Cabo Rojo and the south-westernmost part of Puerto Rico wasn’t the first area that artist Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Marina Reyes Franco, Curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), spoke about exploring for the latest, and 13th, episode of Incidents (of Travel).

As Marina writes: “Originally, I was interested in what Sofía could show me around Levittown, a mid-century housing development where her grandmother had lived, and the new work she was filming using 16mm film that has been rotting since Hurricane Maria. ‘It is an area full of symbols of the collapse of the Commonwealth’, she told me, knowing I’d love it. (The country’s official name is Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.) Naturally, Covid-19 had other plans, but the theme of the collapse of the colonial order that our political system represents remained. We made up lists of possible places that symbolise this and enumerated them over several emails and texts. What’s really rotting away, what’s captured on celluloid or the celluloid itself? When the opportunity arose to stay in a rented house in Cabo Rojo, I jumped for joy and made a whole weekend out of it with my partner Oswaldo and our friend José.”

Continue reading Marina’s evocative account of her day with Sofía, and see their wonderful photos and videos, at incidents.kadist.org