Imagine if each of us were another and not any other. Imagine all that knew, that everything they learned from their parents, their grandparents, which they recorded in landscapes memories, inherited the memory for the children, their passage through this world, his world was doomed to die ... for over two centuries.
This exhibition, which will run until October 1-is the image of a time that never ends, a time that still dying without anyone being able to stop. As in the poem by César Vallejo, the world of mine needs a miracle to return to this side. Pierre Gonnord is the first man, that man, in the midst of battle, dares to approach the dying to ask him to come back and tell your story.
In Coal , yesterday inaugurated the sample José Ramón Alonso (director of Cultural Policies of the Board) at the Museum of Iron and Mining Sabero, Pierre Gonnord explores other maps to show us the way back to ourselves. The artist forces the viewer to listen to the voices of those who never see, the voices of the vanquished by the force of things, the voices of those who have spent years fighting to defeat further postponed again ... Javier, Wojciek, Segundino Theo, Miroslaw, Luis Armando, Glushenko ... Pierre Gonnord knew I had to go down the mine to enter their homes, so six years later returned to the pit to commune, to suffer with them the long way into the darkness and share it with us: "My brothers have broken back" ... "assimilate death from the beginning; one day you see a dead guy and think ... but here you can not choose "..." I went into the mine with eleven. He was so young they had to overtake the age for sure ... I went to school at night because I worked ten hours every day of the week and earned 700 pesetas ... Those times, come again "...
The temporary living museum merges into the darkness to project on three mountains of coal, the text of Emile Zola. The characters in Germinal are dawning on the black sky as you face the silent faces of 120 miners emerge in the light emitted. "I said, you have the word, but you move," explains Gonnord, who has made a touching video that shows the face of human strength, but also of helplessness, fear, lack of certainty, dignity, of sadness, of defeat and respect. The music of composer Arvo Pärt, his tinkling and repetitive rhythm, makes the viewer is unable to look away, to look away from those other us. The notes double as church bells, with a seemingly simple sound that resembles a spiritual song. The artist has managed to give the film free from any tone patina, varnish all into believing that no mediation is really happening as we see it and there is nothing between the two sides of the screen.
Upstairs are arranged images of No Man's Land , the project that started this discussion, the snapshots of the ten miners who speak of strength, hardness and dignity of the mine. It was six years ago when Pierre Gonnord down the pit Villablino and Ponferrada to tell the story of those who do not, the trail of lives that end, a landscape that ruin still eating, a place that takes years rising early hoping to make it less cold when the sun rises. Always and never mañanamos morning! Some of the stories that are in this sample met 'members long sagas workers for generations, struggling people and proud of who they are and have been worried about their future. "
"I am interested in the mining community of northern Spain because their faces shine with a new light and explore these margins is my way of recognizing the importance of silence socially constructed, the risk of collapse, disappearance but mostly to honor those ' other us ', people inhabited by an extraordinary life force' out. And the creative journey of Pierre Gonnord ventures through groups with strong cultural identity and endangered, individuals belonging to a group with roots well embedded in an ancient story, sure of his identity "while ours becomes blurred. "
Eight months ago I asked how they would return to the mine. "I would bring to portray his colleagues and friends, the landscape that welcomes the lives of everyone that has seen them birth. To see and remember, and never forget to fight ... 'promises to continue in the pit, so that forgetting is not so simple. "Life is much more than Sunday stroll for window ', although it is easier to live with closed eyes. That is the task of the artist or at least one of them, trying to open our eyes to the world. And now the world is in Sabero.
