Digital America interviewed Rodrigo Nava Ramirez in November of 2024 on his work Next to You.
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Digital America: Next to You (in-malibu.mx) (2019) is a web-based piece that explores a restricted space through livestream and your animoji rendition of Miley Cyrus’s “Malibu,” not only acting as a form of remembrance but also as a means of existing in this place. You utilize digital tools to cross physical boundaries, and your work reminds me of the protest Jenny O’Dell calls for in How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. In her call to arms, Odell speaks of resisting in place, similar to how the large “Grandfather” tree in Oakland, California stands unmovingly strong and tall because it was rejected by loggers as “useful”. How does Next to You act as a resistance in place?
Rodrigo Nava Ramirez: When making the work it was really important to me that the site itself is hosted in the US, as this is my way to physically enter. If you think of it as a performance, it is me scanning my face to extract data out of it (with the animoji), putting it in the virtual world and then sending it to a data centre in the US, where it has been ever since. My presence in the US thus is really anchored geographically, also by the CCTV camera in Malibu, which is also fixated and always collecting data from a very specific location. So I see it as an act of resistance in the way that after being pushed out physically and politically I still brought myself back geographically through the digital space, acting as a sort of overlooking statue, that because of the “invisibility” of the internet is perceived as harmless.
DigA: The full version of the site is not available in the United States. There are barriers online that could prevent this, but it could also be an intentional decision on your part. Could you speak more on how you think this influences the experience of your work with the American user?
RNR: The fact that it can’t be accessed from the US is definitely intentional. The idea I have is that once I enter the US physically I will remove this geographical barrier on the site. Again, I am thinking of this tension that exists between the physical and the virtual. Reminding the viewer of the physicality of the internet, that it is not an ethereal open space and that data about your physical existence is constantly being extracted. Here I also see the analogy with the Grandfather tree you mentioned in the last question. My virtual occupation of the US territory is only visible (“useful”) from the outside, allowing me to not be seen from within. At the same time, I mention the possibility of using a VPN in order to see the site, showing that although you are still a physical being entering the internet, there is still potential to be anonymous and anywhere. To escape these systems of extraction.
DigA: You created Next to You in 2019, nearly five years ago. With the passage of time in your personal life and the recent American election, how does this piece resonate with you today?
RNR: This work has actually been in my head recently as not long ago I decided to reapply for a Visa to enter the US. I got deported from the country during the last Trump administration and foreseeing his possible return to the presidency I thought it would be wise to reapply before the elections. Sadly the application process has been way longer (and bureaucratic) than I expected, but I hope to get an answer before January 20. Although in the artwork I take it with humour and hope, being deported and treated as a second class citizen was a traumatic experience. Seeing form the distance how the elections develop, while going to the US Embassy to be interrogated and being treated as a sort of criminal has made a lot of those feelings resurface again. My family keeps on asking me why do I want to enter that country again, but I really think it will bring me some kind of closure.
DigA: Next to You consists of various elements, such as sound and image, that work together to create a narrative. Reviewing some of your other works like severed words (2022) and see-also.net (2020), it is evident that the cut-up method, or more general histories of collage, influence many of your works—giving space to the user to interpret and interact. How do you approach constructing your art?
RNR: [A] great part of what has always attracted me about online based practices is how, although these digital spaces have been moulded following western standards, there is still the possibility within them to escape from all of these constraints. Of existing on its own. Of creating non linear narratives that can move back and forth in time, or challenge and create tensions within the way space and movement is perceived. Create glitches and illusions as methods of resistance. My work deals with the idea of nonlinearity through ideas like constant movement and shape shifting narratives. As such, thinking in interactivity, and ways to move away from a passive, more linear way of experiencing art is always what I think of when developing new work. I want the viewer to either be active or question how their behavior dictates the way the work is experienced.
DigA: Are you working on anything at the moment?
RNR: At the moment I am working on a project called “Cómo reencarnar al Templo Mayor usando Blender” (English: “How to reincarnate Templo Mayor in Blender”). It is a video inspired by how-to internet tutorial videos where I will guide the user/viewer through the process of reshaping a 3D model of the Mexico City Cathedral towards the shape of Templo Mayor, the mayor Mexica centre in tenochtitlan. A sort of summoning of a digital hybrid creature that will contain both beings. The Mexico City Cathedral was built following the conquest of Tehnochtitlan by the Spanish, a political move achieved by destroying Templo Mayor and using the location and materials to build the cathedral. Following a major earthquake in 2017, the Cathedral suffered structural damage and drone photography was taken in order to preserve the site, in prevention of a catastrophic future. This tutorial uses this event as the starting point to use this captured imagery rather as an opportunity for digital rebirth. With this work I am interested in the potential of “how-to” tutorials as possible tools for alter-anthropology and refusal. To use this format to generate acts of resistance against digital preservation, archiving and mapping. I am really interested in the space that the “how-to” format cam access, existing in a space between the technical and the reflective, the factual and the fictional/speculative. A space that can easily slip past the institutional. The final shape is still a bit undecided but planning on having it ready by early next year!
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Check out Rodrigo Nava Ramirez’s work Next to You.
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Rodrigo Nava Ramírez (he/they) is an artist and computer programmer from Mexico City. Their work seeks to practically and conceptually reframe digital technologies as tools for exploring spaces that are materially and temporarily restricted, creating alternative spaces for representation. They hold an MFA from The Glasgow School of Art (UK), their work has been exhibited in the US, UK and Europe, most recently at Unseen Guest, part of the British Council public programme for the Venice Biennale.
