For The Sedentary Effect, Baja California-based editor-curator Andrea Torreblanca has envisioned a two-year process focused on tracing micro-histories in which phenomena, geopolitics, ecology, spiritualism, and architecture intersect. The title references the sedentary in two ways, geological and human, to interlink different layers of chronicles from native-born and longstanding residents as well as those of travelers and nomads.

The project, including the INSITE Journal and Conversations, will unfold through a framework divided into five points of departure: Erratic Fields, Turning Signals, Genealogies beyond Geographies, Offshore: Economies within Ecologies, and Abstract Worlds: The Psychological Realm. For each of these themes, Torreblanca will engage artists, writers, and thinkers through commissioned texts, interviews, and films, and will integrate additional archival material related to specific historical accounts that stem from the region.

For the artist commission, Torreblanca has invited artist Pastizal Zamudio (Mexicali, 1991). As part of their practice, Zamudio collects objects, writes, takes photographs, and realizes minimal, ephemeral sculptural interventions during frequent journeys between their hometown, Mexicali, B.C., and the several cities in the U.S where they travel to work as a farmworker. During six months, the artist will develop an expanded visual diary—focused on interests that include recounting family histories, travelling to California to work in agricultural fields, and realizing an expedition in the Baja California Peninsula.

Places function as magnetic fields. They anchor our genealogies even when oceanic and continental plates drift slowly under their soils. On the surface, economic, ecological, and spiritual arenas adhere to fixed geographies, influencing the power and dimension of sites. In other words, sediments—geological and human—are formed by a constellation of peregrine particles, organisms, and narratives that congregate in a single location. Within these layers, some residues continue to roam about. Sedentism was one of the most transcendental human shifts that gave rise to civilizations, cities, and communities during the late Stone Age. Over the years, the concept of a “sedentary lifestyle” has not only been far less explored than nomadism and migration, but also has acquired a negative connotation as it relates to a current condition of inactivity and passivity. As a result, it’s mistakenly confused with a refusal to participate and engage in the larger public realm. In its anthropological and historical dimension, however, sedentism was a transition from travelling to living in fixed settlements as a result of agricultural activity. This transformation led to a radical change in the formation of places, together with the constitution of societies, and their civil, social, and political spheres. Today, permanent inhabitants not only have a significant effect on how cities, communities, dwellings, and habitats are conceived by others, but also on how knowledge and history impact their environments.

In geology, the sedimentary relates to terrestrial, coastal, or marine environments where soils land in a place to settle and form a stratum of particles that are transformed into rocks or sediments. For this to happen, a set of conditions, including erosion, weathering, dissolution, precipitation, and lithification occur, gradually shaping a presumptive geological archive.

POINTS OF DEPARTURE

The following thematic points of departure for The Sedentary Effect will be explored throughout the three project components: the artist commission; the INSITE Journal (including VIEWPOINTS); and Conversations.

Erratic Fields will explore how airborne, terrestrial, and oceanic sediments travel to reconfigure environments and soil. Micro-histories include the Santa Ana winds in California, as well as chronicles of dust and migrant plants.

Turning Signals draws from histories in which minor traces give way to narratives of travel and sedentariness. Included are author John Steinbeck and biologist Ed Rickets’s expedition in search of invertebrate organisms in the Baja California peninsula, as well as processes of gold extraction during the nineteenth-century California Gold Rush.

Genealogies beyond Geographies will trace how several sites and works of architecture have influenced the biographies and lives of travelers and inhabitants alike. Chronicles include artist Donald Judd’s travels to Baja California to design a new residence, and the “Mexicali Project,” designed by architect Christopher Alexander, also the first home of commissioned artist Pastizal Zamudio.

Offshore: Economies within Ecologies considers the fishery economy in the coastal zones of the Pacific. For the VIEWPOINTS section of the INSITE Journal the Ensenada-based artist Livia Corona has been invited to develop a video based on her work related to aquaculture, crustaceans from industrial companies, and her interest in natural debris and global trade.

Abstract Worlds: The Psychological Realm is based on several spiritual societies and sites that were established during the twentieth century in the region, including “Lomaland,” a Theosophical community located in Point Loma in San Diego, California, that operated from 1900 to 1942. Founded by Theosophist Katherine Tingley, the community was rooted in agriculture, vegetarianism, and a passion for antique culture.

The “butterfly effect” argues that singular events can have impactful consequences in larger, complex systems. The theory is attributed to American meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz, who presented a talk in 1972: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” For INSITE’s The Sedentary Effect, this question is posed to consider events that influence one another through collision, interconnection, proximity, and displacement in one distinct territory and place. Through this notion, the project aims to render visible disparate micro-histories in which phenomena, storytelling, architecture, ecology, and spirituality are intertwined in the Baja California/Southern California region.

PATRONS

Rosella Fimbres
Garna Muller
INSITERS 2022