rhetorical or historical value of the stone won’ t be important when you need to let the door open, only its weight. A bucket full of water can only be used to block a door. The relation we maintain with things in both universes (natural and generic) comes from a unique condition: the two objects, the branch and the milk crate, suffer from identity. They seem to be foreign to the system of sense production, foreign to the culture. A plastic box to distribute milk is an abstract and autistic object, dumped through a circle of very specific requirements and that’ s why an object is accessible thanks to its excessive production. I wonder if the description fits with the branch or the stones’ one. For sure, the box has a social function, but its conception has been so much optimized that the human aspect has just become a value, a dimensional data within the plastic surface of the object, as it is for the weight of a litre of milk or the storage capacity of the truck that supplies it. The milk crate is a field sown with physical qualities, potentialities that will become more visible as far as we will have more needs, and it is also a field empty of sense. Its figure is so quiet in terms of image that its indifference and the indifference of the system producing it overwhelm us. Everyday the box travels full and comes back empty. It takes parts in a loop that could remain active for the eternity. If a box goes out the loop, lost or damaged, another one will replace it. If the world suddenly halts, the circle made by the boxes of milk in the city would continue to flow. We would be frightened by its social indifference, its pensiveness, the silence its centripetal move produces. But, around this circle or in a tangential scheme, there are circles of human activities eroding the perfection of the rational system where the milk crate subsists, splintering. The surrounding zones of the markets where milk is distributed are full of milk crates used like urban seats or used for other activities like car washing or water selling. In order to explain you how this occurs in Havana, we can use the example of the fan repaired thanks to a telephone. A quick glance to the object will carry us away from the art field of senses, from the readymade and from the index of associative resources of the Dada where the humour articulated with the image takes our look and our understandings. Nevertheless, for the repairman, the telephone is the unique form, similar to the original prismatic base, he could access to. When the telephone broke, he didn’ t throw it, the necessity made him suspicious. This telephone had been made in the ex-German Democratic Republic as it seems it stayed ten years under the bed or in a wardrobe. When the body of the fan broke, perhaps because of a fall, the family should be worried. A temperature of forty five degrees centigrade is a very difficult situation, the impossibility of replacing the object, because of the excessive disparity of wage, closes the debate. He has to assume the repair ; the accumulation he continued for years has a parallel existence in his memory. He remembers the old telephone. He only takes into account the physical attributes of the object. The angles and the internal plastic nerves that shape this prism with rectangular base assure the stability of the fan. The symbolic association that could appear after the repair are invisible for him. The pragmatism makes the reconstructed body of the object avoid any kind of symbolic construction intent. In Cuba, the process looks more severe as it begins with the flattening of the object’ s identity. In the US, the generic object seems to hide its identity, it yet comes flattened. From this, for the people of the Havana and from Little Haiti, a new field to pick physical virtues is open. Finally, I recently begin to associate this phenomenon to the ideas of Oswald de Andrade, specifically to his Cannibalistic Manifest (one thousand, nine hundred twenty eight). Helio Oiticica uses it to elaborate the “Super-cannibalism” concept considering an “immediate reduction of all the influences exterior to the national model”. By focusing the process on the productive universe and on the Cuban material culture, I can’t stop seeing it, literally like a super chewing, a super riding. It’s a violent action, in cultural terms, against the colonial material universe that surrounds us and which seems to be unable to solve the people life. But it is, over all, a foundation gesture to implement practices of disobedience from which it is impossible to evacuate ideological components around a culture of resistance.

Illustrations from: Con nuestros propios esfuerzos. Editorial Verde Olivo, 1992

BM In this context, you study the way Cubans have been able to re-appropriate the means of production and to develop what you call “the vernacular industrial production”. What is this?

EO I consider it like an appropriation of the productive management, but not of the productive system. The State means have been idle for a long time. The industry paralyzed. There was no raw material and the government had lost its markets.
The Cubans created a parallel productive space, constructed machines in their houses, workshops, tools. In some cases, they parasitized the State industry where they were working; creating productions on the sly, with illegal timetables, but it is not the most usual method. The lamp of extracted acrylic we showed in the book ‹Objets réinventés› connects the two variants: the appropriation of State productive means and the creation of parallel means of production.
It was discovered by some workers during a power cut in the nineties. When the blackout occurred, the Japanese machine used to produce rods for artificial insemination remained full of acrylic in its pipes of extrusion. So, it was necessary to drain it manually and in emergency. The acrylic expelled drew in the room elliptic lines and came tough, forming a complete figure and decorated by the gravity. With their gloves put on, they began to model in the air and to experiment forms that resulted ashtrays, centrepieces... I think that the workers had been waiting with joy and for a long time the forthcoming power cut. They had a legal protection to produce: they just had to save the machine from an obstruction and this liberation allowed they to produce something they could conserve, the expelled material was considered as a waste. One of them thought he could create such a machine at home; the device used to produce fritters was an analogous model. Since then, they did not need the State productive space anymore. They did not need either the Japanese machine that was ordered a power cut each three days. The access to the acrylic was the most complicated thing, but a black market appeared for this product. There were warehouses with immobile raw materials. The State had remained paralyzed, shocked by the crisis impact and he didn’ t react. The individuals found very quickly the responsibility in them for the productive management. The implementation of a familial industry in the ninety’ s, still active, is bound to the production of plastic and aluminium objects. The scale of the productions was so big and visible that they needed a patronage, a legal source of income and support. It is not the same thing to sell illegally ten lamps of kerosene made with beer tins and to sell three thousand plastic glasses. Indeed what was called “the local industries” came on stage. It was a State institution that gave job opportunities to some craftsmen and workers. It was unifying small workshops spread all over the city a long time before the revolution: printers of Linotype, workshops of sewing, of cobblers, workshops to produce craftworks. When the crisis appeared, the local industry was the unique skilled model the State had to regulate the vernacular productive torrent. It was used as a mediator to access to the raw materials, to distribute goods and later as a controller of the tax paying, to keep an eye on the illegal practices and appropriate the inventiveness and the popular effort.
The workshops in houses turned into living systems in the centre of the city. They employed young people of the area. Sometimes you could see them enter stealthily behind a tree: it was the thin access to an improvised cellar where there were two or three machines of plastic injection. The mechanisms were incredible, they produced them by themselves. Also the moulds. The need for raw materials converts these places into very selective “black hollows”. All the plastic objects from the surroundings were absorbed by the mechanism, a kind of industrial cannibalism. Hordes of plastic prospectors were collecting containers from everywhere to feed the monster that was expelling little heads of Batman at the other side. Sometimes families were living with the machines inside the house, not in a patio or a cellar. A room during the day can transform itself into a plant to produce electric switches, pipes or hoses. Photos of children on the wall of the house and a small bedside table now used as a toolbox reappraised the past of the space. I can’ t stop using these examples to answer you. In the order of the definitions, I think that the words “domestic or familial industrial production”, allow determine a more complete form of production that holds an implicit increase of the series characteristic and of the volume of production, but that remains especially associated to the house and that mixes its activities with the domestic tasks of the family. Other vernacular and familiar features in these productions, responding to appropriation gestures, can be found in the elaboration of the designs and in the inspiration sources. In a certain way, the objects present in the house before the crisis supplied a guide to get some values by appropriating the form of a glass. They used its dimensions, decorations, ergonomic values. The family recycled the formal universe coming from the exchanges of Cuba with the communist Europe. It had a second life embodied in the multicolour plastic or aluminium.

