QUESTION. Giambattista Brizzi – Your magazine talks about architecture awareness and educational responsibility of the architect himself, from a quite pessimistic point of view on the current Mexican reality. A dystopic idea, that the title itself already suggests, Fisura, which is about opposites and contradictions. Europe has been discussing all these themes for a very long time, and as a result there has been a reinterpretation of the architecture concept. Despite the cultural differences, do you think that the European alternatives can actually suggest new intervention perspectives on a diversified Latin-American reality, offering innovative solutions and not only novelties?
ANSWER. Chrystyan Romero. “Nor the Latin-American communicates its real misery to the civilized man, neither the civilized man understands truly the miserable nobility of the Latin-American” – Glauber Rocha
Any proposal presupposes changes, changes that are variable between a body and other, between a territory and other, between an old world and a new one. The European alternatives seek the order, they seek the truth, they seek for hygiene, and also to colonize trough orders that not correspond to Latin-American pursuits not even their most authentic destiny.
Both worlds (the old and the new) do not comprise the targets of its opposite one; a lot less the meaning of words that we force to translate between a language and other, words that will not correspond to its real meaning for those who pronounce them, those who feel them, those who use them in current language; words as misery or pessimism would be, this time, a good example.
In such a way that the spaces presented in the publications of fisura raise the acknowledgement of our daily spaces, places which the latin-american architect does not recognize as he has been immersed in the publication of other ambiances, which prevents him from recognizing itself and then talk to his otherness.
This way, fisura thinks about how to be a local path that may very well be an open letter for the global phenomenon. This open letter is addressed to the architects of those other worlds who also have the right to step into a different space, without predisposition to colonize, but simply to inhabit.
Question – Federica Zatta – Our modern times have seen an endless proliferation of publications, magazines, books devoted to architecture as an aesthetic mass phenomenon, in conjunction with the progressive loss of its political and social role. Where does the urge to dedicate part of FISURA to it come from? And how does architecture relate to the other forms of art and visual disciplines that you address in your zine?
Answer – Angel Badillo – We don’t like to think of fisura as an architectural design magazine but a public mechanism. Lately, in the wide design scene, it could be noticed a massive and a very fast divulgation of ‘products’, thanks to the huge reinforcement of instruments of data sharing. This symptom was followed by a contrasting deep attention to the unsolved affairs in unusual latitudes; as an abstract: the principal design refineries ran out of raw material to work with, so they started to extend their limits, creating laboratories abroad.
Architects nowadays started to inhabit a very small sphere where they are lords and masters, truth is that they are no longer recognized by society itself, because of economical and political issues with more relevance than status. In a professional aspect, architecture belongs to a small outcast group that is not distinguished by artists not yet by the “serious careers”, both in the temporal and the social dimension. So, being aware of that unfortunate position, we are aiming to regain the multidisciplinary condition of design branches, but with a genuine interest, leaving behind all of the “archistar” conditions.
In a global comprehension, we work among with the Latin-American culture best interests, specially the Mexican ones. For us the oversaturation of information can also result in a lack of knowledge, so we can find several scenarios where a foreigner point of view is needed to reinforce the local one. Within the evolution of the zine, right now we found ourselves in a divulgation moment, as we need to make the mexican society conscious of its own evolution and -most important- a part of it.
At the end of the day, quoting a popular voice, whom would you blame? Politicians? Lawmakers? Architects? Urban planners? Designers? Landscapers? All we are even doing it right? This is the task we should help to solve as an emergent magazine.