FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS
Mauricio Freyre
Peru, Spain, On production
Mauricio Freyre
Peru, Spain, On production
With the support of
MNCARS Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
L’Internationale
Museum of the Commons
Ministerio de Cultura de España, Ayudas para la producción e investigación artística
MNCARS Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
L’Internationale
Museum of the Commons
Ministerio de Cultura de España, Ayudas para la producción e investigación artística
Combining diaries, travel notes, fables, and testimonies spanning four centuries (1663, 1798, 1857, 1952), the project weaves together a ¹ condesa miraculously cured of malaria in Lima; a ² Shuar man transformed into a jaguar devouring a colonial soldier; a ³ Bolivian watercolorist traveling with an English trader of alpacas and quina; and an ⁴ encounter between an Amazonian community and a U.S. botanist during the largest search for a medicinal plant in history. These narratives intertwine with fragments from the artist’s own research, which began with unclassified botanical archives at Madrid’s Royal Botanical Garden and extend to contemporary testimonies from Kañari (Peru), one of the quina tree’s last habitats, now threatened by copper mining.
Conceived as a scenario rather than a fixed form, the installation unfolds as a stage set, a backdrop where a triptych of off-screen voices interlaces historical and contemporary fragments around the quina tree. Foundational texts, archival traces, and field notes converge with a present-day voice that speaks from lived experience. Their narrative spans from seventeenth-century writings to contemporary testimonies, ultimately closing with those of the Kañari community in Lambayeque, one of the last remainiang habitats of the cinchona.
Presented as a single-channel film or a multi-screen installation, the work can be activated through live performance and an accompanying soundtrack in which readers, voices, synchronized lighting, and sound intervene. The projected images operate as short loops, generating visual rhythms in dialogue with the spoken word and the soundtrack. These images draw from diverse sources, including the documentation of research journeys and refilmed archival material of varied nature.
¹ Bado, Sebastiano. Anastasis Corticis Peruviae, seu Chinachinae defensio. Genuae, (1663), Caput II, Liber I, pp. 22–24.
² Humboldt, Alexander von. Tagebücher der Amerikanischen Reise VI (1798–1805), p. 148r. Manuscrito original. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, MS germ. quart. 298.
³ Savage, Santiago (1857-1858). Series 01: Annotated watercolour sketches by Santiago Savage. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.
⁴ Camp, W. H. (1952). Plant hunting in Ecuador. Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, 8(1), 1–84.
with sound
16mm transferred to digital video (DCP), 1.85:1, Color, with sound in stereo
29 min in loop
The project originated as a reading and writing group held at the Museo Reina Sofía, bringing together scientists, historians, writers, and activists to reflect on the intersections of nature, colonial history, and fiction. Participants in the group and collaborators on the project included, among others:
-Nataly Allasi Canales
Evolutionary biologist at Kew Gardens, Indigenous rights activist
-Nicolás Cuvi
Biologist and historian, epistemologies of the South, FLACSO Ecuador
-Alejandro Gómez Silvera
Forest engineer, INIA Perú
-Tilsa Otta
Experimental writer, poet, and artist
-Emanuele Fabiano
Anthropologist, specialist in Indigenous cosmologies and extractivism, EHESS
-Saló
Musician, DJ, producer, activist, and Peruvian cultural manager
-Laura Pacas
Actress, director, theater as a tool for social transformation