Illustrations from: Con nuestros propios esfuerzos. Editorial Verde Olivo, 1992

BM In front of a perpetual emergency, these practices of reinvention extend themselves to all fields of the everyday life. You say that “the city takes place at the biological rhythm of the house”, a strong image you employ is the potential house. Would you please tell us more about this thin link between the Human and its constructed environment?

EO The crisis persistence and the hope loss in the socialist government productivity generated a mentality, a social being that I called, revisiting Le Corbusier: the Moral Modulor. I talk about an individual or a family pushed in some circumstances under the poverty line (below zero would say Glauber Rocha).They can proceed to a moral reinvention. Their actions will occur in a threshold or a moral frequency where you can’t see old historical and esthetical values, social status, urban standards and codes of citizen behavior in general. That is to say, all these conventions relative to an order now hostile and restrictive of the family survival will be questioned. The individual will register this freedom in his spaces and objects, next to the order of his foot; he will set up an unknown moral dimension. The house, and the city by extension, becomes a continuous diagram of the shrewd relations of the individual with his needs, the contextual limits and the available resources. I told in other occasions that the facades are like films displayed from the middle of the house to the exterior. They talk about the past and the recent life of the family. Indeed, they announce plans, threaten of invasions or inform on future metamorphosis and fusions: staircases which don’ t fit to any side, walls that figure expanding to all interstices, baths open to the public sight, terrace roofs invaded by materials and heterogeneous accumulations. The house like a finished entity doesn’t exist anymore. The house is like an organism that auto-constructs itself in time to the human rhythms living in it. What I call Potential House, or more recently Convergent House, is a way to live in the process (of living). I think there is no better diagram to explain the relations you ask me than the houses themselves, their surfaces, spaces and structures.

Stills from Untitled (cabaret a la deriva), 2011

ART@WORK PRESENTS ENEMIGO PROVISIONAL
Exhibition of Works by Ernesto Oroza
On View July 9 - August 31, 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 2011


Enemigo Provisional. Video, 2:56 min, color. 2004 (still)
Untitled. (from archive Technological Disobedience). Video, 3:01min 2005 (still)

Provisional Enemy
Shooting galleries in Cuba are spaces traversed by a nihilistic ray. These are sectors of the city--and of the material culture of the island--in which destruction occurs at an accelerated pace. They are the dispersed centers from where the void radiates.
 6 years ago I made a video titled Provisional Enemy. During the first seconds of the video, one reads: “On Tuesday, 26th of February, 2004, the person in charge of a shooting gallery agreed to sell me his work resources: a wire full of hanging objects that have been shot by dozens of Cubans, each day, with a pellet gun.”
A version of this video, photos from the archive "Enemigo Provisional", and videos of Fidel Castro promoting household goods from Communist China in Cuban national television constitute the exhibition "Enemigo Provisional" at Artatwork.
Ernesto Oroza, 2011

Untitled. (from archive Enemigo Provisional). 2004, D-print, 5 x 7 inches.
Untitled. (from archive Enemigo Provisional). 2004, D-print, 8 x 10 inches.

Untitled. (from archive Enemigo Provisional). 2004, D-print, 8.5 x 11 inches.
Untitled. (from archive Enemigo Provisional). 2004, D-print, 8.5 x 11 inches.

Curated by Nicholas Frank
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts
Curator's Statement
Download Tabloid (special issue) printed for the exhibition.

Ernesto Oroza’s “Architecture of Necessity” chronicles the inventive solutions that arise under conditions of severe economic limitations, such as those in his native Havana. The island nation of Cuba has been embargoed and isolated for decades and restricted by an authoritarian government, and deprivation is the norm. Though private production is illegal under the current system, people invent the things they need, and make changes to their built environment as necessary.
Oroza’s work (in essays, photographs, collected and reconstructed objects) documents the range of inventive solutions borne out of these conditions, while charting a moral course for social discourse and development.
The exhibition at Inova will feature a combination of interior design and architectural elements, along with documentary photographs of architectural modifications in Havana, and video detailing various household inventions. Inova will publish an edition of Oroza’s Tabloids, an ongoing project that conveys ideas and visual information in an inexpensive and widely distributable format. The Inova tabloid will act as the exhibition publication for the concurrent shows (Matthew Girson and Jeanne Dunning), and contain information specific to the Milwaukee community. We are grateful for the support of the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts and Aprenda Invertir (Miami).
This is Oroza’s first exhibition in the Midwest.

"The need for raw materials converts these places into very selective “black hollows”. All the plastic objects from the surroundings were absorbed by the mechanism, a kind of industrial cannibalism. Hordes of plastic prospectors were collecting containers from everywhere to feed the monster that was expelling little heads of Batman at the other side. Sometimes families were living with the machines inside the house, not in a patio or a cellar. A room during the day can transform itself into a plant to produce electric switches, pipes or hoses. Photos of children on the wall of the house and a small bedside table now used as a toolbox reappraised the past of the space."
From: Menu, Baptiste. Réactions en chaine Interview with Ernesto Oroza. Azimuts 35, Cite du design, 2010.

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{besps_c}0|H2 orozainova.jpg|Untitled (cabaret a la deriva), 2011|Video installation, details. Marble plastic surface from plastic cups, jewels, toys made by families at home, using reinvented injection machines. Row material: scavenged plastic around the city: discarded auto pieces, stolen trash urban cans, plastic bottles.{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|H3 orozainova.jpg|Untitled (cabaret a la deriva), 2011|Video installation, details. Marble plastic surface from plastic cups, jewels, toys made by families at home, using reinvented injection machines. Row material: scavenged plastic around the city: discarded auto pieces, stolen trash urban cans, plastic bottles.{/besps_c}
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{besps_c}0|O orozainova.jpg|Fence|newspaper, cut{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|P orozainova.jpg|Moral Modulor's Drawings Project "When anthropometric dimensions become a metaphor for moral dimensions",|newspaper, cut{/besps_c}
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{besps_c}0|Z orozainova.jpg|Video proposal "Redrawing INOVA", 2011|Video, color{/besps_c}

Gean Moreno / Ernesto Oroza. Farside Gallery. Miami. On View May 6-June 6, 2010

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{besps_c}0|1decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled (decoy), 2010.|Wood and found tiles. Functional object 48” x 48” x 12”{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|2decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled (decoy), 2010.|Wood and found tiles. Functional object 48” x 48” x 12”{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|3decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2009.|Cushings, T-shirts and refills, 16x16 in each{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|4decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Tonel. Telarte pattern for Tabloid 8, 2009.|newspaper{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|5decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Studio Scrap Stools 2, 2010.|plywood{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|6decoy-moreno-oroza-2010.jpg|Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza. Untitled, 2010.|Newsprint and printed matter{/besps_c}

TABLOID #8: This tabloid was produced by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza for the exhibition DECOY. Farside Gallery 2010. Miami, FL.
Textile pattern by Tonel, mass produced as part of the cultural initiative TelArte, Havana 1987, altered by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza, 2010.
Special thanks to Tonel for allowing us to use his work.
8 pages. Blue. Edition of 1000

