Carla Marzán

Carla Marzán’s long-term research explores the difficulty of translation of cultural transmission into hegemonic forms. Oral history, which has been violently severed and now reaches us through bodily intuitions, remains alive in the wind and in mountains. Cultural memory has been steamrolled by colonial roads leading to globalization and the masculinization of knowledge. I Heard Her from the Other Mountain poses a dichotomy between materials and methodologies. The use and treatment of Canarian clay, sourced from the island, is approached through local tradition —a craft that dates back to pre-Hispanic times and has barely survived the intervening centuries until reaching the present. It showcases vanishing traditions that enter into conflict with the contemporary construction materials used in the work, highlighting the Canary Islands’ present-day situation as a globalized territory. In these islands, the land is increasingly arid, the pools in ravines no longer overflow and earthy colours are interspersed with leftover waste from speculation and mass tourism models.
The work is activated by the performance sellar2bocas, which will take place during the course of the exhibition, remixing it into various problematized historical rhythms, starting with the way shepherds communicated with each other between mountains using the reed flute. This now-extinct instrument is part of traditional Canarian music and folklore generally linked to a masculine imaginary. Its disappearance is yet another symbol of the silencing and erasure of legacy by colonial and heteropatriarchal power and the homogenization of culture. Working alongside her cousin Julia Aznar Gutiérrez, the two women from Tenerife defend the power of listening by reviving lost sounds and instruments through the forms and modes of experimental electronic music. The work diverges from linear thinking and, contrary to what we take as tradition or folklore, it can only be activated in consonance with the questions of its time.