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ROGER PAEZ
ROGER PAEZ
Doing Time The duty of any piece of architecture prison or otherwise might
be to reveal some of those lines of flight, to confuse the distinction be-
Ed Keller tween a prison and a house, and also to show more clearly the ways that
the prison functions as a frame for the convicts as citizens. Citizens of
the prison, yes, and also the world they live in. For, ideally, the prison
would be a site where the distinction between inmate and guard can be
dissolved, through a rehabilitation that reveals the (ultimately) relative
nature of any such distinction.
The Mas dEnric projects ambitions bring to mind the famous pen-
ultimate shot in Antonionis film The Passenger. In this much studied
scene, David Locke [a renowned reporter, played by Jack Nicholson]
awaits a conclusion [death] to his story with an ennui that is paralleled
by the cameras movement through space. Tracking across Lockes hotel
room, the camera approaches a set of iron window bars and then, seam-
lessly, quietly, passes through them and pursues a lazy orbit around a
dusty plaza outside. Seemingly choreographed by the painter Balthus
This first impression of the interior-exterior aspect has become clear more sense of gesture and suspended time,
recently, at least as a problem I possess a strange photograph of a face the camera ultimately loops thru the set-
behind the grate of a castle or a convent. From the photograph it is difficult ting sun and stops to capture a deathbed
to know whether one is seeing from the point of view of the person who conversation, looking back into the room
looks at us or from the opposite side. Examining this photo I do not so much through the same grate it had passed
pose for myself the banal problem of how this effect might be, so to speak, earlier. A single, continuous, impossible
expressible in architecture, or even in film or some other medium; but rath-
shot. The sounds and events in the plaza:
er I realize the grate is the means which makes the occurrence possible
childrens voices, birds, dogs barking,
by a singular coincidence, sometime after I first saw this photograph, I
echoes, tires on gravel, a trumpet (on
visited the cells of the sisters in the Convent of Las Pelayas at Santiago
a record player?), the backfiring of a
de Compostela, and I again saw the effect that had been captured in the
photograph There, in the interior of the cells, I noted a striking luminosity
motorcycle perhaps concealing a pistol
which contradicted the nearly prison-like aspect of the exterior facade. shot, the arrival of a police car with siren
The same shouts that reached the outside of the convent were perceived crisscrossed by the paths of people
on the inside with even greater sharpness, as in a theater Similarly, ar- walking thru the piazza and the final
chitecture becomes the vehicle for an event we desire, whether or not it question, Do you recognize him? su-
actually occurs not, as the functionalists thought, because they carry out Michelangelo Antonioni on the set of The Passenger
perimpose all the possibilities of life, of
a determined function, but because they permit other functions. Finally, during filming of the penultimate shot. freedom, of continuing.
because they permit everything that is unforeseeable in life. Technically, this shot in Antonionis film
was of legendary difficulty and took days to achieve. But, the focus here
Aldo Rossi1 is more on the deep question of being, of identity, and of freedom that
Antonioni was engaging. The iron bars are a frame delineating both the
immediate constraints on the character Locke, and the broader question
In Roger Paezs Map of the Outside [p.90] we are shown a nexus of many as well: What is to be done? The camera passes through the bars, mag-
different scales of relation, which we can understand as conditions of the ically just as sound, light, smells, wind, temperature and time itself
Victor Hugo 4
89
88
Map of the Outside, 2007-2013
Roger Paez i Blanch
84
ROGER PAEZ
243
242
Mas dEnric Penitentiary
Paratge Mas dEnric,
43764 El Catllar, Tarragons, Catalunya
245
244
Published by Distribution
Actar Publishers
New York, 2014 ActarD
New York
Author www.actar-d.com
Roger Paez i Blanch
151 Grand Street, 5th floor
Editor
Ricardo Devesa New York, NY 10013, USA
T +1 212 966 2207
Contributions F +1 212 966 2214
Keller Easterling salesnewyork@actar.com
Adri Carbonell
Llus Ortega of the edition, Actar Publishers
Juan Azulay and Roger Paez i Blanch, 2014
Juan Elvira of the design for Mas dEnric, AiB + PSP
Ed Keller of the texts, their authors
Ramon Faura of the images, their authors
Cam of the artwork, their authors
Eghann MacColl
Angela Kay Bunning All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
Gruff Rhys be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
Jordi Bernad transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the
Graphic Design
Nria Saban prior written permission of the author.
Printing ISBN
Grafos S.A. 978-0-9893317-7-7
Translation and proofreading A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
Angela Kay Bunning from the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA.
Images
Actar Publishers made every attempt to contact the
Jordi Bernad and 15-L. Films: 234-241
Institut Cartogrfic de Catalunya: 113, 116 copyright owners for the images published in this
David Bar + Marta Mul: 167 book. In some cases they could not be reached; we
OjOvivOfoto: 8, 18-19, 39, 45, 53, 65, 75, 85, 95 invite the authors to contact the publisher.
Roger Paez i Blanch: 226-227
Snia Pardo i Polo: 210-213
UTE Comsa Emte: 4-5, 10-11, 13, 116
All other photographs by Jos Hevia
Drawings
AiB: 228-231
Roger Paez i Blanch: 35, 58, 60, 91-93
Caterina Paez-Bunning: 23
Lluc Paez-Bunning: 27, 29
Gruff Rhys+Roger Paez i Blanch: 224-225
Benjamin Rice+Juan Azulay: 72-73
oghann MacColl: 109, 206-207
All other drawings by AiB+PSP
Sources
p 42: Brennan/Linsley/AP, 2006
p 89: http://www.museumofcinema.com/museum-of-
cinema-the-passenger-1975-exhibit/