Rumbos 2016, Mexico City - London
Design and project management of video installation
For: Year of exchange MX and UK
Collaborators: Diego Flores, Laura Navarro, Leticia Lozano, Josué Ramírez, Danielle Kummer, Anthony Swords, Lizon Tijous
Rumbos is non-conventional mapping project that explores, through conversations with taxi drivers, the everchanging nature of cities. Soundscapes and video form part of an installation where journeys are taken in an intimate narrative environment: the taxi. Voiced by individual stories, the psique of London and Mexico City is portrayed through the political and social themes that shape the daily life. These conversations and the routes that are being transited, show the role that taxi drivers play as witnesses of the constant transition of the identities in two capital cities.
"Esta ciudad no es la loca, esta ciudad es bellísima, los locos somos nosotros. El tiempo siempre es el mismo, el reloj nunca cambia, lo que cambia somos nosotros y con nostros, la ciudad". Nuñez Domingues, Daniel, Mexico City, 2016. Photo by Mariana Martínez
Narratives portray the features of temporal existence. The narrator in turn, in this case a taxi driver, is the timekeeper, the one that voices human time of a city. These story collectors cruise the urban space getting in close contact with the inhabitants of the city and as like the storyteller of a small village, they disperse their knowledge and tell their experiences with the different characters they encounter, exchanging narratives for narratives. Mobility constitutes and shapes the birth, growth, and functioning of the modern metropolis. The circulation of people and objects establishes infrastructures, whether material or immaterial, that outlive their structures and stratify to constitute a city. Exploring and documenting the Taxi driver narrators, this project will start a conversation between distant cultures and will evidence, through a psicogeographic map, the similarities and differences between the cities.
Mexico City is kept vibrant by the informal reciprocity of storytelling in which its citizens are open all the time to the exchange of ideas and feelings. It important then, that the narratives of this city are spread in a same way, informal, casual, and genuine. Mexico City, 2016. Photo by Jossue Ramirez
Storytellers can be also found driving the Black Cab, a symbol known around the world. The drivers have “the knowledge” of a city so complex like London, having to pass an exam that proves they know every corner of this metropolis. London, 2016. Photo by Tough and Rumble
Plunge into a journey in which the narrators are not the most usual storytellers. What they might lack in verse is counteracted by their empiric knowledge: they are taxi drivers, the first-hand witnesses of the transformations the city has suffered. There are many ways in which Mexico City and London are alike but also very far apart. With this in mind, Rumbos documents and communicates how the urban fabric of these two cities works, the effect it has on their citizens’ lives, its evolution, and how in some ways, it will remain the same through time. It is then, through the eyes of 6 taxi drivers that we explore Mexico City and London, their social, political and cultural controversies, contextualised by reflections, echoes, and impressions of their day-to-day effervescence.
The installation is conformed by 6 small spaces, opposed by city and theme. 2016. Illustration by Mariana Martínez Balvanera
What secrets and opinions can they share with their passengers? What do the conversations between these two characters say about the culture and the concerns of the citizens now a days? 3 journeys and 3 themes that conform a psicogeographic image of each city, 3 videos by city of about 10 minutes each. In each city we cruise 3 different routes, led by 3 taxi driver characters. Three samples of the ever-shifting identity of these cities will be portrayed by each of the narrators, where we will distinguish the diversity of the urban fabric.
ROUTE 1: The global city
The non-place, a place in the city that has become a globalised and modern image, where its inhabitants seek globalised dreams.
ROUTE 2: The city in transition
A place that has changed owners for many cycles, that has encountered many cultures, that has been the creator of mixing and matching.
ROUTE 3: The traditional city
What is a city’s most defined identity, what is the city for its citizens, where can we find a place that is timeless yet charged with layers of time.
Exhibition in Mexico City, Reforma, January 2016. Photos by Tough and Rumble
For more videos go to the Vimeo channel