Urbanautica

JUAN FABUEL. THE ANTHROPOGRAPHER

by Steve Bisson

«We stay in the surface of things and move fast to the next one and, to me, that is a huge problem of our generation. We have lost or diminished our attention, our focus and, without focus, love and care can hardly exist, as Ortega y Gasset states. Love is at stake I guess and that is what really matters.»

© Juan Fabuel from the series 'Sham Paris', 2012

Juan Fabuel is one the finalist of Urbanautica Institute Awards 2019. His series 'Anastasiia' was featured in the catalog of our annual awards.

We feature here the conversation we had at the time with him. Tell us about where you grow up. What kind of place it was? And then photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?

Juan Fabuel (JF): I grew up in Valencia, a pretty standard city on the sunny Mediterranean coast in a middle-class family. My family used to have a small house in a small village where we spent quite a lot of time. Art was never a part of our tribe matters and I only paid attention to music while growing up. On one hand, my desire to be a professional musician was a no go for my parents, but somehow, becoming an artist, on the other hand, was never an issue. I truly believe that they never saw it coming.

Valencia was rather boring for me back then, but the city is a much better place these days. Tons of private and public initiatives addressed to culture seem to be happening and, because of the way the world is interconnected, a lot of artists have chosen it as a place to live. It is a vibrant, medium-sized city, with great history and achievements, lots of potential and a huge backpack full of frustrations and too much self-esteem. Although, this is changing, hopefully for the better.

Photography came pretty early on to me. My grandfather was an amateur photographer and I enjoyed messing around with his contact sheets and chemicals. I did not pay much attention to it until I became a teenager when I realized that I kind of liked having a camera around. I did not really know how it all worked, but I enjoyed the feeling of freezing things and transforming those moments into images. Step by step, I paid more attention to it and friends that were very good at it granted my access to this beautiful world. My first intentional shots were quite staged. I immediately saw the potential of fiction and I started to experiment with it. Everything happened quite organically.

What about your educational background? How do you relate to this? Any takeaways? Any meaningful courses? Any professor or teacher you remember well?

JF: My background is a kind of a melting pot. Human Resources (University of Valencia), Media and Film Studies (University of Valencia), Photography and Video (Polytechnic University of Valencia) and Cultural Anthropology (UNED). All those degrees helped to shape the way I relate intellectually and emotionally to the world. They helped to build a solid structure when it comes to develop projects and have ideas. I also took some courses at the ICP in New York. Those courses showed me the philosophy behind the camera, a way to structure thoughts and emotions before releasing the shutter. Robert Blake taught a course named “Picturing Stories” and it had such a huge impact on me. Regarding anthropology, I would think of urban studies, economic and evolutionary anthropology and visual culture as a constant source of inspiration for me. They give a meaningful base to understand and question the place that we live in. However, without any doubt, the most important aspect of my training as an artist, was to be able to help other artists to create their projects. I was incredibly lucky to work with Sebastião Salgado, Sooja Kim or Axel Hütte. With their different approaches, they shared their vision and techniques, allowing me to process and integrate them on my own vision and approach.

© Juan Fabuel from the series 'Sham Paris', 2012

© Juan Fabuel from the series 'Sham Paris', 2012

What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking? How is the language evolving and impacting daily life of people and communities, in your opinion?

JF: I would probably swap the word “photography” for “image making” in a wider and more complex sense, meaning that we hardly “write with light” anymore since, in my opinion, I am afraid that today it is more important to find our way through the noise than actually producing something that is worth. As Steyerl mentions, the lenses of our smartphones are absolutely crap, they are unable to produce good reliable images and these images are based on algorithmic relationships and interconnections with data bases and binary codes. This relates very well with the era of social media: tons of noise all over the place.

However, it is true though that access to “image making” is easier than ever, allowing the creation, use and distribution of images to the vast majority of people. I believe that on one hand, due to the mass production of images, we have lost our faith in images as a true representation of reality, and that is ok but, on the other hand, we have also damaged the ability to take the right amount of time to decrypt and analyze deeper meanings connections and intentions behind them unfortunately. We stay in the surface of things and move fast to the next one and, to me, that is a huge problem of our generation. We have lost or diminished our attention, our focus and, without focus, love and care can hardly exist, as Ortega y Gasset states. Love is at stake I guess and that is what really matters.