From press release:
(Miami, FL) -For the exhibition Decoy, Ernesto Oroza and Gean Moreno are producing an abstracted interior in the guise of a reading room. In it, nothing is what it seems: a graphic/decorative figure is actually a schematized image pulled from a partially successful effort to join art and mass production (TelArte); the typology of a bench is folded into that of a table which, in turn, is folded into that a display structure; a set of funky tiles stand in as shorthand diagrams of procedures witnessed at the local salvage yard from where they were reclaimed; a tabloid (as a medium for information distribution) is inseparable from a wallpaper as a decorative structure, but the wallpaper presents its own non-decorative information; cushions sewn out of old T-shirts double as a starting archive of graphics that have taken root in our vernacular landscapes. Things acquire two and three identities and negotiate precarious balances between them. Somewhere in all this, one can begin to discern what is important to Oroza and Moreno: crisscrossing functional patterns in order to produce astute artifacts; testing the possibility of objects feed on tactical logics which, despite their proclivity for tending to the necessary with impressive economy, are all-too-often relegated to one kind of margin or another; formulating tentative theorems on what possibilities are still viable and vital for object production and urban experience.

- Contemporary artist Ernesto Oroza Re-presents "Archetype Vizcaya." By Janna Lafferty
- Mapping Vizcaya. By Anne Tschida
- A progress report on the ongoing renovations at Miami’s Vizcaya Museum... By Beth Dunlop
- Villa Vizcaya transfigurada: entre la quimera y el diseño. Por Janet Batet
- Ernesto Oroza. Viscaya Museum and Garden. By Janet Batet

- Harpo Foundation

DESIGN AND ETHICS
--Gean Moreno

The qualifier “popular” in popular design aims, it seems, to bracket the everyday call-and-response of necessity and ingenuity in order to re-locate an entire field within definitions supported by less pedestrian paradigms. Design, the presence of the qualifier seems to insinuate, is nothing as basic as a practice characterized by gestures through which objects are optimized to respond to immediate needs. We should enhance our definition of the discipline by speaking of it as an autonomous creative field with a clear historical trajectory and stellar practitioners; by recalling the matrix of institutions that legitimize its products; by considering it in relation to markets and mass production; by pumping out reams of text that explain its complex interaction with clients, demographics, and media. We should, in other words, define design exclusively in relation to the shape it has taken as a response to the pressures applied by the material conditions of late capitalism. Anything else would be utopian thinking, academic exegesis, theory, or simply naïveté.

Ernesto Oroza came of age as a designer—and as something other than a designer: a meta-designer, a theoretical designer, an ex-designer (as Marti Giuxé says), an artist—in a context in which the material conditions that have shaped design as the global practice that we know and celebrate didn’t exist. Graduating from Havana’s Instituto Superior de Diseño in 1993, he entered the field at a moment when, due to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet subsidies, Cuba was undergoing its most calamitous economic crisis—the Special Period in Times of Peace. This crisis shut down the production of any new objects on the island and nearly eliminated all imports of non-essential foodstuffs and the like. The lesson of this time, Oroza has argued, is that “Cubans understood that they would have to meet their own needs, as they lived in a country where the State owned all productive capabilities. Urgency placed the individual at the center of the country’s survival.”[1] Scarcity marked the moment. And this opened a gulf between emergent needs and the availability of products that responded to these needs. A broken fan couldn’t be replaced by a new one. The possibility of a one-to-one exchange of objects vanished. As the life of things came to an end, there was nothing to take their place. And so aged and broken objects had to be kept in circulation, readjusted and reconfigured to respond to unexpected demands. A broken phone could serve as the base of a fan; a dinner tray became a TV antennae.

Oroza has devised a number of terms to describe the processes that characterized this period of massive popular design. He has spoken of technological disobedience as a fundamental aspect of it, and he uses the term to highlight the fact that it became a common practice to reroute objects intended to respond to a particular need so that they could respond to a completely different one—one that was not envisioned in the processes of design and production from which it emerged. The phone-as-fan-base and the dinner-tray-as-TV-antennae serve as paradigmatic examples. Rather than user-end empowerment that digital technologies have opened up, what we have here is need trumping intended function. It’s not picking whatever song you want, but using the iPod as a wedge to hold a doorjamb in place. Not selecting the quality of gasoline at the pump, but using the yellow plastic gas tank as a sign for your taxi.

When enough of these “re-formatted” objects begin to appear, enough to significantly change the morphology of a city or a town, it could be said that this popular design has turned into something else: a popular urbanism; a way of irrevocably altering urban texture. In other words, the individual gestures through which objects are synthetically reformatted to respond to emergent needs—that is, the individual gestures of technological disobedience—coalesce into a large collective force that alters the shape of a city. Oroza has called this collectivization and transcendence of individual instances of disobedience familial urbanism. That is, an urbanism that begins with the alterations that take place in each household, responding to the needs of each family. The familial, however, in becoming urbanism is an example of the whole being more than the parts: as urbanism, it becomes a force the effects of which exceed each of the individual instances that comprise it.

For over a decade, Oroza has documented and theorized this new logic of popular design, always looking for precise concepts that express its singularity. The form of design that he has dealt with is often thought of in terms of recycling in the West, but surrendering it too quickly in this kind of discourse occludes one of the things that has been central to Oroza’s project: naming the engine that drives this mode of design, rather than naming its effects. Recycling as such is a process. What has interested Oroza is the root cause: the question of necessity; that is, an understanding of the local material conditions that underscore the emergence of this explosion of popular design. It’s a matter of keeping an eye on the context, on the historical moment. He has said: “Necessity has been stigmatized in Western culture. If you find yourself in need, you are considered weak. If you express demands for these needs to be met, you are considered vulgar. Since the 1990s, Cubans have done violence to this stigma. Each object produced or solution discovered has been a statement of principle.”[2]

Responding to necessity, then, Oroza considers that each of these objects have an ethical dimension: each is, as he says, a statement of principle and freedom, a response against a plummeting in the quality of living conditions, against a disintegrating social fabric, and, lastly, against an eroding urban texture. This is why Oroza refuses to participate in the discussion of Havana as a ruin. Such a discourse takes a sweeping view of the city, focusing on its dilapidated surfaces, and ignoring the ground-level and “hidden” gestures of its inhabitants, the new behaviors and altered objects that optimize their responses to immediate needs, to pressures that emerge from existing and local material conditions. Behind the crumbling buildings of the city, Oroza argues, there is another interior city, or city of interiorities: one of architectural up-datings and object re-designs that speak the truth of their moment and the ethics of their producers.

