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“WATCH YOUR STEP MIND YOUR HEAD” - An interview with Marina Reyes Franco

We sat down with art historian and independent curator Marina Reyes Franco to talk about her current exhibition in Berlin, “WATCH YOUR STEP MIND YOUR HEAD”, the perception of the Caribbean, colonial legacies and the idea of Paradise. 

-Hi Marina! So great to have you here, what brought you to the city?

I’m a resident curator invited by ifa and KfW Stiftung as part of an ongoing program of exhibitions called Untie to Tie that was conceived by the director of the gallery Alya Sebti.

-Did the open call have a particular focus?

The program is sort of a counter programming because of the City Palace reconstruction situation, it is based on de-colonial studies, also the partnership with KFW specifies that the curator invited would have to come from Latin America, Africa or Asia. It was under the banner of Urban Cultures.

-Talk to me about the exhibition

I visited Berlin last year when I learned about the palace situation, the reconstruction of imperial Prussian architecture and all the things that that entails, because it seemed like this German past that they could be proud of instead of 20th  century regrets in history so I was aware of that, I came here in September 2016 to participated in a Berlin Biennale Program and that was  a good introduction to the city which is why I was encouraged to apply. I wanted to present an idea that would address another part of the world that I didn’t think was being addressed in the general Untie to Tie program yet.

-That part being the Caribbean?

Exactly, other Tropics. The exhibition is called Watch Your Step Mind Your Head, which is something you can see in boats all over, like when you get on or off a cruise ship or when you pass a certain threshold in a ship, but it also references just be mindful of what you put into your head.

It includes the work of Irene de Andres and Sofia Gallisá Muriente. Sofia is from Puerto Rico and Irene is from Ibiza. Irene has been working on a project in Puerto Rico, which started three years ago, when she participated in a residency program at Beta Local in Puerto Rico, she was very interested in several locations and histories that Sofia and I (who at the time were roommates) were also interested in.  She wanted to visit certain post military spaces like Vieques, Roosevelt Roads, and to check out some monuments, remnants of the Spanish empire in Puerto Rico that are also tourist attractions now, there was also an emphasis on cruise ships (at the time we lived right next to the port). Her visiting Puerto Rico and continuing her research project around Tourism in the Caribbean was very timely because we were investigating the same things. So the exhibition is the culmination of this two-year research process into the construction of the idea of the Caribbean as seen and experience from Puerto Rico.

It stems from our recent search in cruise ship tourism or the current emphasis that the government has in inviting foreign investors to come live in Puerto Rico. There are several pieces that use archival material to reference an earlier period where there was also this incentive to bring in foreign investment to the island.

Irene has a multimedia installation that’s called the second voyage which features some slides and collages that have images that come from the national archives and there’s where she found images from an American soldier, which are then reproduced in a triptych in the entrance of the gallery. Many of the images are of airports, hotels, and different monuments around Old San Juan but also construction sites that convey this idea of progress. There is a wall projection that has a more contemporary narrative that she created over the two years and several visits to the port and to the construction site of the “Birth of the new world sculpture”

-So this is work that’s very critical of the idea of tourism as an investment, or tourism as an economic savior?

I think that the exhibition is concerned with how the development of photography and film went hand in hand with the development of tourism. How the ideas that we have of a place, any place, but in particular at this time in the Caribbean, its related to how it was marketed in the past and realizing that we are performing a role in that society that was also created and mitigated for us through images.

That is why I think it’s really good to see one of the videos that’s included in Irene’s installation, it is a re-editing of films from the mid 40s to the mid 60s, particularly a news reel that shows how Puerto Rico was presented in cinemas in the United States, for an American audience.  And there is also a mini documentary made by the Puerto Rican Development Bank that is informing Puerto Ricans about the progress that they’re making with all these investors that are coming in. In the past what the government was focusing on was trying to bring in foreign investors to develop industry and to create jobs through industry. They were investing in building hotels and in building infrastructure that eventually other corporate partners would administer, it was a very strange kind of public/private association, where the Puerto Rican people were really putting everything on the line, we were the one putting our credits, investing the money and then given the hotel over to the Hilton, for example. But in the present, I think it’s even worse. The discourse hasn’t really changed and that’s what the exhibition reveals.  

Puerto Rico is still the paradise and now, as one may see in Sofia’s video B-Roll, where she re-edit videos from tourism campaigns that were showed at the Puerto Rico investment summit in 2016, that have these swiping views of a really modern looking Puerto Rico as well as empty beaches and luxury hotels, the discourse is the same, come live in Paradise, the people are great, they are really nice, the government is doing everything that they can they are bending over backwards for you, so come to Puerto Rico enjoy the marvelous tax benefits of paying 4% tax and evading federal taxes. So it’s a look into how the Caribbean has been sold.

-How was the reception here in Germany?

There are always many questions about what is Puerto Rico and where is it among awkward conversations about Costa Rica…

-Talked to me about the new project German Tropics

One of the things that Irene told me when you were preparing the show was you have to go to Tropical Islands! So I went there during my first week.  But German Tropics is mostly an appreciation of all the summer advertising that I’ve seen revolving around how Germans perceive these tropical places. It’s not really a project, it’s more observations and I presented it in an open studio setting.

-Do you see the investigation into the relationships of North/South as your main focus as a curator?

As I’m able to travel more, I get to see more of these relationships, so I can comment on them and think about them in a more precise and informed way. So I guess that it has increasingly become more of a focus. After living in Argentina almost seven years and also being informed by their own political history and their own battles with the economic crisis and foreign investors, also the debt that was such a prevalent conversation, I mean I was there when some foreign investors seize a war ship that they have in Africa, the investors were trying to claim some money and they just seized a ship. After I was informed by that situation and going back to Puerto Rico and having the realization that it’s not a recession we are living through but a depression and seeing how a certain part of the cultural sector has reacted and with this whole idea of cultural enterprises and cultural entrepreneurs and how problematic can that be in a very precarious situation, I got more and more interested in what I perceived as this idea that they were trying to impose of Puerto Rico, and by they I mean certain government operatives and think-tanks like the Foundation for Puerto Rico and their immediate advisors, everything is being geared towards the service industry and towards providing services for people who are going to be living in Puerto Rico and are being incentivized to live in Puerto Rico. And working in culture and in arts there’s always the problem of “can you really be ethical about where the money is coming from?” If it’s coming from the government and it’s a terrible administration then what do you do? But right now there isn’t even that.

-Talk to me about your future plans.

This project was able to be shown here but I see it as the first installment of this ongoing research project that I started from afar already and now will be traveling to the Caribbean thanks to a grant I was awarded from Independent Curators International and the Collection Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, it’s a travel research grant and it’s only geared towards the Caribbean and Central America so I'll be going to the Bahamas Jamaica, Panama, Dominican Republic and Trinidad to continue my research into  tax evasion, Panama papers, money laundering but also the culture in the Panama canal and the construction of the Caribbean as Paradise.

Visit “WATCH YOUR STEP MIND YOUR HEAD”  @ ifa Gallery Berlin | Linienstraße 139/140 | Tuesdays – Sundays 2 – 6 p.m | Closed on Mondays and on holidays 23.06. – 17.09.2017

*All photos courtesy of Wataru Marukami