When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca

By Adriana Almada*

To record images of fumes is to stop the course of history and make all bonfires one. In the same way that Bertolt Brecht extracted from newspapers maps and scenes of Second World War and mounted them in his Arbeitsjournal (Labor Diary), or as Aby Warburg long before did with his Atlas Mnemosyne, inviting a re-reading of European civilization from free association of images, Matilde Marín collected between 2005-2011 hundreds of photographs of different “fumes” -with their respective legends- appearing in the press. 

To read them is to get an overview of our convulsive times: explosions in refugee camps following extremist attacks; launching short- and medium-range missiles in the Middle East, but also space shuttles and probes at Cape Canaveral and Tanegashima; polluting industries; volcano eruption and ashfall in Patagonia, Iceland, Tonga or Italy; huge lakes of oil covering Kuwait after the Gulf War; burning tires in demonstrations and violent repressions in Tarija, Buenos Aires, Paris, Karachi, Nairobi, Strasbourg, Punta Arenas or Beirut; attacks on oil fields in Libya; aerial view of the Austrian Neurath power plant; burning shacks in settlements in Johannesburg after xenophobic demonstrations; Palestinians clash with the Israeli army in East Jerusalem; controlled oil burning in the Gulf of Mexico; burning cars on the streets of Nanterre during student protests; smoke bombs in the workers’ marches in Marseille; repression with blood and fire of the biggest Sahrawi revolt in Morocco; plumes of smoke in areas attacked by North Korea; fire in front of the Parliament of London; fire in a car depot in Villa Soldati during demonstrations; the Rio carnival threatened by flames; bombings on Libya; fire in Tripoli, Benghasi and Bin Yauad; clouds of white smoke in Yamadamachi; alert in Chile for toxic gases 

… Added to the endless list are some ephemeris: the black smoke from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941; a still from The Battle of Algiers (1966), by Gillo Pontecorvo; the nuclear explosion in the atoll of Mururoa, French Polynesia, in 1971; again the black smoke, this time coming out of the presidential palace of La Moneda during the coup d’état of 1973; the Twin Towers engulfed in flames shortly after the impact of the second plane, that unforgettable September 11, 2001.

The smoke is usually the signature of a catastrophe, as evidenced by the four photographs hidden from censorship (and oblivion) ​​by the desperate Jews of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz.6 The smoke became an emblem of the Holocaust.

The epigrams change, but the smoke remains. In this exhibition, Marín summarizes the documents collected in a single fixed projection: a monumental column of black smoke that dominates part of the room. Its defined, yet labile contours condense the fears and threats of an entire century.7 Nearby, other smokes – more recent – are shown in motion and confirm, here too, the end of an era: the spectacular implosion of the Building 53, by Kodak, which occurred on July 18, 2005 in Kodak Park (Rochester, United States), where the production line for the acetate base of the photographic film was located. It is a documentary video that records step by step, from an aerial shot, the rhythm of the scheduled demolition: the measured times, the controlled fall of large volumes, the alternation of smoke, the tragic beauty of destruction. Briefly: the story in terms of an outburst, as Didi-Huberman would say.8

6. Georges Didi-Huberman masterfully analyzes the subject in Pictures despite everything. Visual Memory of the Holocaust, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2004.
7. Many of the smoke records collected by Marín found their destination in the publication When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca (Buenos Aires, Kontemporánea Proyecto de Arte, 2012), an editorial project undertaken by the artist with José Emilio Burucúa and Marta Lambertini. But Ithaca’s smoke is different. It’s blue (thanks to an inaccurate translation of The Odyssey). It is the ceremonial smoke that celebrates the return.
8. “It seems to me very important that at a time when the history of Europe is being completely shaken, there are thinkers and artists who rethink history in terms of explosion and reconstruction, which is what we can call – that’s what I call it – knowledge through montage ”. Pedro G. Romero, “Interview with Georges Didi-Huberman”, Minerva Magazine, 2007. Available at: http://www.ddooss.org/articulos/entrevistas/Didi-Huberman.htm

Adriana Almada: Writer, art critic, independent curator. Vice President of AICA International and President of AICA Paraguay.

By Jimena Ferreiro

               When World War I broke out – tells Georges Didi-Huberman – Aby Warburg made his multiple investigations in the field of art history a tool to try to understand the conflict, and thus gathered a mad archive of documents – “a kind of war museum”- where he understood that there were very close links between the production of images and the destruction caused by men.^[2]

               Matilde Marín shares a similar obsession, although formulated in a different way. Her artwork, as prolific as it is austere, revolves around a latent and insistent concern that runs throughout all her work. The memory of man and his ways of existence blend in her production, and perhaps for that reason, whenever she is asked about the usefulness of art, she responds without hesitation, that the artist’s role lies in being a “witness.” Being there, being a narrator of the present time and the vestige of the past, a task for which images become their ominous allies.

