theprojector–house

8/13/2019 TheProjectorHouse

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About the disconcerting case of the Projector-House 1 David Ayala Alfonso

Translated by David Ayala Alfonso

Declaration of the experiential and non-experiential properties of the Projector-House. Attraction-repulsion instigated on history by the current times. Precariousness of the drawing when there is no visible evidence of its transformationin time. Impotence to reveal its transcendental value through the pathetic andstinking surface. Impossibility to inform by itself, on the moment on which the

animation reaches its quasi-symmetrical state. Psychic and mnemonic impact. Intentioned historical remark and unintentional historiographical remark. Disparate archive created by pouring action and the phenomenon of surfaceoxidation. Physical state of the material. Mountain of rust topped by rat andpigeon feces. Symbolic and transcendental value. Under the great mountain ofrusty metal and shit, something has been discovered. Fragments of memories thatcreate unexpected drives and cyclical nightmares of national life. Involuntary patrimonialisation of the contents of a house with an uncertain legal status, forgottenand expected to collapse. Passive exercise of de- patrimonialisation . Dialecticsbetween public policy and pirate preservation. Fictional offices of nostalgia,anachronistic and unnecessary. Sexualized animism of the film meandering fromone projector to the other. Self-digestion, coprophagia and redundancy betweenthe cover and the content. The doubtfulness of one projector when initiating theexchange. Naivety in the reproduction of carnal mechanization. Doubt and thenself-generation and explosion of form and meaning. Filth. Disgust. Curiosity Imbued passion.

1 For mor information on the project on which the image has being drawn, please refer tohttp://carlosguzman.cero29.org/archives/1276


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Description of the initial surprise encounter.

Four years later, and in a totally alien space, without any trace of its symbolic

presence, the image of the Projector-House manifests itself. This image, which ismerely a model or a mental or linguistic image, economic in shape but potent andcomplex, could have appeared by the action of an old and fetid smell that might havetriggered a certain impulse to the brain, one similar to what could have beenexperienced when entering that house, which would become the live reference of theProjector-House. In the animation from which this image has been extracted, a housefeeds another house with film tape, after they built themselves and mutuallyregurgitate, as the heads of Jan Svankmajer, but remaining disturbingly intact. CarlosGuzmans Projector-House is a dialectical device that inquires itself, reflects on itself,while it feeds and pours into history. It is a continuous film tape that comes from anow going towards a then that the optics of the Projector-House render outwards,

while continuing towards a new (or simultaneous) projection on its chronotropicreflection. The conceptual model of a project becomes a powerful form in itself, inorder to review the hypothetical autopoietic nature of history (or media history, orthe history of power) that transpires through the quasi-symmetric drawing of theProjector-House.

The admiration and interest that I felt for this project was inconsequent with thelateness of the analysis, as well as with the absence of resources to examine it, on thespace-time on which my curiosity is renewed. While reviewing this drawing, I comeacross something new, despite knowing very well the material and having stabilizedits image for quite some time in a past that now becomes more and more remote.

There seems to be something on me of that psychic state described by Hume on theinsistence over the referent, where the difference is produced on the transformationof the experience itself and not on the object, to which one goes back again and again,remaining unchanged, still, but revealing new aspects on every new occasion. I try todiagnose the drive that the Projector-House produces me, attempting to extract arather more transcendental sense, thus conferring it a relevant place on themotivations of my analysis. The anxiety of discovery (production) of meaningpropitiates the sporadic encounter with lights coming out of the buildings, describingmonumental projectors in the periphery of vision. Gibsons semiotic ghosts, or thespectral projections of monstrous technologies of vision force me to complete the taskby any means possible. Ridiculous but compelling intellectual inquest for meaning, inorder to insert this fragment in the set of transcendental ideas of the memory field,revealing some of the fixations suffered by the psyche during the process.

2.Description of the phenomena produced as a result of simplifying both text and image.

After the initial encounter, the image of the Projector-House has become aphenomenon in itself, unpacked to bring closer attention to its constituent parts. The


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aforementioned permanence and anxiety allow the production of discrete imagesparting from the return of the constituting parts of the syntactic (and visual) unit ofthe Projector-House.

First secondary manifestation of permanence: I dedicate several hours to Googles

image search engine, looking for coincidences that can draw me near the projector inmy mind, which I recall to be part of the discovery of the fetid heritage, some yearsago. The search of the projector then, as well as my current mental quest, visitcomplex mechanics, naked or hidden, softened or rounded, projectors visited now with a mind of the past, but designed then by minds from the future, who created thisdystopia that eventually evaporated, somewhere between the wars and the collapse ofeconomies. Then, the future designed by science fiction is postponed indefinitely(some of its parts cancelled) to make room for clumsy, complex, utilitarian, economicand unfinished shapes. The endless collection of models of 16-millimeter projectorsconstitute a steep horizon of anxieties, desires, futures, disenchantments andresignation over the heavy pace of time. Time that, just as the sea shaping the rocks,

will cyclically break, reduce and round the shapes of the new projectors to the whimand possibilities of their age.

The volume and robustness of the projection machines drive me away from the initialdrawing, but as an obsessive set they take me back to the essential idea of itsconfiguration, and then I am back again in my mind at the Projector-House, nowconstituted as an image that is also an idea and several other ideas of those multiple(every) images of all the 16-mm projectors of history and all the Projector-Housesthat now exist only in the futuristic anomaly on which they unwittingly take part.

