Allora & Calzadilla on Blackout at MAXXI: Puerto Rico's Political and Ecological Crisis

In an interview with Ludovico Pratesi, Guillermo Calzadilla discusses the duo's exhibition Blackout at MAXXI in Rome, which addresses Puerto Rico's paradoxical status as a US colony. The show features works like Returning a Sound (2003), depicting a boy on a motorcycle with a trumpet on the exhaust, referencing US military bombings on Vieques island from 1941 to 2003. Under Discussions (2006) shows a boat made from a political conference table. Blackout (2017) is inspired by the 2016 electrical blackout in Puerto Rico, paired with David Lang's composition mains hum (2017) for seven singers. Contract AOCL (2014) and Contract (SWMU 4-2) feature silkscreened palm trees marking toxic waste dumps. The Night We Became People Again (2017) was filmed in Cueva Vientos, where they previously installed Dan Flavin's Puerto Rican Light (1965) on loan from Dia Foundation, lit with solar panels. The video also includes an abandoned petrochemical plant and a sugarcane plantation, with Lang's score transforming vowels into an ancient or future language. Calzadilla explains Puerto Rico's status as a 'free associated state' is a paradox, calling it a colony. The duo lives in Puerto Rico; Calzadilla moved there in 1978 from Cuba, and met Jennifer Allora in Florence in 1995.