Regarding Hotel Palenque

In 1969 Robert Smithson took a trip down to Mexico to experience its ancient architecture. In a lecture three years later he presented his experience to the architecture students of the University of Utah. While showing a series of thirty-one color slides he presented to them a story about the Hotel Palenque and Yucatan.

It has been well documented that Smithson had a great interest for architectural ruins. It must have been somewhat surprising when it turned out that what he was in actuality documenting during his travels was not the Mayan architecture, but the hotel that he was staying at. The hotel was undergoing a cycle of simultaneous decay and renewal. What fascinated him was that it was continually being built at one end, while falling apart and dissolving into nature at another. The hotel came to symbolize the process of destruction and renovation known to Mayan culture. Through his presentation he turns the hotel into a contemporary ruin where truths and histories are lost. He begins with an overall photograph showing the hotel. He then continues through its tiled walkway, collapsed terrace, emptied swimming pool, evacuated dancehall, a partially collapsed stairway, and finally he end by showing a photograph of a closed green door. In the whole lecture the ancient Mayan ruins, for which the place is famous, is almost completely ignored. They are recorded only as a possible view from one of the hotel’s windows. The historical architecture remains a backdrop and becomes outshone by the archeology of the Hotel Palenque.

The written text in Cellar in the Attic, one of my most recent art projects, is referencing Robert Smithson’s lecture. A hotel is mentioned and one gets the idea that it follows the lead of a person currently residing inside this hotel. The whole experience is not meant to undermine, or give proof to any form of documentation or history writing. Stories are told and the degree of fiction is irrelevant. It is a hybrid of historical facts, fabrications by other writers, as well as personal associations.

At times, when I make my half-brave attempts at figuring out why I am making art, I end up finding my greatest support in a quote from the great writer Jorge Luis Borges. In an interview he writes, “I’m not sure why I have to define myself. I rather go on wondering and puzzling about things, for I find that very enjoyable.” I very much enjoy puzzling over things. Answers do not interest me. That is partly why I decided to end my narrative story with the image of a closed door. There are plenty of closed doors in this series, but only one is never opened. While the rest of the doors are opened up, just to reveal impenetrable walls, this particular door is “always glowing. I would only have to give it the slightest push. But it is beautiful just as an image to look at.” While the rest of the hotel seems to hold the narrating resident captive, this one door suggests otherwise. The door that Smithson ends with is a green one. He writes, “it’s just a green door. We’ve all seen green doors at one time in our lives. It gives out a sense of universality that way, a sense of kind of global cohesion. The door probably opens up to nowhere and closes on nowhere so that we leave the Hotel Palenque with this closed door and return to the University of Utah.” In that way it can be said that both projects ends with a door that has the possibility of leading somewhere but that, for one or another reason, remain closed. Some doors should only be opened in the imagination.

The book Cellar in the Attic, is available through Lulu.