Fast interconnections and instant sharing. How fast interconnections and instant sharing is affecting the role of a visual maker and your own practice?

JF: Well, it seems like the pace is constantly speeding up but, somehow, I guess that it is a feeling that we share with previous generations. We always have the sensation that technology is ahead of us and that we need to catch up. I believe that, in the current moment of mass/overproduction and reification, we need to somehow slow down. It is ok to take time to think about the things that we want to produce, it is ok to work on ideas and react less to instant emotions. More action and less reaction. It is ok to keep doing the exact same thing for a while until we get to deeper layers. It is ok to share, actually, it is crucial, but I am afraid that there is no reciprocity factor on the sharing process since third parties take advantage and profit from our human instinct to redistribute and exchange. I feel that the times for photographers are quite challenging and full of new obstacles and difficulties. Everyone has a simple tool to take images, a tool that on top of that, is connected in real-time to every possible mass and social media. The questions are: what is the truth these days? And most importantly, who cares about truth anyway? Truth is a social construction that changes and varies over time.

About your work now. How would you introduce yourself as an author or described your personal methodology? Your visual exploration... And what is for you the role of an anthropography?

My work is placed between intimate and social structures, using fiction as an efficient tool to speak about reality and representativeness. I am aware that by altering and remodeling reality, new meanings and interpretations about the things and facts that we believe to know, are generated, which will eventually lead to developing new connotations and questions about ourselves. My artworks forget about narrative and focus on dynamics, dealing with our perception of the so-called reality, interpersonal relations, memory, time and the way that we interact with different emotional and physical landscapes.

© Juan Fabuel from the series 'Anthropography', 2010

© Juan Fabuel from the series 'Becoming Exergy', 2010

Everything is pretty much relational, as Bourriaud states, nothing is isolated. I love to dig into these interconnections and find or create new ones because I believe that the work of the artist, somehow, lies in there. The role of an “anthropographer” is essentially one that cares about the meaning of being or becoming human these days and how we represent this condition. To me, it is a theoretical and practical approach to the most basic observational skills and analytical thinking using transformative and creative tools. Furthermore, the role of an “anthropographer” is about detecting issues that are relevant to us as species and that, somehow, come from discomfort, taking care of them and hopefully offering alternatives and solutions.

Can you introduce to the series/work '14,24' that was selected for Urbanautica Institute Awards? What are the basic motivations and assumptions of this project? Why is so important the distance in kilometers that separates Africa from Europe?

 The work is inspired by the idea of time-lapse, origin, destination and the notion of journey, in which the photographs show different night scenes of some Mediterranean beaches. These beaches symbolize leisure and free time for most of us; open spaces where the sensation of stillness blocks out other latent meanings among the elements. But also, as we can constantly see on the news, these are “arrival” places as well for some people craving for a new opportunity that leaves behind, among other things, situations of political, economic and social chaos. Migratory movements are brought into play as an inception to work, through photography and video, about the perception, construction and the notion of space and place.   As a result of the lack of familiar light, these places are transformed into unknown spaces, without any referents, making it difficult to take a position as an anthropological subject. For those people who arrive, on the contrary, these unknown spaces contain the ability to mutate and turn themselves into places where to settle down, trace a vital history and develop new identitarian silhouettes in which photography is shown itself as a document that can suggest new contexts of understanding. For me, the possibility of conceiving a visual landscape that is placed between the imaginary and the real propels this project and enhances its social quality.   This approach allows expressing the oneiric element that contains the will to seek out and the risk and metamorphosis that any trip embeds. Due to the moonlight, each one of the images needed a very long exposure time, usually more than an hour, behaving as a parallel dialogue to the physical trip. This time experience, in which a specific beach is registered, contributes to adding a new meaning to the understanding of all the photographs emphasizing the idea of the relativity of time; either the one referred to the materialization of the own image, the one referred to the reading by the viewer or the one referred to the time of the trip. And this is the main goal: a visualization of images that later on are chopped off and transformed into something unexpected and extraneous.    14,24 began in 2009 and, in addition to the photographs, it contains a video installation made out of ice. Since I started it, the time has reshaped the project several times and offered new alternatives and possibilities. The video installation arises from the will to add dynamism to the project; the dynamism that the photographs can only suggest. Video is essentially dynamic. Photography is born when time and space are sliced up. To combine these two media in the same project allows going through that space-time cut, offering a more holistic interpretation that comes from a look that is sensory amplified.

