![SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD by SPECERE LAB, artists Ann Burke Daly and Álvaro Marcos, presents a multichannel sound and video installation Wednesday May 3, 2017, at Vassar College. SCENE 2; former Franco[Photo by Karl Rabe].](https://format-com-cld-res.cloudinary.com/image/private/s--JDkQWpET--/c_limit,g_center,h_1200,w_65535/a_auto,fl_keep_iptc.progressive,q_95/v1/e9ff968a7e0807a6474e335856ee5ecb/Vassar_SpecereLab_5_3_17_0023-rev4a-900.jpg)
SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD
Artist Ann Burke Daly (New York, US) and musician-writer Álvaro Marcos (Madrid, Spain) as SPECERE LAB produced an immersive, visually engaging, and provocative 4 channel video and 3 channel sound and photographic installation Spring 2017 on the Vassar College New York campus for their collaboration SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD (SFISD). SFISD is envisioned by Daly and Marcos as an immersive installation which embraces the audience, drawing them into an intimate cacoon-like and subtly disorienting non-linear, sensory, and filmic environment. The collaboration began with an unlikely correspondence when Daly heard a Franco era film clip sampled into Marcos' 2nd album with his Madrid based band Atención Tsunami. The AULA space is part of Ely Hall at Vassar College and is a wood and brick 45 foot x 65 foot two storied space. More information follows six installation photos.
![SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD by SPECERE LAB, artists Ann Burke Daly and Álvaro Marcos, presents a multichannel sound and video installation Wednesday May 3, 2017, at Vassar College. SCENE 2; form[Photo by Karl Rabe].](https://format-com-cld-res.cloudinary.com/image/private/s--OQzbJYqa--/c_limit,g_center,h_1200,w_65535/a_auto,fl_keep_iptc.progressive,q_95/v1/959aa89d33db55984768c0e923a2649c/01-Ann-Daly-for-cds79-rev2-900p_copy.jpg)
![SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD, artists Ann Burke Daly and Álvaro Marcos, presents a multichannel sound and video installation Wednesday May 3, 2017, at Vassar College. INTERLUDE, LA MOVIDA [Photo by Karl Rabe].](https://format-com-cld-res.cloudinary.com/image/private/s--z0utJ8Ax--/c_limit,g_center,h_1200,w_65535/a_auto,fl_keep_iptc.progressive,q_95/v1/e5af3ca278f3c00083c4970a95c5f87f/Vassar_SpecereLab_5_3_17_0022-rev-900.jpg)
SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD is envisioned by Daly and Marcos as an immersive sound and video installation. The structure is a film script in revision, materialized using sound and video projection integrated with the architecture of the space. It includes political speeches, archival film and music, with their original sound, video, photographs and writing for the piece.
The scenes of SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD are built around two important moments/speech acts for post-dictatorship Spain; first, the announcement November 20, 1975 of Franco's death to the nation of Spain, and the second, the chant of the 15M/Indignados social movement of 2011 "they do not represent us" referring to the two ossified political parties of Spain (PP/PSOE) which are a legacy of the Transición to democracy following Franco's death in 1975, and are seen by some Spaniards as the source of graft, corruption, and "austericide" in contemporary Spain.
The focus for the installation is on marked and unmarked sites of mass graves, and completely unmarked sites of prisons and torture centers "hiding in plain sight" in the center of Madrid. The collaboration began with a question of whether the pact of silence and Amnesty Law of the immediate post-dictatorship years created a tacit personal and public silence in its wake. Silence and the visceral raucousness of a silence which does not rest is central to the project. The collaboration continues to look at what happens in the wake of catastrophe —of what is buried and what counter-narratives are silenced—in the "Afterwar/ds."
The duo of SPECERE LAB is Ann Burke Daly (Artist, NY) and Ãlvaro Marcos (Musician-Writer, Spain's DIY music scene). An unlikely year long correspondence is a central component of their cross cultural and inter-generational collaboration, and the correspondence itself is represented as a 50 foot x 2 foot photograph in the installation. Their work was completed through an Andrew W. Mellon-funded Residency and Grant during the Spring 2017 semester at Vassar College, initiated by Political Science Professor Katherine Hite for her seminar "The Politics of Memory."
Some information about images and sound: Installation documentation photos were taken at Vassar College AULA during the May event or during testing in March and April by Specere Lab. The video is largely long still takes. Scene 1 (Architectures of Silence) opens with a shot from the POV of the tomb site called The Valley of the Fallen, where Dictator Francisco Franco and 30-60K civil war dead and post-civil war "disappeared" persons are interred. Many captured anti-fascists were imprisoned and taken on "paseos" (walks), executed, and buried in mass graves in the years immediately following the civil war (1936-1939). Those who were imprisoned in labor camps were forced to participate in the building of the huge monument, basilica, and monastery that comprise Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) just outside of Madrid. It is from the point of view of the dead and those who worked on the building of the site that we chose to shoot, instead of re-producing the iconic views of the monument to Franco (such as shots of the gigantic crucifix atop the mountain and the monumental architecture of the basilica). Heated debates are taking place in Spain around what should become of this huge site, including the remains of the dead, including the dictator himself.
![SCRIPT: FRANCO IS STILL DEAD by SPECERE LAB, artists Ann Burke Daly and Álvaro Marcos, presents a multichannel sound and video installation Wednesday May 3, 2017, at Vassar College. [Photo by Karl Rabe].](https://format-com-cld-res.cloudinary.com/image/private/s--5pkb-sio--/c_limit,g_center,h_1200,w_65535/a_auto,fl_keep_iptc.progressive,q_95/v1/c5568a8e9aa505bc46af050f501b6c9c/Vassar_SpecereLab_5_3_17_0012-rev2-juegos-900.jpg)