[1] Moreno, Gean, “Object as Index: Ernesto Oroza in Conversation with Gean Moreno,” Art Papers, May-June, 2008, p.25

[2] Moreno, Ibid., p.25

Ernesto Oroza: el espacio relacional de todas las cosas del mundo
ADRIANA HERRERA

•  Ernesto Oroza (La Habana, 1968) exhibe actualmente la muestra de videos y fotografías Enemigo Provisional en Art@Work. En 2007 obtuvo la beca Guggenheim por su proyecto Arquitectura de la necesidad que indagaba en la reconfiguración ocurrida en el interior y exterior de los hábitats de La Habana. Tras graduarse de diseñador industrial durante el Período Especial había enfrentado la imposibilidad material de producir obras sofisticadas y descubrió en cambio que existía un impresionante “período de diseño popular masivo”, según escribió el crítico y artista Gean Moreno, con quien ha creado obras colectivas explorando un similar tipo de práctica en el Little Haiti de Miami.
Viendo su oficio sobrepasado por un entorno en el que la gente trasformaba sus viviendas con inesperadas envolturas o modificaciones inusuales para resolver la escasez habitacional; y en el que también se fabricaban objetos con lo que había a mano, improvisando soluciones frente a la carencia; renunció a sus ideas académicas para absorber las prácticas de la estética y vida popular.
Se convirtió en un “ex diseñador”  –como lo llamó Moreno, apropiándose del término acuñado por Martí Guixé-, que más que crear, acopia objetos de arte encontrados que fotografía, usa como patrones, o como ingeniosas instalaciones de solución espacial fabricadas con recursos “pobres” como baldes, cajas de cartón, piedra o plástico. Pero sobre todo, funcionan como artefactos de pensamiento para revelar zonas de interrelación en sombra.
Su práctica artística refleja cómo la  necesidad puede propiciar en Cuba el despliegue de una recursividad orgánica, marcada por los ritmos y las urgencias de la gente. Pero lejos de caer en el romanticismo que hace exóticos esos objetos caseros ingeniosos - una lámpara de querosene hecha con una botella de leche-, reafirma que no se renuncia al deseo del objeto “verdadero”. Como un Aladino contemporáneo, Oroza cambiaba de hecho, un ventilador nuevo por el que alguien había creado con un disco de acetato para “resolver” su carencia, y lo usaba como un readymade de la arquitectura de la necesidad.
Oroza demuestra hasta qué punto diseño y arquitectura, asumidos desde la supervivencia cotidiana, pueden desafiar la ética de un sistema que reprime la iniciativa individual, pero también la de otro que conduce a un consumo de cosas hechas y no necesarias a fin de someterlo a un omnipotente poder financiero.
Su obra no está en las piezas, sino en la intermediación social. Es una mirada apostada en los espacios emocionales –del deseo, del miedo a la escasez, de la posesión simbólica, de la necesidad de expansión- que se activan en las relaciones de las personas con los objetos y arquitecturas con los que viven. Su estética relacional se apropia de las prácticas populares para erosionar los lugares comunes que saturan las ideologías del poder.
De modo coherente con una programación ligada a la observación cultural de la migración y de los desplazamientos territoriales y de visión en Miami, Art@Work exhibe el video y las fotos de Enemigo Provisional. Las piezas registran el estado en que queda un set de objetos caseros tras ser usados en los campos de tiro improvisados que Fidel Castro autorizó montar con escopetas de cacería amarradas a una barra. El gobierno las suministró conminando a la gente a entrenarse a disparar para enfrentar la amenaza de una invasión imperialista. Los campos provisionales, creados para una espera hipotética, funcionan como negocios improvisados en estructuras donde se cuelga cualquier objeto inútil que pueda ser baleado. Balones desinflados, muñecas viejas, piezas sueltas, reciben una descarga de agresividad popular obviamente más conectada con la liberación de una energía de frustración social, que con su supuesto propósito de entrenamiento. Cada objeto agujereado y fotografiado cumple una función que desplaza la inmovilidad de una sociedad donde todos están a la espera de lo que no ha de venir, por una catarsis tan absurda o grotesca como el estado en que quedan estos blancos que hablan no sólo de la extensión del simulacro sino de las estrategias de desplazamiento. El “enemigo” externo provisional ayuda a acatar la inacabable espera.
Oroza propuso la “desobediencia tecnológica” como una vía para remover la inmovilidad que imponía en Cuba determinó una forma de vivir en la transición; pero también el perenne tránsito hacia el progreso que en el capitalismo acaba por obviar, en aras de una sofisticación tecnológica, “los paradigmas de vida humana”.
Otro video exhibido pertenece al archivo llamadoDesobediencia tecnológica y muestra la aparición de Fidel Castro intentando promocionar la ventaja de productos chinos para el consumo, en un momento en que masivamente la gente diseñaba con cualquier cosa objetos de necesidad. La reproducción de esa imagen del líder político que parece encarnar un vendedor callejero armando cuentos sobre el producto que intenta vender, evidencia el límite de las ficciones sociales y erosiona el poder discursivo de un sistema a partir de la visión de los objetos.
En síntesis, estas obras encontradas que interpelan los límites de las ficciones sociales, burlan los estereotipos de exaltación o detracción del consumo del comunismo y del capitalismo, y proponen la formulación de otra ética en la relación del hombre y las cosas.

ESPECIAL/EL NUEVO HERALD
Adriana Herrera es escritora, curadora, y crítica de arte. Colabora con galerías y museos, y asesora publicaciones especializadas.
‘Enemigo Provisional’ de Ernesto Oroza en Art@Work, 1245 SW 87 Ave. Hasta el 21 de septiembre. Charla del artista y visita guiada el jueves 15 a las 7 p.m.
adrianaherrerat@gmail.com

selection & patterns
{besps}vizcayaplants{/besps}
{besps_c}0|Castor Bean (Ricinus communis).jpg|Castor Bean (Ricinus communis)|{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|Climbing Fern (Lygodium japonicum).jpg|Climbing Fern (Lygodium japonicum){/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|Day Blooming Jasmine (Cestrum diurnum).jpg|Day Blooming Jasmine (Cestrum diurnum){/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|Melaleuca quinquenervia.jpg|Melaleuca quinquenervia{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|Napier Grass (Pennisetum purpureum).jpg|Napier Grass (Pennisetum purpureum){/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|Puncture Vine (Tribulus cistoides).jpg|Puncture Vine (Tribulus cistoides){/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|Seaside Mahoe (Thespesia populnead).jpg|Seaside Mahoe (Thespesia populnead){/besps_c}

Provisional gallery, Les Ateliers, Ecole Nationale Supérieur de Création Industrielle (ENSCI) París, France.
Ernesto Oroza's workshop and exhibition.

Archetype: the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based.

As Ernesto Oroza began his work on Archetype Vizcaya, we invited him to look closely at the estate. For several months, he examined the patterns of materials and the movements of crowds and individuals, including party planners and curators; he opened every closet and catalogued visible and invisible surfaces; he explored the archives and original designs for the property; he moved across the line that separates the public from what is behind the stanchions and the plexiglass; and he studied Vizcaya’s presence on the Web.

For several years, Oroza has been interested in utilitarian objects and vernacular practices of appropriation, in which things are taken from their original context and given new purpose and meaning. As an extravagant Italianate vacation home designed for millionaire James Deering by artist and interior decorator Paul Chalfin, Vizcaya would not appear at first sight to be remotely touched by issues of necessity or by a vernacular approach to architecture and design. In fact, we invited Oroza because we were confident that his work in entirely different contexts would enable him to see Vizcaya with fresh eyes, helping us to understand how the estate is currently “used” by its visitors and to envision alternate ways of “using” it.

