Pharus Project

… or the light that guides the destiny of men

During 2005 I read in the newspape)rs a strange piece of news that attracted my attention: “The Lighthouses in the world will be disconnected because the GPS exists”.

I looked for the etymology of the word lighthouse and found that in ancient Greek Pharus means “the light that guides the destiny of men”, it seemed to me something intense, perhaps romantic but real. I imagined this time and this current world so complex, without that light that guided so many destinies through the centuries.

Históricamente los faros han sido “la luz que guía el destino de los hombres”, tal como lo definieron los griegos. La humanidad actualmente atraviesa períodos de una gran incertidumbre social y económica. Mi objetivo es que el proyecto a través de sus textos, videos e imágenes sirva como disparador de reflexiones sobre un camino posible a seguir para llegar a un puerto seguro, tal como sucedía históricamente con los faros que generalmente estaban localizados en zonas costeras de alta peligrosidad. 

I am an artist and I know that art will not change the world, but artists can and do have the ability to show and point out things in a different way and this is what my project, which began in 2005, consists of. Since then, each work trip has helped me get closer to a lighthouse that I identify, document and film.

I privilege the identification and documentation of emblematic lighthouses, lighthouses that have left a mark on humanity. I must say that my current production is focused on the role of the artist as a “witness”, documenting through photography and video stories about the world we inhabit, in what I call “extended ecology”.

The first documentation of the PHARUS project began during my visit to Cabo Virgenes, where I took the first photographs and filmed the Lighthouse at the southern end of the American continent in front of the mythical Strait of Magellan, the place where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet.

The various professional trips of these years brought me closer to the lighthouses that I chose, as the project progressed I discovered not only the location of each lighthouse, but also its aesthetic-architectural variety, its significant history and the link with art and the poetry that many of its locations generate.

Many of these meanings reflect ideas of freedom, of utopias, and I thought of the difficulties that, in the age of generalized technology, human beings still suffer, needing the light of a beacon to make themselves visible and fully understood.

In the history of humanity there are many elements that refer to the journey, but only a few have symbolized the journeys such as the lighthouse, erected on the border of sea and land, guiding those who pursue what lies beyond…

Matilde Marín
Buenos Aires, december, 2020

Faro de Cabo Vírgenes, Santa Cruz, Argentina.
Documentado en 2005.

Allí, en el extremo Sur del continente americano, entremedio de las peligrosas aguas que bordean el Estrecho de Magallanes y de vientos voraces de hasta 100 km por hora, se erige como una figura bicolor recortada en la inmensidad, el Faro de Cabo de Vírgenes. 

Descubierto el 21 de octubre de 1520 por Hernando de Magallanes en el día de las Mil Vírgenes, fecha en la que según cuentan las leyendas medievales, la mártir Santa Úrsula de Colonia se enfrenta a Atila, el huno, y es coronada en los cielos junto a once vírgenes.

Es en este mismo Cabo de Vírgenes, que da paso marítimo entre los océanos Atlántico y Pacifico, donde se erige en el siglo XVI la primera fundación de la Patagonia Argentina: la Antigua Ciudad del Nombre de Jesús; y donde los viajeros luego de las vicisitudes por conseguir alimentos en este clima tan inhóspito, lo bautizan en las narraciones populares como el Puerto del Hambre, desconociendo que debajo de esta misma remota punta del continente Sur, las arenas escondían lo que en 1876 llamarían el oro del fin del mundo.

Macquarie Lightstation, Sydney, Australia.
Documentado en 2007.

Completado en 1818, el Faro Macquarie fue diseñado por Francis Greenway, un arquitecto de origen inglés que luego de entrar en bancarrota, se había declarado culpable de robar unos documentos bancarios para evitar su muerte. Greenway es declarado convicto y trasladado en 1814 a Sidney, donde por azar conoce en el barco que lo transporta al Almirante Arthur Phillips, fundador de la colonia penal para británicos, quien le recomendaría a Lachlan Macquarie, el gobernador de Nueva Gales del Sur, para comisionar el diseño del Faro epónimo.

Pero el destino había reservado otro giro más para Greenway, a quien es concedido un perdón parcial por Macquarie, por la construcción del magnánimo faro, garantizando así su libertad. Los cimientos de arenisca desmoronados llevaron a la construcción de un faro de reemplazo en 1883. Diseñado por James Barnet siguiendo los planos del original para garantizar el arribo seguro de los barcos al puerto de Sydney hasta hoy día.

