The lighthouse of Punta Gallinas is the terrestrial northernmost point of Colombia and South America. In this place I draw a line on the lighthouse of Punta Gallinas which coincides with the horizon line behind him.

This action on the lighthouse comes from the reflection about relationship between the territory and three converging concepts: Border, line and limit.

The word border comes from the Latin frons, frontis (forehead, front part, facade) which which refers to a frontal barrier found when reaching a territory. The border as a concept suggests the action of confronting a bordering place.

The term limit comes from the latin word limes (edge, border) which states a geographical or spatial division, and also refers to a restriction or limitation. The word limit leads us to think of an act of persistence over time in relation to a line. In the case of the territory, I conceive it as the horizon.

Line, from the Greek word linum / linon, means “thing done with linen”. Its relation with linen reminds us of a doing that develops over time towards a result. The line as a border and boundary involves the definition of a place, and an action on it. The space is then what is between borders, and is from a spatiotemporal line where the walker begins his journey through a territory.

One of the ways of inhabiting a territory is given through the recognition of its limits and a work on its edges. The demarcation of the space within which we live, or in which we are forced to stay, originates when drawing a line on the territory. This line, besides physical, can be social, ethnic, cultural, political, psychological or mental.

The lines that demarcate a territory are very similar to the menhirs that the first walkers erected to avoid succumbing to the immensity and uncertainty of a new land. The delimitation of a territory also occurs when, by using a particular look, we turn the earth into a landscape.

I walk through a vast territory with the intention of reaching the horizon. I gradually disappear As I wander and walk away: the size of my body in the video image decreases as move away from the starting point until I finally merge with the landscape.

The instalation of this video is accompanied by a drawing in which I develop a mathematical equation, formulated by the Pythagorean theorem, to find the distance, in kilometers, from an observer to its horizon. (link to the drawing: http://davidguarnizo.com/La-distancia-al-horizonte)

Man, because of his bipedal condition, and his attachment to instinct, is condemned to walk. His priority is to move to meet basic appetites and immediate needs. His walk is as barren as his desires. On the other hand, whoever walks according to his will is different, because he pursues something that is beyond primary desires: he goes after a horizon that he observes in a territory, that he imagines in a landscape.

The walker is first and foremost a dual being. Being a border between the real and the unreal, it walks in two directions simultaneously. He is a mirror, because the horizon he pursues is a reflection of himself. He and his landscape are one. The dry mud on our skin brings our entire body to the landscape: the landscape was mud, we were mud. In an analogous way, I become a horizon because I imitate him and I lose myself, I become infinite in a sculptural walk. There is a tiny limit between the human expiration and the absent being present in the infinity of the horizon.

According to the article “The aesthetics of absence” by Peter Weibel, we now have the feeling that reality disappears due to the acceleration of time and space, which began with the industrial revolution and has gradually grown with the “progress of the civilization”. Things exist according to their capacity to disappear; a simple, pure and successive disappearance. The visible world is fleeting, volatile.

Since the industrial revolution has been created a cult to her, an anguished attempt to multiply the action in a minimum period, which tears the human being to transgress its temporal and spatial limits. Rilke states that “What arrives has such an advance over what we think and about our intentions, that we can never reach it, nor ever know its true appearance.” And, of course, if speed affects the human in this way, it also affects their conception of space and displacement while walking.

For this reason, when we move, we no longer talk about distances, but about duration. Within Colombia, to travel from Bogotá to La Guajira, I say there are 22 hours. The distance measured in units of time causes the space to collapse, become empty. Like the prehistoric nomads, we measure our walk in marching days, our path becomes duration. The means of transport and communication allow us to take advantage of shortened times and distances. They allow us to be simultaneously here and there.

The image of this fallen pine is the product of the assembly of 190 photographs of the same place made during a period of 5 months, at different times of day (and night) and with different lighting and focus conditions.

The tree that originates this project is a fallen pine located a short distance from the top of the hill of Guadalupe, in Bogota, Colombia. Unlike other nearby trees that form a thick forest, its horizontal and inert condition makes it a sacred space for inhabit. The fallen pine is an accidental garden; a temple built by chance, whose origin opaque and transcends the struggle of man over nature.

A garden is an ideal place, a temple that marks a sacred space and keep us away from the impenetrable and chaotic that it is the mysterious and primeval forest. The pine tree is known for its resistance, allowing it to retain its green leaves even in the darkest weather. Pine is one of the archetypal images of immortality, courage and tenacity against the adversities of nature.

The creation of a garden happens when we mark the space within which we want to be and be, either by drawing a line on the territory, or on a map. However, such demarcation is also given when we turn the land into landscape through the gaze: From a laborious exercise of lighting, and a large number of assembled photographs, I build an image of fallen pine, establishing it as a garden.