All Over the Map

Enjoy it. Find out how you enjoy it,” was the advice of Arturo Ortiz Struck to young architects in his lecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture. Ortiz Struck, who heads up the multidisciplinary research center Taller Territorial de México, found joy by stepping away from architectural work to pursue a looser, less rational agenda in the visual arts. The terminology he deployed was at once precise and a little hazy, particularly his use of the concept of the territory. For instance, his artistic practice starts with “putting [his] body in territorial complexities,” e.g., migrant routes, social housing, or even the site of a murder; in doing so, he tries to connect the tactile qualities of sometimes abstract sites and situations with the fine grain of personal experience. The results, he said, hopefully “provoke by creating metaphors of a devastated territory.” See what I mean?