Oroza developed tools that engage us in looking at this National Historic Landmark with an active, playful and ironic perspective. At the same time, in exploring the dynamics of cultural appropriation, Oroza raises issues at the core of Vizcaya’s history and cultural significance. So too does he present Vizcaya as an ongoing layering of appropriations, histories and meanings, still vibrant and more unpredictable than ever.

A key component of Oroza’s project is a printed “map” of the Main House. This map is far from a literal floor plan, but rather an abstract guide that invites visitors to discover objects and ideas generally unseen or overlooked. The extravagant floors assembled by Chalfin serve as the organizing principle. On one part of the map, the floors are catalogued as a means to identify the different spaces at Vizcaya; and the floors are associated by numbers to images of objects in the rooms that they adorn. The map directs us to look at the surfaces beneath our feet and, in doing so, breaks our normative viewing habits and frees us to participate in an intensive treasure hunt for curious artifacts. Oroza’s map is an object in its own right that can be taken home and enjoyed as a piece of art or wallpaper, or in any way one wishes.

Visitors using the map to explore Vizcaya will find traces of Oroza’s intervention and interpretation in unexpected places around the house. On the plexiglass, for example, Oroza has inserted silhouettes of the invasive plants that endanger Miami’s local vegetation. By introducing “alien” things into the fabric of Vizcaya, Oroza challenges us to question what is original or authentic on an estate in which the buildings, landscape, furniture and art objects were all imported or invented.

Ernesto Oroza also went outside of the estate’s walls to understand Vizcaya, scouring the Web for information. From this research, he assembled the third component of his project, a catalogue of amateur videos of quinceañeras, weddings and other parties at the estate. To immerse oneself in this kaleidoscope of moving images is perhaps the best, and certainly the most entertaining, way to understand how Vizcaya is “used” by its visitors.

With Archetype Vizcaya, Oroza explores the border between the institution and its appropriation by the public.
He creates new tools to experience Vizcaya’s spaces and to discover the unseen. Oroza causes us to contemplate what is “native” and what is “alien” in a museum context or in a social environment. And, he asks us to consider the relevance of a historic house filled with Italian decorative arts in modern Miami. But, most important, he shows us that if Deering and Chalfin could appropriate and reinvent Italian decorative arts and design almost one hundred years ago, we should feel free to appropriate and reinvent their work today.

Over the last few months, we engaged in ongoing conversation with Ernesto Oroza about Vizcaya and its multiple histories. The inside of this brochure includes excerpts of this conversation, which was central to the development of his project.

Flaminia Gennari-Santori, Deputy Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs

Courtesy, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
© Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, Florida. All rights reserved.

A conversation between Ernesto Oroza and Flaminia Gennari-Santori, Vizcaya’s Deputy Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs.

EO: Do you think Paul Chalfin applied architectural historicism at Vizcaya because it was a culturally accepted “shortcut” or for other reasons?

FGS: Vizcaya is a product of its time, and architectural historicism is a crucial component of its aesthetic. But, at Vizcaya, historicism was used as the language for the fictional narrative of a country house that had been occupied for centuries and had graciously accommodated changes in taste and style. In fact, it was built over the span of just a few years as the theatrical set for the cultural projections of its owner, James Deering, and even more, of its designer, Paul Chalfin. One could look at the entire estate as the ideal portrait of a worldy, sophisticated gentleman, with the taste of a connoisseur and the means to surround himself with the ultimate technology. And yet, here and there, like in the sets of a period film, one finds the props, the joints of old and new, of “authentic” and “imitated.” Still, I believe that Chalfin had a further ambition: to reproduce the layering of styles and historical periods that he had learned to appreciate in Italy. The result was, of course, pure American eclecticism.

EO: What do you think are some of the most interesting objects for someone trying to understand Vizcaya?

FGS: One of them is certainly the statue of Mezzogiorno (“Midday”), which greets visitors on the driveway when they enter the property. This idealized representation of a Caribbean native —dressed as a classical soldier and symbolizing the passage of time—originally adorned a garden in the Veneto. At Vizcaya, it was placed in its preeminent position as an evocation of a mythical Caribbean and, thus, for me, Mezzogiorno synthesizes Vizcaya’s multiple layers: 18th-century Venice and the early 20th-century culture of appropriation and reinvention that created the estate. In the house, one of my favorite objects is the system of shelves on the east wall of the Living Room. It was created in central Italy in the mid 16th-century as a church screen. Paul Chalfin cut it into pieces, added some surreal neoclassical urns and transformed it into a display case for “collectibles,”an indispensable element in the house of a gentleman. Yet, the “collectibles” are the least interesting things: partly hidden by the structure, one can find beautiful, tragic wood carvings of men fighting with demons, of medallions with monks’ profiles, of human figures with clawed hands. A house designed for relaxing and entertaining hides these daunting and moving figures.

EO: I find the plexiglass panels in the house quite interesting, because I see them as a vernacular intrusion into the history of Vizcaya. I think that the plexiglass can be interpreted as the validation of certain surfaces, a curatorial decision imposed by preservation specialists to protect things of historic value from museum visitors. How do you see them?

FGS: I think that the placement of the plexiglass at Vizcaya is one of the most curious sub-narratives of the house. Why we find a panel in front of a plain wall, and not protecting the 18thcentury lacquer door next to it, is a m ystery that entirely defies me. The plexiglass is another layer in Vizcaya’s history that you are bringing to our attention by including it in your project. Like the canopy, the plexiglass marks the conversion from private home to public museum, a transition that understandably generated anxieties of control and institutional identity.

EO: The eccentric character of a Baroque retreat on Biscayne Bay must have seemed far more powerful without the Courtyard glass canopy, when the house was exposed to natural forces such as wind, rain, hurricanes, saltwater and mosquitos. Do you think that the museum’s collection and activities could be sustained if the canopy were removed?

FGS: The canopy is the most aesthetically intrusive consequence of the transformation of Vizcaya into a public museum. The Main House was conceived as a pavilion immersed in nature, where the sky and the sea could be seen from every room. The most interesting challenge of a house museum is that it forces you to balance on the thin and slippery ridge between the public and private realms. The canopy exemplifies this challenge. We are about to commission a new one and our goal is to make it as light and invisible as possible, while protecting the collection and keeping the heart of Vizcaya comfortable for the public even during the summer. I agree with you that the glass canopy compromises Vizcaya’s magic, yet in order to stay alive, places need to subtly adapt to time.

FGS: And now I’d like to ask you a question. With Archetype Vizcaya, you unveil a new geography of the place, which reflects both your own approach as an artist and designer and the very thorough research you conducted on the estate and its history. How did your desire to “re-map” what is already historic come about, and what do you hope visitors will take away from the tools you have provided?

