In “1978. Sound Documentary”, an installation located in Room 1, Roberto Jacoby together with Luciano Azzigotti and Nacho Marchiano address the sensation of suspended time. The work explores a double reality. On the one hand, the present of the ex-ESMA site, transformed into a space recovered and destined to memory and art; on the other hand, that repressive past that coexists in a latent form. Through an acoustic documentary that reproduces sounds of the street in the middle of the 1978 World Cup soccer match (also the silences), Jacoby puts the idea of temporal frontier in crisis.
program note
“1978 is a sound intervention that seeks to explore the imminence of the past. However, this piece is not about making walls talk. It is an acoustic documentary whose protagonists are neither the executioners nor the prisoners. You will not hear the howls of torment or the commanding voices of the murderers. On the contrary, the aim was to recreate the noise that came from outside, infiltrating every fold of that ill-fated year in which Argentina won the World Cup. Perhaps that noise was what is strictly called ‘the sinister’.“
catalog
There are those who dismiss President Néstor Kirchner’s order to remove the portraits of dictators from the Military College because it is “only a symbol.” But precisely because that “procedure” was a key symbol of the dismantling of the policy of terror, it was such a turning point that it can be said that it was only then that the dictatorship truly ended.
The spaces occupied by the former ESMA carry an emotional charge that does not come exclusively from their representation of state terror. If it still overwhelms us, it is because the horror there is not merely symbolic but is fused with a specific materiality that affects our entire body. When we walk through its buildings, we experience a double reality. We are walking now, yes. But the echo of each step can open the time tunnel of our memories and suddenly throw us into the middle of the concentration camp.
“1978” is a sound intervention that aims to explore the imminence of the past. However, this piece is not about making the walls talk. It is an acoustic documentary whose protagonists are neither the executioners nor the prisoners. You will not hear the howls of torment or the commanding voices of the murderers.
On the contrary, the aim was to reproduce the murmur that came from outside, infiltrating every crevice of that ill-fated year in which Argentina won the World Cup. Perhaps that noise was what is strictly called“the sinister”.
Roberto Jacoby
Organized in conjunction with the Ministry of Culture of the Nation
references
Cangi, Adrían, 2017. El tiempo como Vestigio, Desvío Magazine.