ART AND INSTITUTIONS OF POWER: FERNANDO SANCHEZ CASTILLO’S ARCHITECTURA PARA EL CABALLO

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ART AND INSTITUTIONS OF POWER: FERNANDO SANCHEZ CASTILLO'S ARCHITECTURA PARA EL CABALLO


BIOGRAPHY

Rebecca Gessert is an economics teacher at the American School in Japan in Tokyo. She is currently pursuing a master's degree from Azusa Pacific University in Modern Art History, Criticism and Theory. Her interests include social reform and exploring ways to connect artistic creation to economics and science.

ABSTRACT
This article attempts to serve as a model for educators wanting to employ the practice of connecting artwork to studies of politics, economics, current events, and social theory. Basic pictorial elements of Fernando Sanchez Castillo's short color video Architectura para el Caballo (2002) are discussed in a Marxist framework as representations of capitalist ideology. The article supports the relevancy of Castillo Sanchez's work in the context of recent anti-austerity protests in Spain, surveys other works by Castillo for themes of power, riot and suppression of riot, briefly discusses architecture and its role in controlling human behavior, and relates Architectura to questions surrounding the role higher education plays in supporting capitalist ideology. In the end, the article argues that Castillo's work predominantly functions to critically spotlight the roles normalized institutions like riot police and education play in supporting dominant ideology.

KEYWORDS
Fernando Sanchez Castillo
Labor Theory of Value
Surplus Value Theory
Panopticon
Marxism
Educational reform

On 22 March 2014, tens of thousands of Spanish taking part in the 'March for Dignity' converged on Madrid to show dissatisfaction with austerity measure cuts to public education and healthcare in the face of a national unemployment rate of 26 per cent and government corruption scandals (BBC News 2014). Violence erupted when protestors tried to break a police barricade protecting the headquarters of the ruling party (BBC News 2014). This was one of several demonstrations in Spain, a previous protest culminating in police firing rubber bullets at citizens trying to gain access to Madrid's parliament building (Burridge 2012). More recently, activists have resorted to using holograms of themselves to object to new legislation criminalizing protests at congressional or parliament buildings (CNN 2015).


Caption 1: Protesters surround police vans in Madrid on 26 September 2012.

Fernando Sanchez Castillo's Arquitectura para el Caballo/Architecture for the Horse (2002) is a five-and-a half-minute color video shown as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo's 'Marvellous Real' exhibition in February 2014. In Arquitectura, a rather ordinary-looking man wearing a business suit and sporting a slight paunch sits astride a white horse as it travels through the Autónoma University of Madrid's School of Philosophy building (Li-mac.org 2014).

Caption 2: Video still from Arquitectura para el Caballo (2002).