Faro de Hércules, Galicia, España.
Documentado en 2008.

Construido en el S II D.C. Posiblemente bajo el mando de Trajano, y diseñado a imagen del Faro de Alejandría, esta torre Romana es el faro más antiguo del mundo aún en uso. La Torre de Hércules se ubica en la península de La Coruña, en Galicia y ha sido motivo de estudio exhaustivo debido a los diversos mitos sobre su origen. 

El manuscrito irlandés del SXI Lebor Gabála Érenn (Libro de las Invasiones) que compila poemas y prosas sobre los orígenes celtas, da cuenta del episodio en el que el rey Breogán, el padre fundador de la nación celta gallega, construyó una enorme torre de tal altura que sus hijos podían ver un verde lejano desde su cima. El vislumbre de esa distante tierra verde los atrajo a navegar hacia el norte de Irlanda. Según la leyenda, los descendientes de Breogán se quedaron en Irlanda y son los antepasados celtas del pueblo irlandés actual. 

Según la mitología griega, en el décimo de sus trabajos, el héroe Hércules desafía al gigante rey antropomorfo Gerión robándole el rebaño que tenía de vacas rojas y bueyes. Gerión fue en busca de venganza y luchó contra Hércules, pero luego de tres días y tres noches de batalla continúa, este le lanzó una flecha embebida en el veneno de la Hidra, que atravesó sus tres cuerpos y acabó con él. Hércules entonces, en un gesto celta, enterró la cabeza de Gerión con sus armas y ordenó que se construyera una ciudad en el sitio. La calavera y las tibias que aparecen en el escudo de la ciudad de La Coruña, aluden al relato mítico de la fundación de la ciudad. La Torre de Hércules es el elemento central del escudo de la ciudad de La Coruña desde 1521.

Faro de Finisterre, La Coruña, España.
Documentado en 2009.

Los romanos creían que allí donde se pone el sol sobre la inmensidad del océano de la Costa de Morte, era el punto más occidental del mundo -el finis terrae  o fin de la tierra-Fue en este mismo territorio, donde encontraron un altar dedicado al astro Rey Sol erigido por las tribus celtas de la región. 

Bordeando las costas más salvajes de Galicia, en las que el mar es verdadero soberano; este faro histórico y fascinante desde la antigüedad, hoy día continúa su simbolismo y es el hito final de los peregrinos que guiados por las luces de la Vía Láctea, terminan el Camino de Santiago de Compostela y queman a la orilla del mar sus ropas para así emprender travesía de regreso.

Castle Breakwater Lighthouse, Isla de Guernsey, Gran Bretaña.
Documentado en 2010. 

Construido con granito en la segunda década del siglo XIX, el Faro rompeolas del fortificado castillo del puerto de San Peter en la Isla de Guernsey, fue creado en respuesta a una posible invasión de las fuerzas francesas bajo el mando de Napoleón. Es en esta misma Isla donde Victor Hugo, el máximo exponente del Romanticismo, encuentra refugio en 1855 luego de su exilio de Francia y Bélgica, por manifestarse como feroz oponente del Segundo Imperio de Napoleón III. Guernsey se convertiría en la “roca de la hospitalidad y la libertad”, como el poeta y dramaturgo proclamará en “Trabajadores del mar”, su novela marinera dedicada a la Isla. 

Desde su estudio en la casa Hauteville, contemplaba el faro y los paisajes de niebla rodeados de vigorosos acantilados y salvajes bahías, y es allí donde Victor Hugo, pasaría el período más productivo de su vida y escribiría su obra cumbre, “Los Miserables”; Guernsey fue su refugio por más de 15 años.

La Torre de Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
Documentado en 2011.

La Torre de Ushuaia es una de las múltiples luces que vigilan orgullosamente el Canal de Beagle donde los países hermanos Argentina y Chile se disputaron durante largos años la soberanía de las islas dentro y al sur del canal, y los espacios marítimos adyacentes. Fue con apoyo del Vaticano que ambas regiones llegaron a un acuerdo que hasta nuestros días se recuerda como el hito que dio por terminado el conflicto que duró más de dos tercios de siglo de disputa.

Faro de San Juan de Salvamento, Isla de los Estados, Atlántico Sur.
Documentado en 2011.

El primer faro construido en aguas australes, fue el Faro de San Juan de Salvamento en el año 1884, en ocasión de la División Expedicionaria al Atlántico Sur, al mando del comodoro Augusto Lasserre en la Isla de los Estados; una remota geografía donde brindaban salvamento para auxilio de los numerosos naufragios, que se producían en las inmediaciones del Cabo de Hornos. 

