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We already introduce you Fisura, a magazine about critical reflections and creative projects in architecture, photography and art. Now we offer you the first part of a crossed interview between Artwort team and Fisura founders.
Fisura is cracked
Question – Giuseppe Resta – In the first page of your first issue you start from the dictionary. “Fisura” has three meanings: a slit, a glitch or a gap produced in a uniform material. To me they seem three main conditions of contemporary discourse about architecture, addressing crisis as main engine for innovation. What is your position as catalyst of Mexican debate?
Answer – Diego H. Dorantes. For us, choosing the word fisura as the name of this zine, has different purposes. We like the idea that it is a word that does not necessarily have a negative meaning as one might usually think; we think of a fracture made in a wall, a wall that imprison us, then this fissure would mean a hopeful sign. Of course it can also be a word that relates a negative meaning, but what interests us the most is its capacity to point something out, which turns it into a message.
These meanings can also be included in the contemporary discourse of architecture. Our interest is not to have a single sentence, nor to establish or to convince everyone else that something is “good” or “bad”; it interests us to transmit a message, a question that will confront the preset speeches. Overtime, the fact of questioning what is assumed as single truth, allows the construction of new proposals.
The Mexican architecture milieu seems uniform in many ways. Within this panorama, there coexist repetitive dialogues and paradigms that are rarely challenged; so it is important to have different platforms seeking to expose another point of view. At the same time there are many architectural publications that seem to have similar speeches, where there is no divergence. Our intention is to create a platform that helps dissolve this homogeneous state.
It is because of this premises that we started from quoting these denotations, to establish a dialogue about the relationship of each meaning and to convey our readers into an open interpretation, and simultaneously highlight the intention of this publication: to be an alternative to a speech without gaps.
Question – Marco Ferrari – In the contemporary society it seems that just what is represented is real, that the reality becomes truly active only through the media: in this sense, looks like you are challenging this idea talking about residual spaces, emptiness and margins, revealing what is usually hidden or left at the border. Is the void the place where to start building our futures?
Do you think there is a particular condition of freshness and possibility of destinies associated with the American continent that in Europe we have lost some time ago?
Answer – Stefania Fibela. Mexico city grows everyday, new buildings are built, new highways and roads, all in the pursuit of a modern city, a post industrial one, where the gentrification is inevitable. In this context it is necessary to observe what is happening and what we can find in the outskirts, as this places become empty or giant broke pieces, such is the case of the Bordo. Inside this never-ending city, blank spaces represent a resistance; it is an alternative to understand the megalopolis or what it needs. We must understand the voided spaces not as a lack of architecture, but as a possibility of city.
I think about the concept of Benjamin, the homeless-collector, him who finds in residual the possibility of reconstruction and also of a new story. It seems to me that the main difference between Mexico and Europe are the spatial measures. European cities try to profit better of the existing spaces, because sometimes there is no other choice. In Mexico, despite the great areas, we continue to enlarge one only city, leaving aside every other place that not belongs within these limits; so it is purely necessary to learn from these places, from these voids.
From the name of our publication, we try to offer a possibility, a different vision; we search in the structure of the fissures a chance to identify inaccuracies in order to have access to other visions of architecture, arts, design and culture.