The visual power of Arquitectura para el Caballo (2002) stems mostly from its combination of disparate images; men do not wear business suits when riding horses, and horses are not ridden in sterile institutional hallways. Although these juxtaposed elements clearly create a sense of magical realism as the Tokyo art show's title suggests, this paper argues that Arquitectura is most powerfully interpreted as social commentary, and that this social commentary is essentially Marxist in its message.
Marxist theories primarily focus on the disparities in economic class created by a capitalist system. The 'labor theory of value' asserts that the true value of a commodity reflects the value of the labor used to produce the commodity, while the 'surplus value theory' claims owners of capital, the entrepreneurs, will price these commodities higher than their true value in order to earn a profit for themselves. This makes the commodity price higher than the worker can afford and leads to substantially lower levels of buying power for the worker compared to the capital owner (Wolff 2011). According to Marx, the oppressed workers of this capitalist mode of production will eventually overthrow the system and society will enter a new epoch of classless production (Harvey 1990).
In today's mega-corporate economy, the bourgeois class is comprised of more than just profit-earners. The term, as it is used more currently, encompasses business people and professionals who, although they are still technically wage-earners, manage to become amongst the top wealth holders in society. Thus Castillo's perched man in a business suit represents, not the worker who actually makes society's commodities with his or her rough-handed sweat-labor, but the business professional who earns a soft –handed income serving as a sort of personal assistant to the entrepreneur, or entrepreneurial institution. It is this professional class, the petite bourgeoisie, whose support for top wealth ideology dictates social norms. Marx and Engels famously declared, 'The ideas of the ruling class are in every age the ruling ideas' (Rose 2012) and this ruling class preserves its rule through institutions that both protect established wealth and are societally embedded as essential. These revered structures include private property law, judicial courts and educational institutions (Belsey 2002).
According to semiology, a post-modern study of words and visual signs, the ideology of a culture is both embedded in, and determined by, the language system. Prior to post-structuralism, it was believed that language was the product of ideas, but semiology posits that our ethics and perceptions of the world are restricted to the limits of the pre-existing language system. Because language is taken for granted, the ideas represented by language are also taken for granted and generally accepted as undeniably true, common sense. Marxist thought further asserts that the embedded ideas always, and inevitably, lead to practices that invisibly support current modes of capitalist production and ownership (Belsey 2002). True to this Marxist view of ideology, the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie hold as modern (and thus good) the heroic role of the entrepreneur and holds as fact that a free market system leads to productive efficiency, which is jufstified as the only pathway to human progress (Harvey 1990). Thus, in Castillo's video, the bourgeois class is placed heroically, if metaphorically, atop the ideology that elevates it, a majestic white steed. Although a system of democracy further works to confirm that the people's trust lies with the supposed benefits of free capitalism (Belsey 2002), its contradictory nature is not so readily apparent; capitalism promises freedom and human betterment as long as its subjects are slaves to its tenets. In line with Marxist thought, those left holding the short end of the stick, the disenfranchised poor, are bound to revolt (Harvey 1990). Thus, it is necessary for any capitalist State to maintain repressive institutions.
Castillo's oeuvre frequently invokes history in exploring dynamics of power (Li-mac.org 2014), and ultranationalist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco is a common symbol of repressive rule in his works. For example, in building his sculpture, Guernica Syndrome (2012), Castillo purchased the vacation cruise ship of the former dictator, demolished it, compacted the metal, and stacked the results (Matadero.org 2012) into an ironically 'cubist' tribute to Pablo Picasso's cherished anti-Nationalist painting.


Caption 3: Image of Guernica Syndrome (2012).

Additionally, in the short film Tactica (2010), Castillo asks blind historians to feel statues and monuments of Franco (The Ridder, Accessed 6 Nov. 2014), begging the question, 'How do the blind experience propaganda?' Tactica presents a parallel image to Arquitectura when, at one point, participants are asked to feel a statue depicting Franco perched heroically upon a horse. The monumental tone of the statue instantly recalls the monumental tone established in Arquitectura, although Arquitectura utilizes jarring disproportions, like a horse indoors, not grandeur of style or costume. The seeming implication of these two works is that Castillo proposes an iconography of mounted men as repressive power-holders.
In order for a viewer to receive the full communication of Arquitectura para el Caballo, it is essential to know that the Autónoma School of Philosophy building, through which the suited man rides the white horse, was architecturally designed to accommodate mounted riot police in the event of student uprising. Constructed in 1971, the school was built in the wake of the 1968 global counter-cultural movements whose ground swells often started on university campuses in major urban cities, including Madrid (Harvey 1990). For this reason, the subjects of Arquitectura are most assuredly not just the man and his horse, but also the school building, itself.
Castillo's interest in power relations often narrows to spotlight either rioters attempting to exert power against the State or the State and its power to suppress dissent. In Pegassus Dance: A Choreography for Water Cannon Vehicles (2007), two anti-riot water cannon trucks dance about each other while spraying their hoses, sometimes in coordination, sometimes in flirtatious response to the other. In Canicas (2002), however, Castillo focuses on power tactics at the disposal of rioters. During the Franco era, Autonoma students successfully thwarted mounted riot police by throwing marbles under the horses' feet (Barragan 2014). In Castillo's simple short video, the tiny glass orbs, the canicas, sit quietly scattered on the floor of the Autonoma, humble but imminently powerful.

Caption 4: Video still from Pegasus Dance (2007).


