Pedro G. Romero
Sacco. El saco de Roma, las crisis de la representación y los flamencos. Cuadras/Establo
2019
Real Academia de España en Roma, Rome
The starting point can be found in the accounts of the Abbot of Nájera, Juan Bartolomé de Gattinara, Giraldi Cinthio, Francisco de Salazar, Baldassarre Castiglione, Francisco Delicado, Benvenuto Cellini or Francisco de Hollanda, among many other chroniclers: descriptions of the significance of the profanation of churches turned into stables for horses, mules and donkeys during the 1527 Roman Sack. Even the Vatican Basilica was occupied by the cavalry of Protestant lansquenets who flaunted what was irreverent about this action. However, in the circle of Alonso and Juan de Valdés, in dialogue with the enlightened enlightenment and herasmicism, another interpretation of this same gesture opened up, since turning the temples into stables was nothing more than a return to the poverty and humility of the primordial Church, returning to the stable in which the Messiah, the Christ, was born. Therefore we simultaneously manifested in one gesture the desecration and sacralization of the same space.
For our purpose, it was interesting to understand the equines' vision system. The two eyes give separate field framings to the two hemispheres of their brains, leaving blind spots in the axis from tail to muzzle, gaps supplemented by hearing. What they hear helps to complete two fields of vision that always work together and are different. The animot, Derrida says, must bring together, simultaneously, the zoology and the cultural meaning of the animal.
Pedro G. Romero and Isaki Lacuesta recorded audio and video trying to find this double vision, double perspective, multiplication of viewpoints. Simone Weil thought this was a property of the mystical gaze and Slavoy Žižek called it “parallax vision” and turned it into a tool of the materialist dialectic. Nothing extraordinary, it is a common experience of looking. Only that in representations we allow ourselves to be governed by the fixed point of view. What we want to try is this alternative possibility of seeing, to emphasize it.
Circle framed, the space of Bramante's Tempietto, is not only sacred ground, but also stands as a monument to the techniques of perspective, a system of vision that has been hegemonic since the beginning of the modern age, since the so-called Renaissance. Looking at its emblematic character, its martyrdom, has something of a political gesture. What the audience saw and heard is all of the above: the animals and animot, a flamenco guitar concert addressed to horses, mules and donkeys, the split video and audio recording of the latter, the divided architectural space, the glitter of fireflies in the surroundings and a proliferation of viewpoints.
Dirigido por Isaki Lacuesta & Pedro G. Romero
Project Management: Matteo Binci
Photography: Ludovica Manzetti,
With the partecipation of: Stefan Voglsinger, Maria Doriana Casadidio, Tony Di Mauro, Cizia Mariani, Simone Minigghini, Guillermo Cascante, Laura tremoleda, Santi Baró, Goroka tv., María García, Julio Criado.
Supported by: Real Academia de España en Roma, Instituto Cervantes en Roma, Galería Alarcón&Criado, Goroka tv.
