Santiago Díaz Escamilla

Todo hace parte del mundo (Conversación)
Everything Makes Part of The World (Conversation)

2018

Conversation; Collaborative drawing made on the ground with sticks; Lime; Digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Luster paper, mounted on Aluminum Dibond; Vinyl wall text

To walk through a forest or perhaps
to believe oneself crossing it,
dwelling, trying to locate the sound
of a bird hiding in some branch.
Then bring to mind that veiled and blurred bird.
Keep walking, in company.
After all, ever since I came here,
that’s all I’ve wanted to do.

After a few walks and conversations, the three of us agree on a time and place. The ground has been prepared, and we plan to talk about the formation of the universe, matter, the qualities of the world—unanswerable questions, all of them.

On November 24, 2016, after decades of internal conflict that began in the mid-1960s, the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), then the country’s largest guerrilla group, signed a peace agreement.
As part of the process, 24 Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation (ETCR) were established, places where those who laid down their arms could begin their transition to civilian life.

At the ETCR Amaury Rodríguez, in Pondores, La Guajira, I meet Ricardo, Jefferson, and Curruco. Over several days we talk about nature as we walk through the forests or sit at one of their homes, almost always with each of them separately. After these encounters, I propose we come together as a group for the first time and try to gather our thoughts on a diagram sketched on the ground.

On the morning of the meeting, I run into Curruco by chance. He tells me how, upon arriving at the empty lot that would later become Pondores, he and other inhabitants drew the government’s architectural plan directly onto the soil and covered it with lime—the same material used on the town’s football field—so the rain would take longer to erase it. After hearing his story, I decide to get a sack of that mineral from the nearby village.

That afternoon, we gather. A camera points downward, recording the ground we work on. We talk and draw, tracing a diagram from reflections we’d already shared and others that arise in the moment.

Months later, back in Bogotá, I return to that day's recording. I gather fragments, attempt to compose them into a text. The distance shapes everything; it is inevitable: by selecting from what I hear of our voices, I am already transforming that dialogue that took place only once. I present it without names. It's unclear how many voices participate, whether it's a record or fiction, where it comes from. That text and three photographs that register the ground—first, flat and uniform; then, furrowed by lines traced with sticks; finally, covered with lime—are barely materialized remains of an afternoon, what can be translated into an exhibition space. The work—the conversations, the walks, the diagram traced together—happened in Pondores.


Todo hace parte del mundo (Conversation) is a co-creation with Ricardo, Jefferson, and Curruco, developed during the HAWAPI 2018 residency.