EO: My answer would explain not only this project, but my practice in general. In my work, I have developed an analytical structure, a diagram that is almost immutable, with spaces or variables that are filled in by the context I study. It’s a system of ideas and convictions structured by my inquiries into material culture, need, design, languages, and radical and experimental architecture. Yet, the content that fills the equation—the context—ends up affecting the work. This is what happened with Archetype Vizcaya: my model came face-to-face with the structure and the interrelationships of Paul Chalfin’s interior design. I found some recurrent behaviors here and thought that it might be important to reiterate them. The patterns of appropriation and permutation have been so present at Vizcaya from its very origin, that I believe they’re inevitable. Vizcaya has been dissolving into Miami since its construction, due to the climate, changes in function and its relationship to the community. To me, it is interesting to sit back and watch this process. It’s like adding pigment to a river and watching it dissolve into the sea. The map, the provisional gallery on the plexiglass and the video archive are all moving in this direction, and are abstract tools that can be employed anywhere; but, at Vizcaya, they can provoke very specific results.

Agua con Azúcar and La muestra provisional, Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, Cuba.
Ordo Amoris Cabinet was founded by Ernesto Oroza and Diango Hernandez in 1994. Juan Bernal and Abel Francis joined the same year. Ernesto Oroza left the collective in 1997.

Ordo Amoris: Towards a pragmatic Design
Juan Antonio Molina. (“OrdoAmoris. Hacia un diseño pragmático.” La Gaceta de Cuba (UNEAC, Havana, Cuba) No.3, p. 64.)

The work of the Ordo Amoris gets particular attention by virtue of the relationship between design and society under the current cultural and economic circumstances in Cuba. It is based on a process that intensifies the semantic value of objects, mainly functional -like the objects in Agua con Azúcar (Sugar Water) exhibition- or eminently communicative like the ones in the Muestra provisional (Provisional Show) exhibition. By this means, Ordo Amoris activate a design concept; an action aimed to make sense out of a social production, by its insertion in a communication system that is previously codified.

Agua con Azúcar exhibition is a sample room of the spontaneous solutions given in the face of the industrial insufficiency, the flourishing of popular marketplaces and small private industries, as well as daily life difficulties. On the other hand, the Muestra provisional exhibition consisted of articles specifically designed in order to achieve a functional and symbolic adaptation between the object and the context to which is aimed, or from which has arisen. Both, in their peculiar quality, point out the necessity of strengthening the subjection of Design to a social experience.

What Ordo Amoris presents in Agua con Azúcar for instance, are not a group of works, but evidences and documents. Not so much the result of a "creation" process but a provisionally conclusive stage of an investigation on the crossover of different aesthetic and functional areas. Thus, it is not interesting to look an exact definition now for Ordo Amoris' activity. They move from art and design to sociology, but not looking for a space where to be placed, but looking for the place where those spaces meet. The result is useful to appreciate (also in a playful way) the objectuality generated by the contingencies of daily pragmatic needs, as well as to understand an artistic production which prime characteristic is already the recycling of non official fragments of the nation´s culture.

This specific work of Ordo Amoris, claim for a more realistic and pragmatic Design. A practice based on a concept that condenses the socio historical experience. In the Muestra provisional, the concept of the provisional is developed as a characterization of the social attitudes towards labour, in a moment also socially marked as "special" (Special period), that is to say, not definitive. So that Ordo Amoris's pieces, come signed with an aura of transitoryness, not for the simple fact they will be drained by their use, but because even the needs that originated them are supposedly transitory since the society is called to eliminate them.

By looking at both exhibitions, it is understood that a search on identity traces in Cuban Design (particularly in advertising) is innocuous if Identity is not understood beyond the symbolic; defined within the social attitudes towards the actual conditions of labour and consume where man interacts with realm. The "Cuban Thing" in Design, can turn into a deposit of irrelevant signs, if not taken into account their anthropological and historical dimension. Precisely, Ordo Amoris' semi-archeological work comes to rescue both dimensions for Cuban Design.

If not examined carefully, Ordo Amoris’ work takes the chance of being consumed as a catalogue of folk art. To a person who comes from an industrial society this reality may seem very healthy, not just in the ecologically, but also psychologically. In a way, it could be therapeutic, to try to re-discover the fire, the electricity or to re-invent the wheel, a therapy would re-affirm the individual whose reality suddenly collapsed into a crisis. For the local expectator who is mostly a user of this emerging objectuality it is a more direct way of identifying themselves in the things they uses and reproduces. At the same time, The work of Ordo Amoris suggests nostalgia for an uncertain future, which we think we might have already lived in the past, in a dream of comfort and technological development.

"Marble is a material that results from the encounter of powerful natural forces; colored veins are the result of a fluid of magma that penetrates the limestone rock. To mineralogists, these shapes that we consider beautiful are, in fact, impurities that invaded the rock. Any piece of marble in Vizcaya may be considered the diagram of a similar process of contamination that has occurred during the life of the building.
Similarly, for almost a century, Vizcaya has been exposed to the pressures of individual, social, economic and institutional forces, in an ongoing process of contamination. One of the most powerful and pervasive of these forces was Paul Chalfin (1873-1959), the artistic director who created Vizcaya’s fantastic interiors twisting and playing with the canon of European decoration. Other major transformations occurred after 1953, when Vizcaya became a museum. For example, to protect artifacts from visitors panels of plexiglass were placed over many surfaces. It was as if a transparent plastic vein had invaded the stone body of the building. Vizcaya itself can be seen as an intrusion into the Miami tropical landscape of 100 years ago."
Ernesto Oroza, 2011

{besps}vizcaya{/besps}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya a.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya b.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|The Video Archive (espacioprovisional.info/vizcaya): This archive is a compilation of videos filmed by visitors in the exteriors of Vizcaya and posted on YouTube. They include quinceañeras, weddings, tourists, parties and concerts.{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya c.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|Map, installation{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya c1.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|The Video Archive (espacioprovisional.info/vizcaya): This archive is a compilation of videos filmed by visitors in the exteriors of Vizcaya and posted on YouTube. They include quinceañeras, weddings, tourists, parties and concerts.{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya d.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|Map (reverse){/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya d1.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|Map (front){/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya e.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya f.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya g.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya h.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya h1.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya i.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya j.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya k.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya l.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya m.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya n.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|"Espacio Provisional/ Provisional Space: The plexiglass panels that cover and preserve surfaces throughout Vizcaya constitute a gallery I call Espacio Provisional. To show the “architecture” of Espacio Provisional, I use the plexiglass as an exhibition space. On several of them, I have placed a grouping of vinyl silhouettes that represent invasive plants prohibited in Miami-Dade County."{/besps_c}
{besps_c}0|oroza vizcaya o.jpg|Archetype Vizcaya, 2011|Installation view{/besps_c}

ARCHETYPE VIZCAYA 12/12/2009

I want to do a research on the material culture that has given form and meaning to the Vizcaya, from its origins as a home, up to present as a museum.

I recognize that the Vizcaya was an accomplishment desire of James Deering to found a village in a virgin natural context, inspired by archetypes of comfort and social exchange of different places and times. I consider that the Architectural and Interior Design projects that was conceived and directed by Paul Chalfin in this place, has been the vehicle for this foundation process. In this way, the topics that are more interest to me of the historical material of the history of Vizcaya are: the very idea of the foundation itself, the models (archetypes) and the means (Interior Design and Architecture) by which this foundation process was consolidated.

