Daydream A transatlantic research on site-responsiveness. Copenhagen, June (Sydhavn Teater), Mexico City, July, (Bienal Tlatelolco). By Lasse Mouritzen & Frida Robles. Participating artists: Helene Johanne Christensen, Louisa Yaa Aisin, Madeleine Cole, Sophie Grodin, Christa Mako Teigen, Balam Bartolomé, Mauricio Patrón, Mariel Calderón, Morelos León Celis, Laura Valencia

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Two hands are holding up a model of an apartment building on a green hill. Almost god-like. There are trees around the apartment, and a single car is parked outside, in what seems to be a small private parking lot. The apartment building has four floors. The ground floor has a full glass facade. 

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The leaves are sweating, releasing liquids that are now in my face. 

 

We took the subway, straight to Tlatelolco station, the orange barandas, the light coming through, a tiny market outside, almost empty. There is a feeling of a ghost town in that square, or of something forgotten by time. We enter a restaurant, the letters in the windowpane are from the 1970s, the time of glory of Tlatelolco. Children playing, dogs being trained to jump obstacles and a soft sound of reggaeton. It feels like a Sunday, it is a Saturday. People waiting in the distance. On top of a railing system one can read: “We do not forget October 2nd”. 

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A dream is a sound of a pet trapped in the ruins.

Barking dream. 

The dream entails a sound coming through the window, the sound is in the form of a dog barking inside an apartment in Tlatelolco. I am on the field that is not suitable for playing basketball, there are no backboards, no ...

I hope the sound bounces

Defecate sound.

 

At Central de Maquetas, the old model shop, the gift from the architect Mario Pani. The illusion of modelling reality, to hold fragments of spaces with a god-like hand, the perspective of the architecture model. Tlatelolco was constructed as the ideal of a progressive Mexico, the dream-like image of housing for the new workers and families of Latin America. 

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I walk in the opposite direction

Not backwards

No _____

No______

 

Tlatelolco fought the last battle against the Spanish, here the Aztecs were defeated. It used to be a lake, the watery ground. Buildings like ships, the foundations are as high as the buildings, there is an unexplored territory right in the front of your door, beneath the ground, like the relics of the Tlatelolcas, like the volcano stones persisting, reminding us of the rupture of nature. 

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I thought I was the statues

Now resting, each worried, falling.
Holding on?
Searching for a feeling which was once there. Will they search in the concrete, in the stories of the bricks, the lights from the blueprints, renderings, butterflies. 

 

The buildings of Tlatelolco are connected by the passageways made from an orange metal framework which holds the light-grey concrete roof. These provide shelter and passage among the buildings, travelling through the small green parks where people will walk their dogs, or take a stroll. Underneath the ceiling you see the cement starting to crack and the marks of moisture in dark grey and brown nuances. Small sprouts and plants grow out of the orange metal framework, leaning upwards to glimpse the sun. On a square, surrounded by three buildings and a metal railing, there is a basket court. Both nets are missing.

 

I'm walking, touching the railing with my hand, the rhythm of the metal touching each of the tubes of the structure hypnotizes me, it's a mantra that transports me to a strange place. In front of me I see a kind of window displaying some wooden trunks and Christmas flowers, is it summer? is it winter?

 

The basketball court is perfectly framed by three tall buildings, the facade of one of them is covered with windows, some of them show raggedy curtains, sunwashed plastic flowers and strange memorabilia from a store that does not exist anymore. In between the buildings there are green areas, some trees. There is a huge mural depicting a totem composed of a jaguar, an eagle, an orchid and two faces looking opposite to each other; the mural is painted in bright neon colors. Contiguous to the mural, the building to the right side hosts tags and graffiti, one of them is a series of skeletons, a mosaic of dead faces staring right to the center of the court. There is a blue semisphere painted in the center of the court where grass is coming out and moss grows.

 

I’m dreaming here, floating, grabbing onto the orange aisles (ails), I like to float, I grab on to a chord, then I break an antenna.

 

The city from above. A horizontal triangle framed by double-sided roads. There are trees in between the apartment buildings, all with orange roofs, there are courts, and el Jardín de Santiago. An organic body, the rhythm of the structures, a seeming maze. The small aisles have that particular roofed aisle. Framed between the Eje Central and Flores Magón Avenue. The space is populated by important names, the names of provinces, of historical heroes, the narrative of the nation. The buildings are called Chamizal, 5 de Febrero, Revolución, …  

 

There is a body, is a body, but it is not me. Just a body in the edge of the square, looking and hearing the traffic on Eje Central, changing the direction of the blood every time a trolebús passes by. 

 

The cars driving around, the sounds of airplanes going over your head. The city becomes suffocating, there is no space to think, to smile, to breathe. Is the square of Tlatelolco closing against ourselves? Are we shaping it or is it shaping us? The way in which the leaves of the trees move, a certain cadency sketching a different rhythm of the world. Where do we find rest and let the mind wander through the city?

 

I was a shadow

Chasing after another shadow

Which was me, until I faded away