All Stories Come Together in the End

All Stories Come Together in the End

Artista: Carlos Ranc

This exhibition originated in The Clipperton Project, a trip to the island of Clipperton in March 2012. The journey was made in two small sailboats and a motorboat, with a total of twenty-two participants, including the crew. The passengers included artists, writers, and scientists, whose mission was to develop scientific and artistic research and production projects during and after the trip. As a result of this experience, which was not unaffected by various problems, Carlos Ranc created a body of work divided into thematic groups. For Biombo*, Ranc presents some of the works that make up this extensive project:

A small library of books in Spanish, English, and French about shipwrecks, losses, islands (both real and metaphorical), maritime tragedies, etc., whose titles and authors’ names were effaced, so that the members of the “crew” could not know whom or what they were reading during the trip. The covers of the books were covered in a phosphorescent orange such as that used for life jackets and inflatable lifeboats.

A video in which the artist is depicted as the curator of an exhibition held on the island of objects gather in situ, out of which Ranc, in an act of appropriation, recreated works by other artists. The text that appears in the subtitles is from the novel Clipperton by Pablo Raphael, a close friend of the artist and also a member of the crew. Before embarking on the voyage, Ranc sent an invitation to everyone on his list of contacts to announce the exhibition: Marooned, “…so so far away that no one can visit it,” with the geographical coordinates of the island as the sole reference.

A book of songs, in the form of a playlist, edited together in such a way that they tell a story of a love affair drawing to its end. There are only two copies of the book: one was deliberately left on the island as a token of expiation, while the other is the one exhibited here.

The work Get Your Filthy Hands off My Desert was created a few months after returning from the island. The monuments in question are all milestones of defeat. The artist transfers them symbolically to the island, which has been reclaimed and then lost again, where the real victors are scurvy and madness.

* Biombo is a program of the Museo de Arte de Zapopan aimed at expanding the practice of art through the appropriation of writing and publishing techniques, through works which are not limited to book form, but which have to be read in order to be understood.