Claudia Pagès Rabal, 'Five Defence Towers'

About

Claudia Pagès Rabal’s practice intertwines words, bodies, music, and movement. Five Defence Towers marks Pagès’ first institutional solo exhibition in London and the premiere of a major new moving image commission.

Continuing her exploration along the Silk Road, Pagès’ new commission locates five defence towers built throughout Catalonia’s former borderlands. During the 9th and 10th centuries, European forces established a military buffer zone called the Hispanic March. This delineated the border between their own territories and Al-Andalus – the Arabic name for the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula from 711–1492. These historic frontiers of legal, economic, political, and cultural power struggle are the starting point for Pagès’ new moving image work, which spans scripted dialogue, choreographed dance, light, and sound.

Shot on a 360-degree camera and within the black box space of a theatre, The Night of Five Defence Towers tells a tale of surveillance, control, settlement, and refuge across five acts. While a central narrator plots a cartography of the surrounding terrain and its historical bearings, four other performers seek shelter at the foot of a tower.

A camera wanders above and below the performers creating pervasive and panoptical viewpoints while also mimicking the verticality and violence of the watchful towers. Dreamlike sequences of dialogue and dance explore questions of national identity, the construction of political ideology, and the associated myths that shape belief systems.

Presented across a large-scale ceiling-mounted LED screen, the installation recalls the form of a Catalan vault – an architectural feature that draws on ancient Islamic building techniques. Five lightboxes display photographs of the towers spotlit at night. Installed around the gallery, they create a fragmented panorama that returns us to the question of how colonial practices of erasure have persisted over time.