  The construction of a wall and the use of ice as main material comes from the observation and analysis of the European anti-migrant policies that obstruct, and even prevent, the movement of people. The wall works as a powerful symbol. Walls prevent access but also protect. When we build a wall, we do it as a measure of protection, even though it is our own fear that causes us to protect ourselves. In this way, we end up protecting ourselves because of fear to the otherness and because of our own fear.   This wall is a fragile one. A wall that crumbles because it has been constructed inverting the quantities of the materials. Usually, walls are made out of stone and water, used as a binder, and here we offer a liquid wall in which the amount of water is larger than the amount of stone. Through this installation, I aimed not only to generate the movement that is missing in the photographs but also to cause a feeling of emptiness, silence, cold, moisture and non-sensory control. The viewer enters the installation through a passageway that is lined with curtains that absorb the sound, which immerses and slide him down to truth as uncomfortable as real.

  14,24 is the distance in kilometers that separates Africa from Europe and to me, this physical distance was were significative and powerful as a symbol. When the right climatological conditions happen, it is possible to see Africa from Europe but, still, in a certain way seems unreachable. Close enough to be seen but far enough to be easily overlooked.

I find interesting the way in which you stimulate a process of raising consciousness on the notion of space and place through images. The fact of showing the sea through the mountain that contributes to filling the Mediterranean basin involves a perceptual alteration of a stereotyped aesthetics. This way you produce documents that suggest new contexts of understanding. What is your opinion regarding the issue of immigrants movements? What kind of perspectives do you want to suggest with your research?

Your suggestions are very significant. While taking those images I always looked inside of me and then outside of me. Place and space/space and place. I tried to find a balance between those two positions and come up with images that could reflect that approach somehow. I wanted to get rid of some stereotypes and photographing those locations with moonlight, happened to be the perfect solution. I sought to transform a place that I am used to into space and vice versa, as a way to experience certain conditions that would arise new feelings about migration and landscape.

I believe that it is pretty much all about fear. As species, we were hunters and gatherers most of our time on this planet. Therefore, we had to move in order to survive. As a group, we found a way to stay in one place and not starve, leading to the oblivion of our migrant past. Currently, when we see people moving around the globe, we somehow grow an unconscious fear towards them because, in our mind, nobody should be moving anymore. Everyone should stay somewhere and, if they move, it is because there’s something wrong with them.

Truth is way more complex than that and our fear is simply irrational thoughts about things that we don’t quite understand. It is easier to fear and construct walls than solving the issues that originated those movements in the first place. We all look for better chances and possibilities and most of us, enjoy being surrounded by those who share the same values and morals, by those who speak the same language and laugh about the same things that we laugh about. My work hoped for a new level of empathy because I believe that it is a key factor if we want to overcome the migratory crisis successfully. As species, we will keep moving constantly. It is also in our DNA because deep inside we are still a refined version of hunters and gatherers.

The project is well articulated in various elements including installation. From a methodological point of view how you proceed in orchestrating this kind of production?

The project started ten years ago more or less. Since I needed to have the technique right, I began working on it quite slowly. Trial and error, right and wrong. So many magical things happened back then. At a later stage, it grew and evolved rapidly into a more complex thing. I always envisioned it as a multimedia project, taking advantage of the different mediums in order to create a deeper experience. The ice installation was the top of the icing since it allowed the viewer to play and experiment with several senses at the same time. When the project was ready to be shown, I worked with a great team that made things possible, from organization and transport to design and implementation. Things can get quite complex with big exhibitions.

