Single-channel video installation

An eerie silence hangs over the small town of Piornal in southwestern Spain: covered buildings, police patrols in the empty streets and huge piles of carrots on the pavements – the calm before the storm. Jarramplas unfolds before this almost surreal backdrop. People, most of them young, gradually gather on the streets, tractors deliver tons more carrots, and a crowd seems to be preparing itself for some sort of clash whose goal initially remains unclear.

For more than a century, Piornal has been celebrating the Jarramplas festival in January. It centres upon the figure of the costumed “Jarramplas”, whose name is derived from the Spanish verb jarramplar – to steal. According to legend, a man once came to town to steal livestock, but was pelted with carrots by the local inhabitants until he fled. Every year, this event is reconstructed: one of the townspeople takes on the role of the Jarramplas, while hundreds of others throw carrots at him.

Afsah’s film observes this ritual, albeit without ever showing its protagonist. The Jarramplas himself remains outside of the frame. Instead, the camera is trained on the crowd: on movements, gestures and individual faces that emerge from the mass. With the footage slightly slowed down, the bodies’ movements appear almost choreographed: individual figures stand out before merging with the crowd again, while rhythm, repetitions and gestures reveal a subtle order within the assembly of people.

This close observation is earned by way of formal staging: sound and images become detached from one another and noises come across as out of place or exaggerated, directing the gaze on to individual moments even as the entire happening remains fragmentary. In this way, the focus is shifted from the actual ritual on to the dynamics of assembly itself. Without making the target of the attacks visible, the collective action appears increasingly directionless and open. The tensions between individual and crowd become visible: concentrated aggression, exuberance and uncertainty ripple together, while the crowd forms temporarily before dissolving again. This choreography of bodies, gazes and absence reflects structures that also characterise larger social orders: forms of participation, cohesion and exclusion appear as a performative structure – stable and yet perpetually brittle at the same time.

Once the dynamics finally begin to falter and the opponent continues to remain invisible, a void opens up in what’s happening. Instead of providing a full picture, Jarramplas reveals the underlying mechanisms according to which a crowd is formed and becomes aligned towards a shared goal. In this back and forth between the individual and the collective and participation and observation, the ways in which belonging, the ability to take action and exclusion are continually renegotiated become tangible.

• Sektion Section: An Incomplete Assembly
• Programm Programme: An Incomplete Assembly