Guest: Isaki Lacuesta, filmmaker.
Lugares que no existen: Goggle Earth 1.0. Australia. ALPHA AND AGAIN (Places That Don’t Exist: Goggle Earth 1.0. Australia. ALPHA AND AGAIN), Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campo, Spain, 2009, 26 min
“Goggle (ɡɒɡ(ə)l). verb. Look with wide open eyes, typically in amazement // noun A wide-eyed stare or affected rolling of the eye. // pl. A pair of protective eyeglasses. [Complement and on occasions antonym of Google Earth].
Places That Don’t Exist: (Goggle Earth 1.0) is a serious of depictions and recordings of places which do not feature in Google Earth. We have travelled to these locations to document their true aspect (using videos and photographs) and subsequently contrast it with the false view that we get from our computers. Military grounds, training camps, government buildings, natural parks illegally built upon by speculators, nudist beaches... There is an endless catalogue of landscapes hidden from view in Google Earth (in Spain Colombia, Ecuador, Russia, Australia and elsewhere) for a variety of reasons, and with astonishing frequency. This project compares the hyperrealistic and supposedly objective view of Google Earth with the realistic (yet subjective) perspective in our images taken on the ground in places which, despite everything, do exist.
Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campo
Marte en la Tierra (Mars On Earth), Isaki Lacuesta, Spain, 2007, 49 min.
What is the Río Tinto? What is this Andalusian valley with its red mining lands which are so similar to the planet Mars? Several people come together on this territory-cum-film, each bringing different perspectives over the course of the investigation: a NASA scientist describes the wonders of this unique place on Earth, two sound engineers try to capture the mysterious sounds of the valley, and a miner wanders among the abandoned buildings...
Où en êtes-vous? (Where are you?), Isaki Lacuesta, Spain-France, 2018, 18 min
Where are you? is one of the great questions of the 21st century. Evoking the geolocation function of our mobile devices, the question links the ubiquity of our time with the classic question about the journey into the unknown.
This project is part of an initiative in the Pompidou Centre in Paris which entrusts a series of film makers (Naomi Kawase, Pippo Delbono, Amir Naderi, Christian Petzold, Barbet Schroeder, João Pedro Rodrigues, Jafar Panahi, Jean-Marie Straub, Sharunas Bartas, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Tariq Teguia, Bertrand Bonello and others) to respond to the title question through the medium of film.
Isaki Lacuesta uses images he filmed in South Africa, Russia, Cuba, Qatar, Spain and next to his house to respond to the question posed by the Pompidou Centre. His answer:
“I am both here and there.”
“I am both here and there.”