Pucusana

Ishmael Randall’s work has dealt, in various ways, with themes of central interest in contemporary thought, form an initial approximation to sculpture through the reuse of debris and the coherent treatment of carved organic materials, to a reflection on the urban/rural conflict as origin and symptom of profound global transformations. This is precisely one of the implicit themes in Pucusana, a video that takes its title from the name of one of the coastal resort towns south of Lima. Based on the almost dystopic reality of the urban distortions of Peru’s coastline, the video allegorizes the conditions of the so-called “noble material”, its absurd and forced coexistence with the landscape of the desert, its conventionalized image of “progress” and of “modernity,” its opposition to the delicate natural harmony, and its well-deserved end and collapse at the hands of the machinery that surrounds it. (TC)