I cut across the projector, the image of the romanticized projector and the one spittedinto the world by the limitations of its time and the need for its existence. In my mind,I try to superimpose the shapes, arms, buttons, lenses, reels, levers and blinds with


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those of the projector in my memory, the one that was part of the universe of theProjector-House. This absurd fixation on a detail that seemed minor (the physicalprojector) points me towards the kind of pleasure emerged through the observation(remembrance) of each one of the details, seeking to escape from the miasma thattook the Projector-House back to my memory.

Second secondary manifestation of permanence. Back in the anomalous market of thereal estate of the Projector-House, I review the multiple variations of the matter,trying to elucidate some kind of result to inscribe a reasonable cause into this nowinevitable enterprise. I wander through the shelves of the image bank of the Internet,looking for clues to decipher the crosslinking between the notions of the house and the projector . Or the Projector-House. The digital grid of images tells an unlikely story ofshapes that are impossible to decode on a linear account. Perhaps the anxiety for theunfulfilled future, fed for too much a long time these fantasies, encouraging temporaryorgies of design and shape, followed by waves of regret and desires for a return to theessential. The lens, primordial component of the projector, does not reveal virility in

its shape (which is diluted in the complexity and solidity of the whole electronicparaphernalia) but in its potentiality. Depending on the kind of projector, images canbe augmented as many times as to overwhelm the size of the house that hosts theprojector. The images can take over the house to the extent of becoming an essentialcomponent of it, transforming the space in an excessive but necessary receptacle forthe constitution of the Projector-House. Or it could become a house-projector, ahabitable projector, potentially to big or too small, depending on the direction it isread. The 16-mm projector, virile and mindful (observant), can shelter an entirefamily with great comfort, without loosing its primary function. Multiple semanticvariations go along with the experience of images.


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1. In the moment of the encounter with the advertising image that takes me backto the time of the projector as a technology, I meet again with the Projector-House. Family, usually gathered around TV, finds in the 16-mm projector apretext to bring over the experience of the outside to the inside. Cinema, asspace and experience is thinned within the notion of cinema as spectacle. The

house is projected towards the exterior through the projection apparatus. Imust admit that at this point, I had forgotten that the whole origin of thedrawing that caused this matter. A key on its origin would be: filmic heritageforgotten on a house held in abeyance accidentally found and recovered by anartist. At the house, rotten and fetid, the artist is the only one that has not yetdismissed the value of a mountain of 16-mm film cans and has undertaken thetask of recovering them, little by little, without experience or specialequipment. The rest of the world has no awareness of the existence of thismaterial, or believes it has no importance, or it is beyond salvation.

2. As a curiosity, I find a model to build a projector at home. Although I go

through the whole website, I do not stop at the text, rather I try to make senseof the diagrams that show the shapes, objects and dimensions required toundertake this manual project. I imagine the materials, deciding that wood willconfer the project a certain dignity as a craft. I conclude that at some point thewood will burn and take the components to the limit, precipitating theinevitable end of the projector. And then I think of the Projector-House, part ofa fictional institution created inside a house that is falling apart. Its collapse isuncertain, but at the same time inevitable. The wood could not take any testfor resistance. These ideas contain new keys about the project on which theProjector-House emerges. The artists that finds the material decides toundertake the task of digitalize it slow and quietly, to avoid raising suspicion

from the institution that owns the house (and therefore the material), whichhas not yet discovered the (cultural, heritage) value of what is hidden (buried)under their practices of real estate speculation: leave the architectural heritageto rot to raise a new multi-functional building. To make memory (even more,history) endure speculation, I build a device for projecting it.


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3. At some point I find (or decide to settle for) a projector like the one that waspart of the original project, the heart of the Projector-House. I must say that,technologically, it is quite pathetic: heavy, ridiculously designed, and belongingto a period unable to be determined. But what interests us is not precisely theappearance of the projector, especially if we are looking for an obsolete

equipment to recover some material. We are in the quest for an acceptabletechnology of vision rather than an acceptable vision of technology. Theprojector fulfills its mission. It is used to put the 16-mm films on a flat surfaceand, under proper conditions they can be captured and transferred to a digitalformat. It is a precarious but efficient procedure. With the proper ritual,memory will be safe. The artists creates logs, writes reflections, classifiesvideos, produces subtitles and discovers his time projected on those materialsfrom fifty years ago. He decides to create a fictional institution to promotethem, to set them on movement as historical objects and as audiovisualmaterials. The Roman loci of memory. A place to wander through the past byinhabiting it. Water leaks into the building, it is crumbling; the artist

rehabilitates it for his own purposes.

4. On eBay, there is a small collection of 16-mm projectors for sale: a strangecollection of technological oddities that overwhelms any grid of imagesavailable at Google or similar engines. Amongst them, a briefcase appears,looking heavy, perhaps wooden and from which we can only recognize thebrand of the projector it shelters. The container takes me back to the idea ofthe Projector-House. What is the logic of the container in this whole matter?

I tend to think of history in relation to a phobia that I inherited from mymother. Being allergic to many insect stings, I have seen her for years exaltedover the most insignificant appearances of flies, nocturnal butterflies and


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theprojector–house

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