As the horse in Arquitectura para el Caballo confidently walks, trots and even gallops through the empty university halls, it creates an eerie sense that this animal, which normally should feel out of place and frightened in such an unnatural environment, actually dominates the building and all parts of the school. The absence of students heightens the bizarre scenario and the spatially austere building feels more like a floor plan design or model than an actual full-sized structure. Glass walls and open atrium stairways are staples of modern architecture, but in Castillo's film, they become reminiscent of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon prisons. A Panopticon positions a circle of prison cells toward a central guard tower. The guard tower is designed such that prisoners can never detect the non-gaze of the guards and are thus left feeling they are under constant surveillance, ingeniously ensuring compliant behavior at all times. In this economically efficient structure, the architecture itself succeeds at creating 'docile bodies' (Rose 2012). The Autónoma's architecture, having been designed for efficient use by riot police, functions similarly. Highlighting the educational institution's compliance with the State, Architectura's only sound, clip-clopping hooves against tiled floors, echoes in ominous warning. Castillo's video is a reminder that this building was designed and constructed for the purpose of not only human use, but also human control.
Foucault asserted, 'Where there is power, there is resistance' (Rose 2012), and, as resistance often ferments in philosophy studies, the most fitting site on campus for Arquitectura's horse to survey is the university's School of Philosophy building. Castillo earned his master's of philosophy degree at the Autónoma (Castillo 2002) and was likely influenced by resistance philosophies of post-modern theorists including Gramsci's 'counter-hegemony' (Rose 2012), Lyotard's call for artistic dissent (Belsey 2002) and Foucault's rationale for urging a multitude of attacks on small local institutions instead of heads of the State (Harvey 1990). At the very least, an interview with Castillo reveals his awareness of Barthes's theories of dominant ideology, as he remarks of society, 'We are mythomaniacs' (Gonzalez and Luengo 2013 accessed nov 6 2014). Arquitectura is a criticism of not only the power riot police secure over philosophy students, but also the power the entire university system holds over society. Because the university is a revered institution, central to justifying the structure of society, it is only reasonable to conclude that it must work cooperatively with the State to perpetuate ruling ideology. Catherine Belsey, in reflecting on Foucault's twin-ship of power and resistance, states that, 'Resistance is the inevitable corollary of power… the difference without which it has no meaning' (2002). In other words, power cannot exist without dissent; otherwise over whom would power-holders have power? Thus, the equestrian 'show of power' over the School of Philosophy can also be seen as a snarky courtship, a patronizing visit to say 'thank you' to its power-giving subjects, the necessary resistors, the philosophers.
Castillo's choice of setting, the School of Philosophy, is an institution that both resists and cooperates with the ruling class, and it therefore becomes irresistible to question the role higher education, in general, serves in perpetuating Capitalist ideology. Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser placed schools on his list of 'Ideological State Apparatuses', institutions that generate a belief that society's structures protect our best interests (Belsey 2002). He believed schools play a crucial role in inculcating obedience and self-discipline and thus function to provide society with beings who, in large masses, do not need overt threats from a higher power since school-trained individuals eventually work independently and ideologically to peacefully perpetuate ruling class interests (Belsey 2002). The rationalizing doctrine commonly taught in schools is that education leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to moral progress, moral progress leads to justice, and justice leads to the relatively peaceful and materially pleasant societies in which we now live (Harvey 1990). Although students are aware of a history of resistance, mere participation in the educational system signals cooperation with dominant ideology and implicit trust in the belief that higher education begets deserved possessions and influence. In this way, the building's accommodation of riot police is a moot point, since good students do not riot, they write theses.


