Landscape and Sustainability

Deborah Ligorio at Bürofriedrich
2006, January 21–March 01

by Andreas SchlaegelIn Don Delillo’s 1984 novel White Noise the protagonist checks his bank account via an automated bank teller - and leaves it feeling approved by the system. The mechanical interaction with the institution, confirming his economic solidity/status offers not only moral relief, but approval of the very individual. The difference to the system Deborah Ligorio finds herself confronted with is that she is asking her machines different questions – twenty years later there can be none of that linearity, there is no central apparatus that could grant approval. At the centre of her latest exhibition at Büro Friedrich lies the question of sustainability in a world where every single thing is interrelated on several levels, where every breath and move becomes an economic, and on it’s flipside an ecological and therefore finally an ethical issue. A labyrinth?

Her maps don’t work. They don’t trace real spaces, nor do they articulate real or imagined locations, distances or topographies. In fact they’re not even really maps - what Deborah Ligorio mounts on boards are structures that are inspired by and reminiscent of maps, but as such basically grids – layers of structures of aligned rectangular forms, ink-jet printed on recycled paper and glued on chip boards. With the coolness of architectural presentations the artist combines these structures with photographs and magazine cut outs, featuring images of people, architecture and nature, adding elements of authenticity, maybe even sincerity, adding an aroma of specificity. The boards together with large ink-jet drawings wallpapered directly onto the wall form a kind of an illustration of what appears as a meta-landscape, a complex three-dimensional multi-layered matrix.

„I had a look on the microchips for macro utilities department, I started to wander if I should replace my old machines with new ones, well there is always a good reason, new machines pollute less than old ones.“ from the video Sizescape, 2003

Deborah is a stranger. Her voice comes across in English with a prominent Italian accent, requiring the viewer of her works to listen attentively. This attention is an asset, that makes the viewer follow her more closely, which is necessary, because her references ricochet happily across the boards, the artist’s gentle and personal guidance is very helpful not to get lost in her ambitious attempt at establishing a cohesive network of the most disparate of references. Like a GPS system in a car with animated maps and instructions it is the moving images that make the artist’s ambitions most transparent, and allow her thoughts to slowly unfold their charm: Hyperdevelopment, 2002, and Sizescape, 2003, run on two TV sets.

With the refreshing brevity and clarity that allows the artist’s in-depth knowledge and skills to shine through, the one or two minute pieces have all of the sincerity of a personal journal, fusing associations, personal memories with recounted information bits. Underscored by reductive electronic soundscapes, the artist’s husky narration lends the abstract animations a convincing level of personal sincerity, while moving geometric forms map an artistic terrain of interwoven strands of ideas and associations in words, pseudo graphs or even figuratively to architecture, design, circumstances of living, urban planning, social engineering, the artists personal life set in relation to a range of consequences. The ease and flow of these animations clearly reflect not only the relative simplicity of the medium, but a logic trained by conceptual methods trained by working with computers, the architecture of websites, and the structuring of complex information systems (see also the artist’s website, deborahligorio.com). But not only the way information is interlinked echoes the organisation of space as her board collage matrix construction.

“gather, recycle, new energy. Families produce 4 kilos of rubbish per week, couples 7 and singles 11. When I arrived at the café, the only think he told me was: And then you can go your way and I can go mine. Suddenly I became an 11 kilos per week rubbish producer.“ from the video Hyperdevelopment, 2002

Her latest and most complex video piece to date, Irregular Configurations, 2005, uses information from a database of land cover changes of the European Communities (CORINE, an ecological commission to coordinate information but also action to define and protect biotopes, to combat air pollution, and to preserve the ecology of the Mediterranean region) to generate animations, and the latest Environment Agency reports as scrolling texts, juxtaposed with real footage, and the artist’s trademark observations as a voice-over. Water plays an important role in this piece, statistics and bits of information on the effects of global warming particularly on Europe roll by on one screen: altering spawning habits of toads or egg laying of birds, the habitats of butterflies shifting northward, molluscs changing their patterns of distribution. Suddenly the images switch to the grids of windows and other façade elements from institutional buildings, contemporary, brutalist, classicist. “Eventually, in a different context you wonder how those things could have been possible,” the artist comments. The second screen, set in an angle, shows the calm surface of a sea. Crickets chirp alternating with cool electronic sounds, while the artist recites her lyrics in the manner of a confession, the intimacy of her voice draws the viewer closer, reaching its maximum when the artist chuckles away at her statement “I see it, as a convincing signal that the danger has passed.” The camera moves on through a young forest looking skywards, flies over an urban landscape, a calm sea, and scans landfill growth.

Statistics are obviously map-making materials, but together with the images of specific areas, they assume something of a role-play, a kind of disillusionment with the concept of illustration portraying a level of estrangement concerning an idea of landscape as an accessible space, in the way of current speculative capitalism. Less a deplorable history or a coordinate system Deborah Ligorio describes (cultural) landscapes as programmatic medium for change, biological, economical and finally social. This programmatic landscape is the product of contradictions of interests, and therefore under extreme and constant pressure in ecologic and economic terms. All hope rests within a point that unites economy and the everyday in pure form – free space. Deborah Ligorio renders the landscapes as a form of redundant psychogeography, mapping not particular geographic sites as much as places for particular purposes, areas of value and symbolic meaning.

“Maybe a satellite view of the earth? maybe not!
So distant, so faraway.“ from the video Landscape, 2002

The view from above is god’s perspective, the all-seeing eye that is removed from the details. The bigger picture is the perspective that facilitates planning, programming, production of theory and finally: control. Space exists because it is in use, it is walked through, bred on, lived on – precisely these everyday doings constitute a sort of narrative with an immediate effect – the space begins to belong.
The effects of global warming affect the maps – but also real space. The question remains with the viewer about how consciously we organize this, the artist simply records individual emotions and behaviour, and points out relations: a careful critique of present conditions of daily life, with a subtle concern for the environment, but with the twist of a near-situationist view of the relative limitations of everyday life. Deborah Ligorio’s interest in specific effects of the geographical environment reclaims some space – simply by acknowledging it’s changing, in more than two or three dimensions.

Andreas Schlaegel