Este emblemático Faro, singular por su ubicación, fue durante mucho tiempo, la única luz que tenían los navegantes en el Mar Austral. Un haz de esperanza al paisaje desconocido de la Antártida, que fue inmortalizado a partir de la excepcional obra literaria “El Faro del Fin del Mundo” de Julio Verne publicada en 1901.

Faro Molo de Abrigo de Iquique, Iquique, Chile.
Documentado en 2011.

El Faro Molo de Abrigo Iquique ubicado en la región de Tarapacá, originariamente territorio Peruano, descansa en la costa Pacífica al oeste del Desierto de Atacama, conquistado de Bolivia durante la Guerra del Pacífico (1879-1883). Su estructura está conformada por una torre tradicional de forma troncocónica roja y posee una luz del mismo color que anuncia la banda de estribor del puerto. 

Faro da Ponta do Sinó, Cabo Verde.
Documentado en 2011.

El Faro da Ponta do Sinó fue construido en 1892. Por su inusual arquitectura y ubicación, en el punto más al austral de la Isla de Sal del archipiélago de Cabo Verde, en el Océano Atlántico, es considerado como el más maravilloso del mundo.

La torre es cuadrangular y cuenta con 9 metros de altura. Se accede por una escalera exterior que permite contemplar las inmensas playas de arenas blancas iluminadas por los 350 días de sol al año.

La Isla de Sal, denominada “Isla Llana” en sus orígenes, fue descubierta el 3 de diciembre de 1460 y posteriormente tomó el nombre de “Sal” cuando se descubrieron las dos extensas Salinas de Pedra de Lume y Santa María.

Hraunhafnartangi Lighthouse, Raufarhöfn, Islandia.
Documentado en 2011.

Según la mitología nórdica, Islandia era la tierra de los reinos primordiales de los que emergía y perecía toda la vida. Surcada por paisajes de hielo y fuego, en forma de volcanes, se creía habitada por dioses nórdicos, elfos, espíritus, y otras entidades haciéndola responsable tanto de sus bajas como altas temperaturas.

El Faro de Hraunhafnartangi es el faro más septentrional del mundo, a unos 800 metros al sur del Círculo Polar Ártico, en la ciudad de Raufarhöfn, donde se encuentra el monumento “Arctic Henge” alineado con los cielos e inspirado en el mundo mítico del poema Eddic Völuspá, del nórdico antiguo: Profecía de la vidente, en el cual la vidente le relata a Odín la historia de la creación del mundo y su próximo fin, dando lugar a un nuevo mundo que surgirá de las cenizas del fuego.

Textos de la artista y fichas de documentación
Matilde Marin

Fichas de documentación
Años diversos

“When you set out on your  journey, pray that your path be long (…)
 Always keep Ithaca on your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for; but don’t in the least hurry the journey.
Better that it lasts long, better having anchored when you’re old.
Full, with the experience of the trip.
C.P. Cavafy

Is the place where you want to arrive idealized? How do you get there? In what ways do you arrive? The Egyptian poet Constantine Cavafy shows us a route, probably a path that contains wisdom; a trip is always a change of location and there are always different trips… pleasure trips, lifelong dreams, work trips, but all of them are finally learning exercises and in all cases they put us to the test, because if experience is allowed to enter into one, it allows us to know ourselves and there we return to Cavafy.

In my life I have made many trips and of all kinds, except for one imagined in childhood that has not yet materialized and judging by the geographical location and the current political situation of that country, it is very likely that I will never reach it and it will remain as the pending dream of my life.

In my early childhood I used to read adventure magazines and in one of them I found a fascinating story of the French Jean-François Champollion who, without reaching Egypt, managed to decipher the hieroglyphic writing of that culture, thanks mainly to the study of the Rosetta stone (currently in the Museum of the Louvre) reading that genre historical adventure in me the first genuine desire to travel.

After several years and already as a formal student at the National School of Fine Arts, I came across Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting “Bonaparte devant le Sphinx” made between 1867-1868, a magnificent confrontation that exposes two moments of world culture, on the one hand, Bonaparte on horseback observing the great sphinx of Gizeh, and on the other hand the sphinx observing and being observed by a traveling conqueror. 

