Córcores (Galicia, Spain). July 2004.
Modernity has won in Galicia. Traditional houses and villages have been replaced by towns and houses of steel and concrete. This is another house in the same abandoned village. The floor of a bedroom is scattered with documents, newspaper cuttings, notes, family photographs. Most documents are from the early 1960s. There are two photos of a man and one of a woman with three children. The woman is alone with her children. The man probably emigrated and had to leave her behind. Did they ever meet again? Why are the documents thrown on the floor?
The dream of Reason produces monsters.
I am interested in how modernity fails or goes wrong, how it produces ruins and rubbish. I study the confrontation between modernity and traditional cultures in Spain and Ethiopia. Sometimes modernity wins (Spain), sometimes loses (Ethiopia). In both cases, the fight creates archaeological landscapes – abandoned villages, houses, artefacts.
see also >> San Jose - the fourth room
 by Alfredo Gonzalez Ruibal
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