The Sedimentary Effect

/ Editor-Curator

Andrea Torreblanca (Mexico) is a curator and writer from Mexico, and the Director of Curatorial Projects at INSITE.

Program El Sitio: A Timeless Way of Building | May 18, 19, 20, 2023

Q & A with Andrea Torreblanca

INTRODUCTION

The Sedimentary Effect is a five-year project (2021–25) being developed for INSITE’s current initiative, COMMONPLACES. Conceived by editor-curator Andrea Torreblanca, The Sedimentary Effect is envisioned as a platform for artists, curators, writers, and various publics to explore alternative ways of understanding and imagining the context of Baja California, Mexico, and San Diego County in the United States. Through different “chapters,” or points of departure, the project aims to delve into multiple layers of the border region through a constellation of commissions, experiences, dialogues, and histories designed to prompt and suggest new routes for engagement with this vast and singular place.

Each chapter is focused on distinct microhistories and natural phenomena unique to the region—from Santa Ana winds, to Pacific Ocean artisanal fishing, to Donald Judd’s travels to Baja California and the development of modular houses by the architect Christopher Alexander in Mexicali, to Lomaland, the Theosophical society founded by Katherine Tingley in San Diego.

The Sedimentary Effect chapters will each unfold in four components: Artist Commissions (context-specific works in a variety of disciplines); Conversations (expeditions, encounters, and public dialogs at sites throughout the region); both print and online editions of the INSITE Journal (including commissioned texts and visual essays by writers, artists, curators, and researchers); and Collaborations/Exhibitions (the presentation of artworks, screenings, or talks jointly organized with institutions in the region and beyond).

Overview

The Sedimentary Effect is a project that will delve into different layers of the Baja California-Southern California region through a constellation of experiences, histories, and dialogues that can prompt new routes and possibilities to engage with this geographical context. The project, conceived to unfold between 2021 and 2024, features several components, including Artist Commissions, a series of Conversations, special issues of the INSITE Journal, and Collaborations/Exhibitions both in the region and beyond.

Devised through different main chapters, The Sedimentary Effect will trace microhistories and phenomena that reveal different social, cultural, and spiritual layers, ranging from the Santa Ana winds, to artisanal fishing in the Pacific Ocean, to Donald Judd’s travelling to Baja California and the development of modular houses by the architect Christopher Alexander in Mexicali, to Lomaland, the Theosophical society founded by Katherine Tingley in San Diego.

CHAPTERS (POINTS OF DEPARTURE):

Chapter 1: Erratic Fields

The first chapter, Erratic Fields, is based on stories about the transmutation of dust, wind, earth, soil, and territory from aesthetic, social, and anthropological views. From the effects of seasonal winds and histories of mining and droughts, work for this chapter will delve into the different ways in which geology and natural phenomena mark the memory of landscapes.

Chapter 2: Offshore, Economies within Ecologies

The second chapter, Offshore, Economies within Ecologies, focuses on the Pacific Ocean—described by artist Allan Sekula (INSITE 97) as “troubled waters”—where both underwater ecologies and economic industries converge. Microhistories considered in this chapter include Japanese artisanal fishing in Ensenada, B.C., as well as John Steinbeck and Ed Rickett’s journey to Baja California in the 1940s in search of invertebrates.

Chapter 3: A Timeless Way of Building

The third chapter, A Timeless Way of Building, is based on the homonymous book (1979) and social housing complex designed by the Viennese architect Christopher Alexander, in 1976, in Mexicali, B.C. (coincidentally, the former residence of one of the artists invited to develop a commission for The Sedimentary Effect), as well as Donald Judd's travels between 1968 and 1971 through Baja California in search of a place to build a house. Both projects speak to the notion of home as a place that goes beyond dwelling.

The Sedentary Effect will take place around four organizing platforms:

Artists Commissions. For each of the chapters, various projects will be commissioned with artists, musicians, architects, and choreographers from the region at different stages during 2022 and 2023. Manifestations of these commissions will include work in a range of media, including performance, concerts, dance, video, sculpture, and drawings. Public presentations of the commissioned projects will take place in different sites and institutions across the region.

Conversations. Conceived as a central component of The Sedimentary Effect, Conversations is an experimental and flexible platform that will adapt to each of the chapters of the project. From multi-day peripatetic city excursions and lectures in several venues, to expeditions by land and sea, to symposia in site-specific unique settings, the impulse behind these dialogic encounters is to provide multilayered frameworks, where research, guided excursions, lectures, and roundtables, both public and private, are all critical to engage with this geographical context, and to prompt collaborations among practitioners from different fields.

INSITE Journals. The Sedimentary Effect will have online and print publications devoted to each of the chapters, that will include new texts and related material commissioned with writers, curators, artists, and researchers, as well as selections from existing archives. The Journals will also serve as the primary source of documentation for the processes and outcomes associated with both the Artists Commissions and Conversations.

Collaborations/Exhibitions. With The Sedimentary Effect, multiple opportunities to work with and through partner institutions are emerging as each of the chapters is developed, which include collaborations to develop public programs, concerts, performances, and exhibitions with focused nonprofits, museums, and cultural centers in the Baja California-San Diego County region and beyond.

All projects and public programs realized for The Sedimentary Effect will be documented and disseminated on INSITE’s comprehensive archive-based website.

Curatorial Statement

Sedimentary rocks are not formed as a consequence of their immobility, but rather as a result of movement, of external agents that travel and collect migrant particles on their way. Once they solidify and settle in a territory, the sediments give rise to other forms of life, as they continuously erode and change their geomorphology. In between the rocks’ cracks and porosities, dust drifts and dissipates. This process is similar to the ways in which the strata of history settle in a single place that seems to be fixed by geography, because not only are its terrestrial layers erratic, but other natural phenomena and incidents, nomadic and sedentary, also come together through stories of displacements and settlements that intersect and build up its character. Among the fissures and gaps are the microhistories that reveal the signs, experiences, and narratives of its trajectory.

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.

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 Sedimentary 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.

The Sedimentary Effect

Overview

Curatorial Statement

Acknowledgments