When this work appeared before me, travel was again presented as a life and work option, and searching for information I began to read the journeys of some cursed poets such as Arthur Rimbaud’s “Letters from Africa” that reveals that long and voluptuous journey in dangerous lands, exotic and sensual where everything can supposedly be experienced. There is a recent and beautiful edition of “Letters from Africa” published by Gallonero in 2016. At that time, travel had no certain destination and was also synonymous with freedom. When Rimbaud writes to his parents “… we will travel, we will hunt in the deserts, we will sleep on the cobblestones of unknown cities, without care without sorrow…” he marks a style as a continuation of the historical journeys of adventurers and expeditionaries that were always in force in the different times.

I am a visual artist, this is my profession and in 1975 for various reasons I left my country Argentina, it was a complex departure but it led to one of the magnificent adventures of my life as it helped me broaden my perspective, learn about different cultures and recognize my profession, visit towns and cities where the teaching was the “journey and travel”, and feel multiple reasons for inspiration that were later deposited in various series of work.

From the understanding that travel was going to be part of the profession and that it is intertwined with life, I began to read literature by some writers such as Bruce Chatwin and his desire for the freedom that travel provides him. The place is remote and not very well known at that time, Argentine Patagonia emerges in Chatwin’s life and prompts him to leave a very simple note of resignation to his boss at work that says “I’ve gone to Patagonia”, this departure marks a desire, a fantasy and a destiny that he will adopt for the rest of his life and his book “In Patagonia” published in 1977 and read by thousands of people continues the literature of traveling writers.

I would like to mention other very valuable writers inscribed in this genre, writers that I admire and from whom I have learned through their literary images that have later invaded my work.

Ryszard Kapuscinki and his wonderful book “Ebony” where the title and content is a play on words about black Africa and its stoicism. Kapuscinki traveled extensively throughout the African continent and tells big and small stories, the title of the book is the synthesis of it. Ebony that tall, black tropical tree that rises above wars and misfortune as its inhabitants do.

Another great book is “The Last Train to Zona Verde” by Paul Theroux, this epic writer is well known to many as a “living monument to travel prose”.

Antonio Tabucchi and his beautiful little book “Indian Nocturne” where the excuse of the true story or not, makes him travel through deep regions of India thinking and looking for the woman of his life, this beautiful book was my company on a long journey through Asia where he completes the photographic trilogy of Indeterminate Landscapes.

“Can we really travel to the other side of the world? If we travel to the other side of the world, will we be able to understand the place we arrived at?
Indian Nocturen, Antonio Tabucchi

Currently traveling has become an important production resource for many contemporary visual artists. An artist travels to document regions, record ecological situations, photograph cities, travels to participate in exhibitions and biennials, in short, travels….

All of this, that is, “travel” as a means of production probably began with the long walks of Richard Long and his “A line made by walking” of 1967, that artist enrolled in Land Art who for five decades has walked the world to building his work and leaving a legacy of spirituality defines his journey as:

In each walk, not by conceptual definition, a particular idea appears.
Therefore, walking-as art-provides a simple way
for me to explore the relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks of my travels are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work.
All these works feed the imagination.
Richard Long

Another cult artist is Ronie Horn, his long stay in Iceland resulted in a unique place in the world “The Water Library”, a space built for the future where she collected water from 25 glaciers in extinction, traveled through the entire country and all the water collected from those glaciers deposited them in columns of water for posterity facing the Bay… in a building that had previously been a Library.

I want to make being here enough.
Maybe enough is enough. I won’t have to invent enough.
I’ll be here and I’ll do nothing and this place will be here but I’ll do nothing.
I’ll leave it here.
Ronie Horn

Going back to the work I do in the visual arts for several years now, the journey has deeply marked much of my production.. I often photograph almost without a subject and I can work on my works that were generated from paths.

In a very anonymous and perhaps somewhat nomadic way, I travel to different cities and towns around the world in search of images and cultures that will later give rise to my various series.

Since 1995, I began to take photographs of the landscapes that crossed the Latin American soil, thus facing a new journey, I am interested in capturing the horizon in deep Patagonia, those strips of inexhaustible atmospheres that run through our country, “Horizontal Landscapes” began the trilogy which was followed by “Altered Landscapes” and “Indeterminate Landscapes”. This series of photographic records in the southern part of the American continent emerges in some way as an involuntary landscape, something that arises outside the viewer who contemplates. The whole series of works had a post-photographic work that somehow while I was doing it reminded me of the Impressionists and their own look towards the experience with nature.

