Review

Claudia Pagès Rabal Plays in the Ruins of Settler Colonial Time

Claudia Pagès Rabal Plays in the Ruins of Settler Colonial Time


In Typo-Topo-Time Aljibe (2024), a video, shown on an undulating screen, follows Claudia Pagès Rabal as she descends into an 11th-century Moorish water cistern in Xàtiva, Spain—wetsuit on, 360-degree camera strapped to her body. She swims through murky water, plunging and surfacing as a techno score drops and swells with her. The walls around her are scribed with marks spanning centuries—penises, names, legal contracts—all cut into the same damp stone, none claiming priority over the others. This is what Pagès Rabal calls “settler time”: Markings and materials pile up as one civilization is superimposed onto the next.



Source link