Caption 5: Video still from Arquitectura para el Caballo (2002).
Barthes's theory of myth assumes meanings operate on many levels (Rose 2012). He uses as an example a picture of a dark-skinned man in uniform saluting the French flag. On the first level of meaning, it is just that – a picture of a man in uniform with a flag (Rose 2012). On the level of myth, however, the picture additionally means France is a just and fair imperialist who gains the respect of all its subjects (Rose 2012). In the same way, higher education has come to signify, not just spending more time learning more stuff, but a golden ticket to enter the bourgeoisie. Recent justification for being able to wave this rarified prize like a societal carrot is the quantitatively-substantiated claim that access to college is now equal (Deresiewicz 2014). Liberals can relax and enjoy the successes of the civil rights movement; the nasty problems of sexism, racism and homophobia are systematically being marched off the nation's campuses and better days are most definitely ahead. To prove their progressive nature, universities point to over-whelming increases in female and non-white students enrollments. As William Deresiewicz (2014: Nov 6) points out, however, when college acceptance numbers based on class are scrutinized, the universities' myth is exposed; 'As of 2004, 40 percent of first-year students at the most selective state campuses came from families with incomes of more than $100,000, up from 32 percent just five years earlier'. More directly, Walter Benn Michaels (2013: Nov 6, 2014) points out, 'universities are in the business of inequality'. Benn Michaels explains that the financial position of universities crucially depends on its customers placing economic value in a degree based partly on its scarcity and partly on the promise of a vastly elevated income that can only be earned as a holder, versus a non-holder.
In addition to selling class inequality as meritocracy, college institutions vend the notion that those without a college degree should not only be economically disadvantaged, but also authoritatively bereft. Disqualifying the authority of the poor is, of course, not new. Although industrialization was prophesied by its benefactors to, in its fully-realized glory, eradicate poverty, its failure to do so was blamed on the poor themselves. In studying views of poverty predominant during the late 1800s, Gareth Steadman Jones found that most in London blamed the condition of being poor on the moral vices, 'filthy habits', and ignorance of a societal element labeled the 'residuum', the uneducated and lazy members of the lower class (Rose 2012). Presumably, the rosy promises of economic progress were dimwittedly thwarted by this residuum, too rotten to know what was good for them, and too stupid to care.
Today, the powerless position of the uneducated poor is justified by a system that places ultimate faith in the authority of educational credentials. Knowledge, quite semantically, originates from the knowledgeable, and within the current ideological structure, the power of authoritative source, of cite-ability, can only be earned by holders of advanced degrees. Non-degree holders are to be viewed with, at the very least, skepticism, if not complete authoritative bankruptcy. However, when higher education is predominantly accessible only to children of the ruling class, the ruling class maintains a semi-monopoly on knowledge and the perks of societal assumptions about these few elite individuals; possession of these scarce titles further justifies right to rule, higher earnings eligibility, and an increased likelihood that their offspring will inherit the same privileged status. It further works to the ruling class' advantage to elevate philosophers, thinkers, and scientists produced by ivy-league institutions since these are the students within the bourgeoisie, or wanna-be-bourgeoisie, who show the most self-control, the most dedication to cooperation with authority and, thus, the least likelihood of revolt. From an economic standpoint, even if recent educational attempts to 'leave no child behind' succeed, what will happen when a significant majority of the successful, common-core-assessed high school graduates cannot afford to pay for college? The likely result will be neither an increased ceding of university seats to the poor by the rich nor a decline in the authoritative faith society attaches to college degrees. The likely result will, instead, be a more vocal emphasis on the mythological culpability of a residuum that refuses to go away, a residuum that will inevitably fail to meet the standards of a perpetually shifting definition of 'college-readiness'.
By metaphorically placing the bourgeois class astride a creature of ideology who carries its rider effortlessly through the halls of a structure specifically built to accommodate them, Arquitectura's attack on capitalist ideology is strongly aligned with Marxist thought. However, in its very existence as an artwork questioning the many facets of dominant ideology, Arquitectura does not support the theory of meta-narrative, a Marxist belief in a single master story of human progress. Foucault was critical of society's 'dominant discourse' and its methods but staunchly rejected the Marxist theory of meta-narrative, as did Lyotard (Harvey 1990). Lyotard proposed that culture consists of, not one narrative, but several small narratives and that these petit recits prove ideology heterogeneous, not homogeneous (Belsey 2002). Lyotard suggested that individuals engage in creating a multitude of fables, all sharing the same meaningless but unavoidable end, the destruction of Earth in 4.5 billion years (Belsey 2002). Additionally, Lyotard instructs that the fables do not have to be believable; they must only spark reflection (Belsey 2002).
In line with Lyotard's counsel and characteristic of post-modern art, Arquitectura presents questions without giving answers. The rider of the horse is not menacing, nor a megalomaniac. The walls of the institution are solid, but not ostentatious. The building is a quiet host for the ordinary businessman and his horse. Castillo does not ask for revolt, he asks only for recognition of otherwise invisible structures that perpetuate dominant ideology.
In reporting on the violence that erupted in Spain during austerity-measure protests, news reports asked, couched within the standard language and norms of journalism, questions that ultimately support ruling ideology: 'Why did the protestors smash barricades protecting government buildings? How could the police actually lose control of these protestors?!' The dominant discourse on institutionalized power accepts as a tenet that riot police must control protestors. Castillo's work continually forces reflection on the very nature of power, and Arquitectura, most valuably, creates an alternate fable, an alternate phrasing of fundamental questions: Why were these protestors forcibly blocked from their government? How do protestors lose control over their riot police?


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