I have found in the Archetype concept, a very important parallel between the history of the Vizcaya and the "objects of necessity" in which I’ve always been interested since I lived in Cuba. In my book, Reinvented Objects, I dedicated a chapter to the idea of Archetype and its function in the works of reconstruction the habitat, which during the economic crisis affected the island for several decades. I consider that the Vizcaya and the Cuba of the 90’, although characterized by opposed material cultures, they share in the archetype a possibility to restart, a hope.

With my research I intend to “re-found” the Vizcaya, virtually speaking. For this, I will use the Interior Design as a theoretical tool to analyze and to project new ways to associate and interpret the objects and spaces of the museum. I’m specifically interested in the capacity of the Interior Design and the Architecture to build meanings and knowledge by means of the space and the relationship with the human being that inhabits it.

My investigation will result in three materials: a Video Library, a Book, and a Map.

VIDEO LIBRARY: - I want to collect, to classify and to return the Vizcaya, systematically, those digital videos filmed during visits, family celebrations (weddings, birthday, quinceaneras) and social events happened in the spaces of the museum. The videos that interest me are those that have been up loaded to Youtube during the last years. In these videos, we can observe new uses of the Vizcaya and a continuous re-interpretation of the place by the community. Each architectural object, each area of the garden and of the building, each perspective is objects of a process of family appropriation that reinvent the place inserting it in a new narrative. The videos accumulated in Youtube have been processed with effects, animations, re-alignments, texts and sound bands that complete this practice of absorption or digestion of the Vizcaya for the family and collective imaginary. With this re-collection I seek to connect the physical universe of the Vizcaya with the digital sphere of Youtube and with the private environment of the family memoirs. I pretend to design a program of video projections at the garden of the museum.

BOOK: - The book will contain the texts, diagrams, collages, pictures of my projects of re-interpretation of this village. It will have from 60 to 120 pages and an approximate format of 8"x 10."

MAP: - The map will be printed, with a minimum format of 22"x17", will be the means to link this project directly with the visitors of the museum. One side of the map will contain "guides" or suggestions on how to “walk" and "to be" in the Vizcaya. On the reverse, the map will contain a scanned graphic pattern that will document some important element of the place. The pattern will have the potentiality, when multiplying, of producing ornamental surfaces as wallpapers, carpets etc. With this map-pattern I will be adding a new object to the material history of the museum and at the same time enabling a new relationship of the Vizcaya with the metropolis that embraces it. People with these maps will be carrying, potentiality a practical model of expansion of the Vizcaya toward Miami. In the future, the pattern will be integrated into the domestic environment of the city, everything will be covered by these decorative surfaces and the dreams of Deering and Chalfin will flood the city.

Courtesy, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
© Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, Florida. All rights reserved.

Decorative Documentary (Cuantos Somos). Ludwig Foundation, Havana, 2005.
Collaborators: Pol Chaviano, Linares, Alex Hernández, Ariadna Contino, Liliam Dooley, Isis Chaviano, Greta García, Asori Soto, Roberto Ramos, Samuel Riera, Yunaika Martin, Angel Madruga, Fermin el azoguero, Nerys and Evelio, Daysi.
Especial thanks: Raysa Rojas, Frank Vega, Julio Gonzalez, Yaima Balboa, Raquel Carreras, Idalmis Borroto, Cristina Gonzalez, Idalmis Garcia, Marylin Gonzalez, Omar Rodriguez, Ernesto Rodríguez, Carlos.

Notas sobre Documental Decorativo.

Utilicé la metáfora del diseño interior para introducir y articular en el espacio de la Fundación Ludwig de Cuba un conjunto de prácticas marginales que sostienen algunas economías privadas familiares en Cuba. Cuando un diseñador de interiores concibe un local, habilita relaciones comerciales con productores y suministradores de muebles, losas de pisos, pinturas de pared, para usar sus productos en la creación del lugar. Mi trabajo, por un lado, se enfocó en la búsqueda por la ciudad de estos negocios y en la creación de una estructura comercial y de diálogo para hacer llegar sus mercancías a un espacio de validación, en este caso de arte. La institución compró productos o encargó servicios que eran indispensables al proceso de renovación interior que yo había proyectado. Por otra parte el diseño del interior operaba como una estructura conceptual, un diagrama que producía relaciones temporales entre cada elemento, cada superficie, con un discurso sociológico y productivo mas complejo. Es decir, la capacidad para relacionar de la estructura ambiental, funcional y simbólica de la arquitectura interior la utilicé para enunciar relaciones más complejas entre prácticas populares, la institución artística y el lenguaje mismo que estaba empleando. Hice énfasis con el curador (Helmo Hernández) en no nombrar ningún elemento como instalación, para propiciar una percepción desprejuiciada del, para mi, nuevo modelo de relaciones que había creado.

Untitled. Decorative Documentary. Metal strainers. 2005

El título oficial dado al proyecto fue “Cuantos Somos”, también le llamé Remozamiento en mis cuadernos y textos, después terminé nombrándolo por el método que utilicé: Documental Decorativo.

Entre algunas de las economías privadas familiares que seleccioné estaban: una familia que hacía espejos decorativos; otra que creaba adornos con desechos de lámparas fluorescentes; una ascensorista de un hospital que tejía objetos decorativos (collares y llaveros) con mangueras y piezas usadas en transfusiones de sangre; una persona que hacía tapetes (doilies); una familia que producía colchones en el barrio La Güinera, donde todas las familias tienen el mismo negocio; una familia que producía vasos y juegos de copas cortando botellas; un señor que vive de pintar piedras falsas en fachadas e interiores de bares y centros de trabajo; unas familias que vivían de fabricar rejillas para desagües.

Untitled. Decorative Documentary. Surfaces, 2005

Untitled. Decorative Documentary. Surfaces, 2005

Durante las visitas a sus casas y espacios de venta en la ciudad entendí que el carácter serial de estas producciones era importante, no tenía sentido llevar objetos únicos al espacio de la Fundación sino superficies. Por lo tanto al entrar objetos, lo hacían integrando un área. De esta manera establecía también una distancia estructural importante en relación a Agua con Azúcar.

Uno de los valores del proyecto, en mi opinión, radicó en la noción de legalidad, asocié la belleza no legitimada de estas producciones con lo ilegitimo de las prácticas productivas familiares. Es decir, al pretender legitimar esa producción apelé a la legitimación y constatación de algunas economías privadas en Cuba. Los documentos, los comprobantes, los modelos de pago constituyen una memoria de los vericuetos legales y económicos de la exhibición.

Untitled. Decorative Documentary. 2005

El proyecto derivó hacia un ejercicio analítico sobre el lenguaje del documental, me interesó específicamente la ambigüedad funcional del documento y su afectación del entorno que lo alberga, ya sea un espacio expositivo, una publicación o un video. Un museo de objetos decorativos, por ejemplo, es sensible o corre el riesgo de ser leído como un espacio decorado, disolviéndose, en este sentido, la función documental. Usé las rejillas de desagües bajo esa exigencia conceptual, la superficie era una fría recolección de objetos dispuestos uno al lado del otro. La cantidad de ejemplares le dio una complejidad funcional y simbólica en relación al espacio, algunos lo percibieron como una alfombra, otros como un display. Alguien lo entendió como una escultura en diálogo con alguna obra en metal de Carl Andre. Para mi era una documentación de procesos productivos alrededor de una función y un arquetipo de objeto doméstico. Un diagrama que realice para sintetizar esta ambiguedad es el de la rejilla al centro de una urna de cristal.

