Carmen Mariscal
Tláloc/Contadero

My work has addressed the question of memory through the concept of habitat (or dwelling) for the past two decades. The first habitat of human beings is our body, followed by the clothes we wear and the homes, cities, and public spaces that contain us. I explore the presence of traces of memory in these human habitats.

For the project Tláloc, Contadero, I presented films and photographs of my encounter with the last destruction process of my childhood home in Mexico City. In this embodied experience, which is filmed, I found myself confronted by an excavator (or power shovel) and started digging next to it. As an archaeologist, I re-arranged the last remains of what used to be the house where I grew up in. I used my hands and water to reveal the underlying matter. In the film, I also walked barefoot between the intact garden and the ruins of the house; I constantly stared at the excavated land where my house once stood, engaging and disengaging with it. What has been extracted? What remains?

The project takes its name from the street Tláloc and the neighbourhood Contadero where the house was located. Tláloc was the Aztec god of the rain; its name derives from the Náhuatl language and can be translated as “that which lies upon the surface of the earth”, meaning that this project suggests the debris that was leftover on the surface after excavation. The other word used in the project´s title Contadero means “That which can or should be counted, such as days, months, and years” in Spanish. I use this word to allude to the fragments of the house that I collected and the flow of memories that marched past my psyche as I quartered the area during the documentation process of the last demolition of my family house.

Carmen Mariscal PhD Candidate, SoAH, Royal College of Art.