The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening.
To the lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

During the year 2005 I read in the newspapers a strange news item that caught my attention: “The lighthouses in the world will be disconnected because there is a GPS”. I looked up the etymology of the word lighthouse and found that in ancient Greek Pharus means “the light that guides the destiny of men”, it seemed to me something intense, perhaps romantic but real. I imagined this time and this current world so complex, without that light that guided so many destinations through the centuries.

The origin of the lighthouses has its most remote antecedent in the stepped tower built by Ptolemy II in honor of Alexander the Great, which with its monumental presence –measuring more than 100 meters– and the enormous pyre that burned on its top, visible from a great distance, marked the location of the city of Alexandria; and was considered by the ancients as one of the seven wonders of the world. In fact, this surprising building -destroyed in modern times by an earthquake-, was located on the island of Pharos, very close to Alexandria, and from it, by extension, all those constructions destined to mark different geographical milestones took their name, which for centuries they were an indispensable guide for generations of sailors.

I am an artist and I know that art will not change the world, but artists can and have the ability to show and point things out in a different way.

This is what my project started in 2005 consists of; a work in progress that I don’t know when it will end. Since then, every work trip has served me to get closer to some lighthouse that I identify, document and film.

I selected ten lighthouses from different countries, which for me are emblematic. They are lighthouses that contain a history that has marked the collective unconscious of a people, in some cases of humanity.

As the project progressed, I discovered not only the location of each lighthouse but also its aesthetic-architectural variety, its significant history and the link with art and poetry that many of its locations generate. Many of these meanings reflect ideas of freedom, of utopias, and I thought of the difficulties that, in the age of generalized technology, human beings still suffer, needing the light of a beacon to make themselves visible and fully understood.

Today my trips have become visual inquiry, uncertain and sometimes enigmatic investigations, but always marked by the fascination of what the gaze reveals along the way.

Historically, traveling has always occupied a central place in realities, myths and fictions. The departure, the exile, the adventure; the ancient world shows us from the Egyptians to Homer and my favorite Ulysses the transits of complex plots.

Sometimes the trips have clues that are difficult to decipher, they are often suspensions in time, testimonies and for me a tool that reveals possible images. Probably the ideal map does not really exist, but there is a sum of situations and sensations that build their own maps for each trip, to finish I choose again a phrase from Kerouac that concludes this text.

“Life is a foreign country.”

Matilde Marín
Essay for the book “De lo Visual a lo afectivo”
Biblos / Culturalia Publishers
Buenos Aires, December 2017
“Practicas artisticas y cientificas en torno a visualidades, desplazamientos y artefactos”
Biblos / Culturalia Publishers, 2018

The theme of travel has been a constant concern in the work of Matilde Marín. In this reflection, which includes videos and books, photography reveals itself as a recurring and powerful medium, whether it is its own shot or the collection of images found in the media. Aware of the political and social conflicts that journeys go through, the artist works on them in dimensions that range from melancholy to humanitarian tragedy. The first of these records is the Pharus Project series, relating to the function of the lighthouse and its abandonment through the use of GPS. The lighthouse is the quintessential object/guide of one of the most traditional acts of travel: the sea crossing. Today, it is a relic and the rest, a memory of another time. The Tower of Ushuaia is an example of this. The Beagle Channel of 2009 cuts the bareness of its structure while a ray of light is still projected on the southernmost channel of our country.

The series When I Sight the Blue Smoke of Ithaca, on the other hand, works on the second register. Starting from photographs of smoke found in the graphic press –some holidays such as fireworks; the most, the result of great conflagrations and catastrophes-, the artist makes a vast photographic series and a video that are the basis for a beautiful book of the same name, with texts by José E. Burucúa and a CD with music composed ad hoc by Marta Lambertini (2012). The title refers to the model of all travelers and their longings –smoke from home in the distance, a sign of returning home- and intersects with other poetic resonances: Cavafis, Jorge Urrutia. It can be a trace of a homeland lost and not always rediscovered, smoke of ruin and threat, a sign of the need for a departure rather than a return. Tharir Square, from 2011, is precisely a newspaper reproduction with a photograph of the smoke produced by the massive demonstrations, the consequent repression and the disturbances in this square in Cairo, in the context of the “Arab Spring” revolts. Ithaca no longer welcomes the weary traveler.

Graciela Sarti
Excerpt from the homonymous text “The Artists and the journeys”
F.J. Klemm Foundation Publishers, 2019