           Since 2005 Matilde gathers evidence in an ongoing series made from cuts of hundreds of photographs of smokes that have appeared in the newspapers and press, with their respective captions: “Just read them to have a global view of our convulsive time,” she says.^[3] Finally, when she gathered a considerable archive material, she understood that “the smoke was internally linked to war, environmental disasters and rarely to pleasant moments. I cut many of them, and as I always do, once the idea is mature, I begin working on it.”^[4] What followed was a long odyssey of an artwork that slowly found in its drift, successive materializations. 

           Thus, When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca, became an artist’s book in its first version, which also contains a musical piece composed by Marta Lambertini, for which José Emilio Burucúa added historical texts, and that was presented in the Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón in 2012. In the context of the 2016 arteBA fair, a video was incorporated on the implosion of the 53rd factory of the Eastman Kódak Company where the film for analog cameras was produced: “the end of an era, without doubt.” It was also exhibited in the framework of her anthological exhibition in 2017, where the video of the Kódak was mirrored in a large image of smoke on nuclear tests in the Pacific.^[5] Finally, in April of this year, the series was exhibited at the XIII Havana Biennial where she worked with the front pages of the newspapers, in a selection of events that include records of the climatic threat against CO2 pollution of the power plant of Belchatow in Poland; the nuclear explosion in 1971 at the Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia; the fracture of the military coup by Salvador Allende in 1973 at El Palacio de La Moneda; the devastating wave of fires that swept the Peloponnese in 2007; the indiscriminate abuse of natural resources in the Amazon during the last 20 years; or the recent ash clouds of the Icelandic volcano Grímsvötn. “Contemporary scars that Matilde Marín portrays.”^[6]

           As I write this text, the ashes of the Amazon’s criminal fires still overfly the region’s skies, something Matilde warned us about in her work. It is enough to review the archives of the multiple posts of When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca, to discover that the imminence of the ecological catastrophe was already there, as well as the signaling of the humanitarian crisis, among other crucial episodes of recent history. “Photography enabled social registration and the possibility of documenting nature and editing it,”^[7] reflects the artist, pointing out that the passage from hand to eye (or rather, from engraving to photography), amplified her field of action and intensity of her research. However, although the situation is present in her work becoming imponderable, Matilde developed the skill so that her art is located beyond the event. And that is why, in addition to referring to disasters, these fumes open as a threshold in search of other senses. The smoke escapes to the measure, it is immeasurable and deformed like a ghost in space; it is ancestral and enigmatic, predictive and divinatory such as the flight of birds, the sound of bowls or the rolling of stones. The smoke that causes fire is also purification and healing, punishment and bad omen. In this chain of signifiers, Burucúa is referring to when he remembers that: “From the past, however, other experiences of the phenomenon come to us, from its manifestation in the sacrifice of the great religions, a sacred act par excellence, to its metaphorical value that it alluded once to the action of love and anger in the depths of the soul.”^[8]

           The fire is also all the bonfires where the insurgent women burned, the Napalm massacres caused by the US army in Vietnam (a destination that Marin encountered in her many travels as a nomad artist where she also produced work) and the destruction of the malones in the war for expansion of the border of the Argentine State (precisely in Patagonia that the artist visited so many times). Smoke is scorched earth but also a sign of hope. It is no accident that the title refers to the blue smoke of Ithaca – the ceremony of the return of the hero in the Homeric poems – where smoke means promise (“when I sight,” he says conditionally”). A celebration that became more poetic and capricious by a translation error that applied the adjective of blue where it was not in its original version. Great courtesy to the history of the images and for these chronicles that Matilde Marín organized, that allow us to think of those fumes with other qualities.

           Nostalgia is blue and sadness is being away from home. The exile of Ulises and the journey of 20 years to return to his land also act as a backdrop in When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca. Longing is a process that reveals an alienating and maddening distance; but on second thought, artistic practice is in itself a tear, because it bursts in shock with everyday order. Aldo Pellegrini used to say that the excess of feelings places the poet, as well as the criminal, outside the law.^[9]

The images that Matilde Marín invokes contain the fury and enigma of all time, perhaps because fire is still one of the most essential and captivating, reminding us that destruction is the genesis of art, in a perpetual dialectic of annihilation and redemption. When the fire raises, I want to be there.^[10]

Buenos Aires, September 2019.

1. “El fuego que hemos construido” is the last song from the record La Dinastía Scorpio (2011) from the band El mató a un policía motorizado.
2. George Didi-Huberman, “The exhibition as a war machine,” Minerva, Madrid, 2010.
3. Correspondence with the author, Buenos Aires, July 17, 2019.
4. Marcela Costa Peuser, “Matilde Marín, guest artist of the Havana Biennial,” arte on line, April 25,
2019.
5. “Archaeologist of herself,” curated by Adriana Almada at Espacio de Arte de la Fundación OSDE.
6. Exhibition text, XIII Havana Biennial, April 12 – May 12, 2019.
7. Fabián Lebenglik, “Photographs of a traveling condition,” Página 12, Buenos Aires, June 2, 2017.
8. Matilde Marín, When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca, Buenos Aires, Edición Kontemporánea Proyecto de arte, 2012.
9. Aldo Pellegrini, Fundamentals of an aesthetic of destruction (1961), quoted by Andrea Giunta, “Destruction-creation in the Argentine avant-garde of the sixties. Art and politics. Markets and violence,” Razón y Revolución, #4, Fall 1998.
10. “Yo caníbal,” song by the rock band Los redonditos de ricota, included in their record Lobo suelto, cordero atado Vol. 2 (1993).

