Even though the film is an excellent introduction to Bleda and Rosa’s work, could you tell us a bit more about this artistic duo and about the genesis of this project ?
María Bleda (Castellón, 1969) and José María Rosa (Albacete, 1970) have established themselves as two major references when it comes to spanish contemporary photography. Among the many distinctions they have received, are the National Photography Prize in 2008 and the PhotoEspaña Award for Best Emerging Photographer in 2005. Since 1992, their work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout Spain as well as in Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States and China. Their photographs are also displayed in many institutions including the MNCARS (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), the ARTIUM (Centre-Musée basque d’art contemporain), the CAAC (Centre andalou d’art contemporain), the MUSAC (Musée d’art contemporain de Castille-et-León), Bombas Gens Centre d’Art in Valencia and the contemporary art collection of the Generalitat valencienne.
The heart of their work resides in the representation of territory, through which they try to highlight the complex intersection of cultures and temporalities that shape a place. They transform the landscape genre into images endowed with a powerful evocative force, expressing their own experience of the sites they photograph. Through series such as Campos de fútbol (Football pitches), Campos de batalla (Battlefields), Ciudades (Cities) and Origen (Origin), Bleda et Rosa have created a body of work that records the underlying history embedded within places, activating our imagination and our memory.
The origins of the film date back to 2007. At the time, Carles Candela, who conceived the project, and I were making a television documentary about the Spanish Republican government’s final departure into exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War. While filming places associated with the memory of these events, we began talking about the photographic duo whose work we had only just discovered. We were equally struck by these apparently simple images, which had moved us profoundly, although we could not really explain why. A few years later, we met them on separate occasions, entirely unrelated to any film project.
For a long time, Carles and I shared the idea of developing a project focused on an artist’s creative process. We had already explored this interrogation independently, but we wanted to approach it more directly and in greater depth. Bleda and Rosa’s work seemed particularly compelling because of the questions it raised on its form, its meaning, and the ways in which its process of construction could help us understand it better. We therefore decided to approach them. We suggested that we do something together, without knowing exactly what, but with the idea of following their working process in order to gain a deeper understanding of the images that fascinated us so much.
It was around that time that Silvia Blasco, a collaborator of Carles’s, joined the project. She began developing a work method based on experimenting with different ways of approaching the artists and their work. We accompanied them during several projects they were developing at the time, exploring the narrative possibilities they might offer. Eventually, circumstances led us to observe and record the creation of Res Communis, an installation involving an intervention in the landscape, its photographic documentation, and the exhibition of the resulting image in a museum. Perhaps, watching people wandering through the mountains and performing gestures we struggled to understand, gradually opened the way to our own investigation. This mystery echoed with what every act of creation, every poetic gesture, represents for us: something whose origin and mode of appearance remain unknown.
How did you arrive at the split screen format, and what specific aspects did it allow you to explore?
The split screen wasn’t planned from the start. It emerged during the editing process and subsequently shaped the entire portion of the project that still remained to be filmed. At that point, the arrival of Eloy Enciso proved decisive. His role in editing the project became fundamental and extended far beyond the technical task of editing itself.
When we sent him the synchronised footage, some sequences already appeared in split-screen format because they had been shot with two cameras and this presentation made them easier to review. We had been working on the project for nearly two years, whereas Eloy had only just joined it. We therefore trusted his perspective completely, especially because he was free from the attachments and preconceptions we had developed in relation to the filmed material.
Eloy produced an initial cut independently. When he sent it back to us, the double-screen format was already present. We were surprised, but immediately recognised the potential of his suggestion. After discussing it, we all agreed on its relevance.
We felt that this device created a dialectical relationship that opened up the possibility of generating new images in the spectator’s mind through the collision of adjacent and successive images. In this sense, it suggested a dialogue that was evocative of the one that exists between the two artists throughout their shared creative process. It is impossible to see what takes place in the mind of a solitary artist whilst he is creating, but when there are two, we can witness the sharing of doubts, discussions, contradictions, and research. They need to externalise these elements and confront them with one another, just as our images confront each other, reinforcing the idea that all of this work and all of these discussions must ultimately converge into a single image.
Moreover, the ambiguity sometimes created between the two screens regarding the continuity or discontinuity of the images they contain may lead the spectator to reflect on the image itself as they might on a constructed and manipulable object.
The split screen implies a type of editing that Harun Farocki referred to as soft editing offering particular possibilities that are less lens than those of a single-channel editing.
n truth, we were unfamiliar with Farocki’s concept and did not arrive at the idea of a split screen through any prior theoretical justification. The reflections we have just described were formulated retrospectively; they simply seemed relevant and consistent with the way our process of observation and creation materialized in the form of a split screen.
And yes, the relationship between succession and simultaneity that Farocki describes helps us to continually reconsider the balance of the images in play and re-evaluate them.
As we mentioned, Eloy joined the project and proposed an initial cut. From that moment onward, Eloy, Carles, and I gradually sculpted the film’s material. The process evolved with the contributions of the entire team: Silvia, co-screenwriter, who helped structure the film; Miguel Llorens and Miguel Ángel, the two directors of photography, whom we consulted during the editing to assess the possibility of filming new images adapted to the emerging split screen logic; and Amadeo Moscardó, the sound designer, confronted to the challenges posed by two images and sound sources sharing the same visual space.
Everything evolved organically and quite intuitively. Thus, the moments when the image returns to a single screen were never premeditated. In the end, there are only three instances where this happens: when the photo is taken in the fog; when the artists deliberate over which image will be exhibited; and finally when this picture is already hung up, ready to be exposed to the public. They are key moments when a decision is to be made and, in this case, an agreement needs to be reached.
Bleda and Rosa follow an extreme process of distillation that ultimately results in a single image. The film seems to follow the opposite movement: revealing the entire process, the hesitations, the discarded images, and even the assembly of the final piece.
This was a subject we often talked about with María Bleda and José María Rosa. Their work consists in pruning away until only the minimum is left, the essential elements capable of converting what they wish to express. This refinement process took place in the editing room for us.
As we already explained, our idea was to witness a creative process, which meant following all of its steps. Not every single one of them was retained in the final film, because of the narrative structure and the rhythm. This was the case, for example, with the printing process and the material realisation of the image on paper, as well as the preparatory sketches made before the mountain ascent to determine the placement and the orientation of the installation within the landscape
We also filmed a few sequences in which the artists explained their work, their intentions and their methods. Even though these interviews provided valuable material for getting to know them better, we preferred to show people in action rather than explaining what they do.
We wanted to make visible the becoming of an idea born in someone’s mind and its materialisation in the form of an object capable of transmitting a thought. This transmission does not only reside in the finished form of the piece of art but also during the process that led to its creation, a process that seemed just as important to us, if not more so, than the final result presented to the public.
Interviewed by Margot Mecca
