Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

‘Tlatelolco Disproved’ is both a choreographed urban landscape and a portrait of a community. Documented with photographs and video it was created with the collaboration of over 100 neighbors of the Chihuahua building of the Nonoalco Tlatelolco residential complex. The aim of this paper is to present this collaborative project and critically negotiate the different types of participatory processes in art. It also aims at discussing alternative methods for mapping history, architecture and the everyday, through critical and fragmented glimpses of a place and performative processes. The residential urban complex of Tlatelolco, completed in 1964, became the second biggest of its kind on the American continent (after co-op city in the Bronx). It was part of Mexico´s ambitious move towards modernization. Architect Mario Pani, a contemporary of Le Corbusier, was set on bringing Functional Modernism to Mexico with his Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlatelolco; a utopic middleclass paradise. His ambitious project was carefully timed to be completed a few years before Mexico was to host the Olympics. Pani´s dream was short-lived though. Only 4 years after its completion and 10 days before the Olympics opening ceremony in 1968 the government massacred hundreds of students during a peaceful protest in-front of Tlatelolco´s Chihuahua Building. Tragedy was to strike again less than two decades later when hundreds more were killed after the Nuevo Leon building (part of the complex) collapsed in the 1985 earthquake. Today, Tlatelolco exhibits the scars of history. This palimpsest of memories and events informs the collaborative mapping presented in this paper.