Stefan Leandro Gonzales
Interview by Naz Cuguoğlu
You are interested in decolonizing and feminizing the aesthetics of the 60s-70s land art / earthworks. Can you tell us more about what was missing in these practices? If you were the artist who produced these works, how would you rather do it?
When it comes to the male artist, if I were in their position, I would have taken time to acknowledge the larger history of the land. Often these men were setting out on a quest to the desert where they considered the land “empty” and free of human touch. I feel that this perspective endorses a sense of manifest destiny and the rest of the western ideology that follows. They feel more like cowboys and conquerors than artists at times. I gave the example of Nancy Holts’ Sun Tunnels because the physical footprint that work occupies is much smaller than works like Spiral Jetty or Double Negative. Despite its smaller size, it is able to capture the grand geological scale of land art while also expanding into the cosmos due to the fact that the art is also based on star patterns. Therefore, making it even larger than the likes of the Jetty or Negative. I believe there are ways to capture the “essence” of land art without needing to carve into the earth or use gas-guzzling dump trucks.
In your practice, the solution you came up with is to use objects “you are currently in possession of.” Using stones stolen from a driveway creates tension and conflict — which can definitely be productive in life. How do you deal with this tension, and how do you resolve it (if at all)? How do you embrace the history of these stones in your practice (in a way that is different than the 60s-70s land art / earthworks)?
I use the word “stolen” or “in possession of” as a type of wordplay. If I’m using that term correctly… First, it is hard to steal land being in my ancestral history, not only because our land was “stolen” from us but also because the notion of owning land is a conflict because it implies that we “owned” the land in the first place. I recently wrote this about the Stones:
“I didn’t get the chance to be a delinquent until I moved out of my parents’ house. I wouldn’t have come across my collection of Stones without the sentiment of a suburban teenager. It’s early 2014, and a new piece of shit, half-assed, box home was being built in North Ballard (Tech Residue). Like many of these new lots, this house had a temporary driveway constructed of quarry stones, also known as Riprap or Landscape Rock. Seeing that I had no plans on paying for rocks, I decided to steal six, five-gallon buckets of Stones from this particular driveway. Why this driveway? No real reason. I was stoned, the music was right, and it looked like the right driveway.”
I deal with the history of these stones by creating a history for them. For logistical reasons, it would be incredibly difficult to trace the place of origin for every stone. It is hard to say if they all came from the same quarry due to the nature of quarry stones. They are excess rubbles and can be a variety of stone types. I treat them like members of the family. They have jobs to perform, they get to be put on display at times, and they have been bathed, counted, and archived at this point. They still hold their history of the quarry. They will always connect themselves back to the original site, similar to how artists of the 60s / 70s treated their raw materials.
I am interested in the way you talk about Nancy Holt and how she was able to occupy less space compared to her male counterparts, respecting the limits of the earth. Moving on from where we are now as the humankind, I feel like this is something we all have to start thinking about (if we have not done yet). How do you deal with monumentality in your practice? What is the role of recycling, love, and care for the land and our nonhuman kin?
Monumentality is a difficult thing to deal with. I feel it carries a lot of masculine weight these days, especially here in the west. In my practice, I have been looking into other ways of expanding space. I am working on a large pdf — roughly 1000 pages. Well of a gig of memory for the uncompressed version. It’s a collection of writing and image archives that take a stab at queering my stones. This collection tells the story of the stones’ history and life as well as their connection to my body.
I am subtle with “the role of recycle, love and care for the land and our nonhuman kin.” There, I think my choice is not to go out and buy materials to make work, which is definitely a political choice. I am hesitant to decide what role art plays in “change.” I think the compassion I have for my materials can be applied to caring for your family and friends, so there are connections there.
Why do you prefer to occupy the domestic space rather than the land itself?
A small part of me enjoys the heightened control inside of the domestic space. The politics and logistics of land use are also hard to navigate. I have gotten tickets and in trouble for making work in public and national forests. I have also occupied a home in the suburbs for the last four years, and I think that has had a significant impact on me. I have plans to make work in the land itself. I just think that the domestic space is what is in front of me at the moment.
You make use of performance and archive, which are different from each other in the way they approach time, temporariness, and physicality. Can you talk about this push and pull between these methodologies, and how it affects your practice and the message you are interested in conveying?
The archives I create are only the shell of archives. I do not think any of them are “archived” very well. Many times they are printed on non-archival paper or exist in a cloud. I do not believe the cloud to be a site of stability. So, I even question the archivable power the cloud possesses. When it comes to performance, I think of our bodies holding these same loose archives. Your body remembers the motions of a performance even if it is stored in the very, very back of your mind. I think that’s still a type of archive in a way. I think my weak attempts to create archives mirrors some of the attitudes Western societies have used to treat cultures outside their own.
What have you been reading, listening to, and watching? Where / from whom do you get your brain juice?
I’m absorbing content all the time. I believe I use everything I come in contact with to get the juices going. Everything is fair game. A big influence on me is the online MMORPG EVE Online. It is essential, a ridiculous neo-liberal space simulator. It’s a whole different world than the one I am apart of in the real world, but I like using it to observe how a large and very different part of our society functions. I watch a lot of mecha anime: Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Also, the discovery show, Gold Rush.
Thinking about the current moment of the pandemic, how do you envision the future of art? I believe that speculative fiction allows us to construct alternative realities. Daydreaming is the first step towards action. What would your speculative fiction for the art world look like?
I would like to see us return to a prohibition-era vibe. Except for drinking, it’s just about being in the same room as others. Small, local, intimate art shows. A move away from art fairs and biennials. Not more “local” or “community” art but community critical thinking through visual means. In addition to this, I think live streaming has a lot of potential. I was already looking into it as a practice prior to the pandemic because I am a big part of the gaming community, and that has been a thing for years. Live streaming allows good viewers into content creators’ conversations.