Ernesto Oroza / Pernod Ricard Fellow 2016

Ernesto Oroza is an artist, designer and author based in South Florida. A grad­uate of Havana’s Superior Institute of Design and later a pro­fessor in Havana, his prac­tice is geared to crit­i­cally under­standing man-object inter­ac­tions and the role that col­lec­tive engage­ments with mate­rial cul­ture have in the making of com­mu­nity. He develops research methods as well as chan­nels of dis­sem­i­na­tion that follow the ver­nac­ular prac­tices and eco­nomic logics of his sub­ject-objects. He is author of sev­eral books on pop­ular cre­ativity as expressed in tool objects and the urban envi­ron­ment -what he the­o­rizes as “tech­no­log­ical dis­obe­di­ence” and “ar­chi­tec­ture of neces­sity,” respec­tively. Oroza’s work has been pre­sented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Groninger Museum, The Netherlands; Perez Art Miami Museum, USA; LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Spain; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; Institut de Cultura La Virreina, Barcelona.

Ernesto Oroza, Technological Disobedience. Battery Charger for battery non-rechargeable, 2012. Courtesy of the artiste.

RESEARCH PROJECT

ParaISO (Factogram) is a formal and con­cep­tual inquiry into how the con­tem­po­rary pro­cesses of stan­dard­iza­tion and nor­mal­iza­tion, stig­ma­tized by some intel­lec­tual dis­courses, can, para­dox­i­cally, act as vec­tors to expand ver­nac­ular prac­tices, ideas and everyday tac­tics. For many, “the Norm” and “Stan­dard”—as vec­tors of glob­al­iza­tion pro­cesses— weaken and destroy local pro­duc­tions, con­sump­tion habits and the pop­ular imag­i­nary. This pos­tu­late applies to the pro­duc­tion of everyday goods and cul­tural prod­ucts. ParaISO pro­ject, erected in oppo­si­tion to this assump­tion, seeks to struc­ture the argu­ment that the ele­ments of a mate­rial cul­ture, with a high degree of stan­dard­iza­tion— and even the smallest stan­dard­ized object of this cul­ture—can, under sit­u­a­tions of eco­nomic emer­gency, become a common resource capable of prop­a­gating a mate­rial and cul­tural rev­o­lu­tion.

Family pro­duc­tions in Cuba during the crisis of the 90’s were rad­i­cal­ized by the pres­ence of many stan­dard­ized objects that were sup­plied by the par­tic­i­pa­tion and exchanges of Cuba in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). As everyone on the island had the same objects, knowl­edge on how to repair and reuse them became a common sub­strate. A grass roots pro­duc­tive move­ment found the codes for its recovery and expan­sion in the grammar of the stan­dard­ized. Parts, sur­faces and common forms, engage with the mech­a­nisms of the pop­ular imag­i­na­tion. If someone used a bottle for some­thing new, everyone rec­og­nized the new poten­tial in the object.

Based on the range of pos­si­bil­i­ties inherent in some stan­dard­ized objects and sys­tems (pack­aging, spare parts, raw mate­rials, cal­endar, lan­guage, type­face fam­i­lies), this pro­ject will explore the syntax of the pro­cesses of stan­dard­iza­tion, and the char­ac­ter­is­tics and con­di­tions that allow its dis­tinc­tive use in pop­ular cul­ture and in other redoubts of cul­tural resis­tance.Although Cuba is cur­rently the main field of study for this explo­ration, the pro­ject include an extended research to archives of some European schools of design as Hochschule für Gestaltung in ULM, ENSCI (Les Ateliers) in Paris, and archives of insti­tu­tions such as COMECON, based in coun­tries former mem­bers of this orga­ni­za­tion.

* The title ParaISO (paraiso: Spanish word for par­adise) is a con­ju­ga­tion of “para” (Greek term for alongside of, by, past, beyond, against) and “ISO” (Greek term for: equal to, the same as), an acronym for International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an inter­na­tional stan­dard-set­ting body com­posed of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from var­ious national orga­ni­za­tions for stan­dard­iza­tion.

Research in progress, in the Pernod Ricard studio by Ernesto Oroza, 2016. Courtesy Ernesto Oroza & Villa Vassilieff.

Research in progress, in the Pernod Ricard studio by Ernesto Oroza, 2016. Courtesy Ernesto Oroza & Villa Vassilieff.

Research in progress, in the Pernod Ricard studio by Ernesto Oroza, 2016. Courtesy Ernesto Oroza & Villa Vassilieff.