During January 2015, Pedro Aparicio joined an open-ended field-work research about shared conditions of risk in Cancún, Mexico with Professor Diane Davis and a group of Mdes students. Following up the site visit Pedro used the course “Media As Method” with Pierre Belanger and Kiel Moe, to explore massive print media as a place for visual critical theory.
Postal Survey is a project that assembles tensions as a domain for enquiry. It surveys the current condition of Cancún, Mexico a 130 km strip of exclusive littoral urbanization and back-yard support cities from Isla Mujeres to Tulúm. By merging together the front-line of this conurbation—sea, coast, beach, sand and sand—with it’s back alley of social housing, Postal Survey questions the image of a city, not from its preconceived condition of exception, but rather from the conflict that shapes the notion of its actuality.
Postcard stands occupy the public space and narrate a rhizomatic story of the city through produced scenarios of iconic landmarks for 1 dollar. The postcard represents the mediating idea of a place, as the content becomes an event conditioned to a specific time and a specific sender. If the postcard is the symbol and the postal survey the surveyor of its trajectory, then the postcard stand is the device that assembles an index of constructed narratives that unveil the interaction of expertise and power towards the construction of a place.