Since 2005 Matilde has gathered evidence in an ongoing series made from cuts of hundreds of photographs of smokes that have appeared in the newspapers and press, with their respective captions: “Just read them to have a global view of our convulsive time,” she says. Finally, when she gathered a considerable archive material, she understood that “the smoke was internally linked to war, environmental disasters and rarely to pleasant moments. I cut many of them, and as I always do, once the idea is mature, I begin working on it.” What followed was a long odyssey of an artwork that slowly found in its drift, successive materializations.

When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca, comprises an artist’s book which also contains a musical piece composed by Marta Lambertini and historical texts by José Emilio Burucúa. The book was presented in the Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón in 2012. During 2016 Marin incorporated to the Project, the video “Factory” depicting the implosion of the 53rd factory of the Eastman Kódak Company where the film for analog cameras was produced. Finally, in April of this year, the series was exhibited at the XIII Havana Biennial where she worked with the front pages of the newspapers, in a selection of events that include records of the climatic threat against CO2 pollution of the power plant of Belchatow in Poland; the nuclear explosion in 1971 at the Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia; the fracture of the military coup by Salvador Allende in 1973 at El Palacio de La Moneda; the devastating wave of fires that swept the Peloponnese in 2007; the indiscriminate abuse of natural resources in the Amazon during the last 20 years; or the recent ash clouds of the Icelandic volcano Grímsvötn. “Contemporary scars that Matilde Marín portrays.

“Photography enabled social registration and the possibility of documenting nature and editing it,” reflects the artist, pointing out that the passage from hand to eye (or rather, from engraving to photography), amplified her field of action and intensity of her research. However, although the situation is present in her work becoming imponderable, Matilde developed the skill so that her art is located beyond the event. And that is why, in addition to referring to disasters, these fumes open as a threshold in search of other senses. The smoke escapes to the measure, it is immeasurable and deformed like a ghost in space; it is ancestral and enigmatic, predictive and divinatory such as the flight of birds, the sound of bowls or the rolling of stones. The smoke that causes fire is also purification and healing, punishment and bad omen. In this chain of signifiers, Burucúa is referring to when he remembers that: “From the past, however, other experiences of the phenomenon come to us, from its manifestation in the sacrifice of the great religions, a sacred act par excellence, to its metaphorical value that it alluded once to the action of love and anger in the depths of the soul.”

It is no accident that the title refers to the blue smoke of Ithaca – the ceremony of the return of the hero in the Homeric poems – where smoke means promise (“when I sight,” he says conditionally”). A celebration that became more poetic and capricious by a translation error that applied the adjective of blue where it was not in its original version. Great courtesy to the history of the images and for these chronicles that Matilde Marín organized, that allow us to think of those fumes with other qualities.

The images that Matilde Marín invokes contain the fury and enigma of all time, perhaps because fire is still one of the most essential and captivating, reminding us that destruction is the genesis of art, in a perpetual dialectic of annihilation and redemption.

By Laeticia Mello

In the poem X of the Homeric epic, Ulysses descends to Hades to consult with the fortune-teller Tiresias. The Theban prophet predicts an arduous return to his hometown. The hero, in his longing for return, prefers to fade to lie immortal next to the nymph Calypso. And in a breath of desire, he sees the ceremonial smoke of his land, the muscular smoke of a life with still unresolved issues. A timeless smoke, as a metaphor for the life of humanity.

When I sight the blue smoke of Ithaca is a project created by the Argentine artist Matilde Marín between 2005 and 2019. The suite presented in the framework of the 13th edition of the Havana Biennial -‘The construction of the possible’- is a set of works deeply rooted in the social and political circumstances of our time. The work is based on a rigorous investigation of an archive of journalistic articles that the artist reexamines to investigate catastrophes, whether natural or incurred by men, and ‘reconstruct’ historical events from her singular visual reinterpretation.

The climatic threat in front of the Co2 pollution of the Belchatow power station in Poland; the nuclear explosion in 1971 on the Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia; the fracture of Allende’s military coup in 1973 at the Palacio de La Moneda; the devastating wave of fires that swept the Peloponnese in 2007; the indiscriminate abuse of natural resources in the Amazon; or the recent ash clouds in Europe of the Icelandic volcano Grimsvötn; are some of the contemporary scars that Matilde Marín portrays in this piece.

Along with this compendium of fragments of our contemporary culture, the artist presents the video captured in a single shot on the damp morning of July 18, 2015 in Rochester, New York when another jewel of the empire of photography fell into Kodak Park. In an irreparable canon, like the horns of an orchestra, the pillars of what was once the 53rd factory of the Eastman Kódak Company, lay one by one under a veil of white smoke. Stacks of oxide, concrete and metals, transmuted into dust in an alchemical process of destruction. What once housed the only thing capable of capturing time, had become no more than a memory.