Untitled. Decorative Documentary. Surfaces, 2005

Wood. Decorative Documentary. 2005

El baño recoge otro experimento documental pero en relación a un tipo de colecciones que realicé, el de las simulaciones de materiales. Encontré un individuo que hacia este trabajo en el Cerro, sus imitaciones de madera cubrían elementos inesperados. Recuerdo una reja de barras metálicas(cabillas) en el exterior de su casa que parecía de caoba. Pensé que podía producir una nueva lectura si alteraba el soporte del documento. Nunca pude conversar con el individuo pero un artista relacionado con la Fundación aceptó el trabajo, él tenía experiencia simulando madera y había ganado dinero haciéndolo. Le pedí aplicara la simulación a todo el baño, e incluyera los objetos. El piso, la ventana, el techo, la tasa y el lavamanos, el espejo, un adorno que puse en la pared, todos sirvieron de soporte. Automáticamente se produjo el conflicto, el rechazo por las prácticas estéticas vernáculas se homologó con el rechazo lógico a un espacio pintado con algo que parecía mierda. Esta sección del interior se desmontó mucho antes que todo el show.

*Notas a Ileana Cepero, 2007 (fragmentos)

Stone. Decorative Documentary. 2005

Decorative fan by Fermin.

Untitled. Decorative Documentary. 2005

Untitled (bar). Decorative Documentary. 2005

Prohibited Plant Species List

The following is a list of plant species prohibited in Miami-Dade County.

• Air Potato (Dioscorea bulbifera)
• Australian Pine (Casurina equisetifolia)
• Banyan Fig (Ficus benghalensis)
• Bishopwood (Bischofia javanica)
• Brazilian Jasmine (Jasminum fluminense)
• Brazilian Pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius)
• Burma Reed (Cane Grass) - Neyaudia reynaudiana
• Carrotwood (Cupaniopsis anacardioides)
• Castor Bean (Ricinus communis)
• Catclaw Mimosa (Mimosa pigra)
• Climbing Fern (Lygodium japonicum, Lygodium microphyllum)
• Day Blooming Jasmine (Cestrum diurnum)
• Earleaf Acacia (Acacia auriculiformis)
• Gold Coast Jasmine (Jasminum dichotomum)
• Governor's Plum (Flacourtia indica)
• Indian Rosewood (Dalbergia sissoo)
• Lather Leaf (Colubrina asiatica)
• Lead Tree (Leucaena leucocephala, Leucaena glauca)
• Lofty Fig (Banyan Tree) - Ficus altissima
• Laurel Fig (Banyan Tree) - Ficus microcarpa, Ficus nitida, Ficus retusa
• Mahoe (Hibiscus tiliaceus)
• Melaleuca (Punk Tree) - Melaleuca quinquenervia, Melaleuca leucadendron
• Napier Grass (Pennisetum purpureum)
• Puncture Vine (Tribulus cistoides)
• Queensland Umbrella Tree (Schefflera actinophylla, Brassaia actinophylla)
• Red Sandalwood (Adenanthera pavonina)
• Seaside Mahoe (Thespesia populnead)
• Shoebutton Ardisia (Ardisia elliptica, Ardisia humilis)
• Tropical Soda Apple (Solanum viarum)
• Woman's Tongue (Albizia lebbeck)
• Woodrose (Merremia tuberosa)

Archetype Vizcaya Youtube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7-foq9n4s0&playnext=1&list=PL7945988DCDEADEB3

Stools at Ludwig Foundation. 2005 (with Pol Chaviano)
Collected doilies, cardboard and paint.

The Nightclub invites you to Marakka 2012, the ninth of twelve events involving a network of artists, producers, and art students. Its aim is to create dialogue within a diversity of art practice through curated exhibitions showcased in a one—night venue.

Magdiel Aspillaga and Ernesto Oroza | curators

December 7, 7-11 pm

Address: Buena Vista Building, 180 NE 39 St. Suite 204, Miami FL 33137

Since 1983, Waldo Fernandez has been assembling an archive of Cuban audiovisual memory. The collection--which functions commercially under the "Marakka 2000" brand--relies and exploits a loophole created by current Cuba-U.S. diplomatic relations, and is sustained by a precise and astute understanding of current procedures regarding the protection of copyright in the U.S.

Each generation of emigrants has put its own nostalgic claims to the archive, which has more that 14,000 objects. Waldo has processed all this material in order to add new credits, remove sensitive copyright issues, and even re-edit the dramaturgical time and pace of serials and soap operas in order to adjust them for suitable commercial formats. The pinnacle of the archive lies in the documentaries that Waldo himself has directed and edited using video clips and sounds from his collection.

"Marakka 2012" is a revision of "Marakka 2000". From our perspective, Waldo's archive is above all else a registry of its own constitution. A repertoire of source formats, a history of the transfers produced and the copying technologies employed. A deposit of all the available resolutions of the last 70 years. A monument to piracy, to the glory of anti-macrovisions.

Featuring: Waldo Fernandez “Marakka”

Above image: Courtesy of Ernesto Oroza

The Nightclub is a collaborative art endeavor that initiates and supports critical exchange of ideas in art and cultural practice and the active development of artists, in-situ exhibitions and talks.

Artistic Director Angela Valella in collaboration with Odalis Valdivieso

The Nightclub

The Nightclub programming is made possible with the support from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, and DACRA. Special thanks to Tiffany Chestler and Gustavo Matamoros.

ARCHIPLAGO Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
IDEOBOX ARTSPACE
2417 N. Miami Ave., Miami
305-576-9878
Through February 26

ART@WORK PRESENTS ENEMIGO PROVISIONAL
Exhibition of Works by Ernesto Oroza
On View July 9 - August 31, 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 2011

ARCHETYPE VIZCAYA: a commission by Ernesto Oroza (view images and texts)
March 4 – May 29, 2011
Thursday, March 3 · 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Vizcaya Museum & Gardens
3251 South Miami Avenue
Miami, FL

Architecture of Necessity at INOVA
Curated by Nicholas Frank (press release)
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts
Jan 21 2011 - Mar 13 2011, Opening reception on 1/21 from 5-8pm.
Exhibition's views

INOVA/Kenilworth
2155 North Prospect Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53202

PRE-CITY
Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
Gallery Diet 174 NW 23 St Miami, Fl, 33127
October 9, 2010 7 - 10 pm

Driftwood - Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Miami-Dade Public Library System - Main Library
101 West Flagler Street  Miami, FL 33130

Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza’s collaborative works question, test and “act out” ideas about the function of and tensions between objects, cities, exhibition spaces, art, architecture and design. Often visually simple and sparse, their projects for exhibition spaces have many layers...

DECOY by Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza
FARSIDE GALLERY press release -- invitation
On View May 6-June 6, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, May 7
see review

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Miami, FL) -For the exhibition Decoy, Ernesto Oroza and Gean Moreno are producing an abstracted interior in the guise of a reading room...

GISH-artEcodesign/ Gli oggetti della necessità by Ernesto Oroza.
Curator: Allesandra Dini