Installation views Bancaja Foundation 2017

Sketch for installation at Bancaja Foundation 2017

Installation views Bancaja Foundation 2017

You wrote on your work 'Becoming Exergy' that it questions what is real, what seems real and is in fact imagined. Real landscapes that slip into an illusory territory and imagined landscapes that support reality. Can you introduce us to this concept of "exergy" and how you developed this from the old photo album of your mother's aunt?

Some time ago I found among the belongings of my mother's aunt, who died when I was fifteen, a photo album that contained the postcards sent from her Venezuelan exile back in the sixties. In those postcards, I found her words and heard her voice with that characteristic accent. I inevitably missed her and wondered what her years would have been like in the distance, surrounded by a context in which her past did not match with that of her neighbors and where her gaze very often pointed to the other side of the Atlantic. In her Venezuelan postcards, I discovered places that I had never seen and I knew of people that no longer exist. Somehow, I saw myself reflected in her and in her gaze, although mine was never an exile in itself, but rather a desire to explore and know the world while discovering myself. Photography, during those years, played a cathartic role in my life becoming a medium to fantasize about what is possible, while capturing and transforming the immediate.

© Juan Fabuel from the series 'Becoming Exergy'

I noticed that something had to be done with that photo album and remembered a valuable concept extracted from the second law of thermodynamics: exergy. This is defined as the maximum amount of work that can be produced by a stream of matter, heat, or work as the medium comes into equilibrium with a reference environment or into equilibrium with the surrounding environment (Dincer, 2000). Exergy is invariably related to entropy, or in other words, the disorder. Thermodynamics describes the states of equilibrium at a macroscopic level and analyzes the role of certain materials in achieving a 0 equilibrium that stabilizes the system as a whole. Reaching 0 to make the system work by giving it balance and life or, from my poetics, to give life by being practically invisible.

Reaching 0, becoming landscape, becoming exergy. This work, based on those images sent by her and my own images, lays on the search for that essential balance between an element and its whole. Between her Venezuelan exile and my life in Switzerland. Between her sixties and my present time. Between our absence and our presence. Between the distant and the nearby. A correspondence between two people accustomed to living out of their original axis. A correspondence between two contexts that emphasizes the importance of the landscape as a social construct.

Becoming exergy aims to make the invisible visible through an acupunctural manipulation of a possible common landscape, a balance between the objective world of the second law of thermodynamics and the subjective world of memory and its constant rewriting. Staring at something, implicitly, carries the need for order and also, to a greater or lesser degree, power and action. The series of shots intends to play with our perception when it comes to looking at landscape pictures, questioning what is real, what seems real and is in fact imagined. Real landscapes that slip into an illusory territory and imagined landscapes that support reality.

Three books (not only of photography) that you recommend in relation to the project 'Aporia' or your photography or your interest in general.

JF: And our faces my heart brief as photos by John Berger; WTJ Mitchel (pretty much everything), Art duty free by Hito Steyerl.

Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?

JF: Tomas Saraceno, Alicja Kwade and Teresa Margolles.

What are you up to?

JF: Currently, I am working on a couple of new ideas and exhibitions. Photography for me is just a medium to express certain thoughts but it can get quite flat and narrow at times. Some ideas might need different approaches that go beyond the purely visual factor, including more senses and elements.

I have been working on a project that involves ceramics for the last year and a half. To me, it so enriching and interesting due to the obvious differences with photography. It is quite challenging and beautiful because it embraces history, anthropology, politics and art all at once. I am working with people that are experts in their fields and that brings me joy, new approaches and helps me to keep an open mind. I am also working on a documentary movie about photography and composing a soundtrack for a short movie. I love being involved in different projects that require using different skills.

---

LINKS
Juan Fabuel (website)

share this page

more on Juan Fabuel GO TO JUAN FABUEL'S PAGE

portfolio
14,24. THE SPACE BETWEEN
Juan Fabuel