Endless structure: metro series

Exhibited for the first time in 2023, Endless structure: metro series is a video installation in a building in ruins that is part of the Bogotá La Sabana railway station (Colombia). This allowed me to generate a fold between different moments in the country’s transportation history about the game of political and economic interests that meant the dismantling of Ferrocarriles Nacionales and the implicit corruption in major infrastructure works such as the case of the Medellin Metro.

The main component of the work is a panoramic video shot in several stations of the Medellin Metro System. For this purpose, the platform was recorded, configuring an image that evidences the dynamic of this space, such as passengers waiting, the arrival of the subway, passengers coming in and out, and institutional dynamics that, to some extent, show the ideological devices implemented as a form of social control of urban space.

The audiovisual material was the basis for creating the video installation through the implementation of a multichannel projection, as well as the realization of direct interventions in the exhibition space with elements typical of these urban spaces, such as security mirrors, seeking a 1:1 scale to build an immersive atmosphere and interaction with the viewer.Memory is a central element in these processes. In the case of this proposal, Estructura sinfín: metro series acquires autobiographical nuances by proposing the investigation of places inhabited, travelled, suffered or enjoyed in different moments of my life. To travel again through the city I live in and stop in some of the spaces that have demarcated the daily routes, such as the complex urban infrastructure works of the subway system, could perhaps allow me to look again at the reality surrounding me and reflect on it. What is the impact of these unimportant moments of displacement on our lives? To what extent do the transportation systems condition our life habits? Following Marc Augé in his text The Underground Traveler, can a life history – one’s history – be reconstructed through the investigation of memories traced through the subway stations one has travelled through in one’s life, beyond geographical location, as places of personal memory? And in turn, could inhabiting these infrastructures allow us to raise questions about the social and political history of the country?

A project by Mauricio Carmona Rivera

Production: Andrés Carmona Rivera – Mauricio Carmona Rivera

Field production: Kelly Yhoana Urrea 

Camera: Alejandro Henao, Alexis Caro, Laura Zuluaga, Daniel Torres

Winder Urrutia, Daniela Loaiza, Carlos Londoño 

Direct sound: Daniel Correa, Diego Giraldo 

Script: Laura Zuluaga

Sound design: Andrés Quintero 

Editing and editing: Andrés Carmona Rivera, Mauricio Carmona Rivera

3D shots: Laura Tobón

Policéfalo Films