Hacendera

Hacendera is a chorus of clay pots rotating on the axes of potter's wheels. Every second pot turns thanks to a motor at its base. The handmade, and thus, slightly irregular jars are not exactly circular, so the motorized ones rub against their neighbours. These collisions produce a resonant sound that fills the space of the room, vaguely reminiscent of cowbells being rattled in the distance. Meanwhile, the friction itself tends to be removed by the system: the excess of touch erodes the surfaces of the jars and produces a fine dust that accumulates in traces along the floor below.

Vitruvius’ architectural concept of the acoustic jar is recalled in Hacendera: jars served as models in his Treatise on Architecture for the acoustic design of buildings. Later, during the Middle Ages, they were used in the walls and floors of churches as sound amplifiers. In the installation, however, each handmade vessel -with its irregularities- acts only as a materialized model of itself: on top of the modelling machine, the potter's wheel, they turn, rattle and wear out.

The making and unmaking of stabilized forms and movement is at play in the installation. Hacendera, an old Spanish word from the rural context that names the communal work involved in the provision of common services, refers to the tension between matter and form through processes of making, sedimentation and maintenance.

The installation was produced with the help of the Hacendera Abierta group (Mónica Castro de Lera, Javier Rodríguez, Carlos María Rodríguez Trigueros, Almudena López, Miguel Ángel Llamas, Iván Valbuena, Alipio Muñiz de Gorostiza, Amado Nogueras and Ángel Juárez), which gathers together every two weeks at the Foundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia in Cerezales del Condado (León, Spain).