Celebramos el post número 200 con un aperitivo de una obra que acabamos de realizar.
Aún no podemos subir el pdf entero, con todo el material, pero se avecina una web este verano, y entonces será otro cantar. En cualquier caso "pego" la introducción en inglés y algunas fotos del evento que tuvo lugar el fin de semana pasado.
Micropolíticas, memoria, relato, y bucolismo a raudales. Como está mandado ;)
This project works with the memorial benches that are spread all over Cannizaro park.
The nature of these seats and their placement in the open space generate an interesting relation between the rules of public space and the private memorabilia.
The bench constitutes a public piece of furniture placed on the streets, on the parks or on squares and normally depends on the town council. The council also takes care of cleaning the streets and the walls of common use, meaning that any trace of personal use of space, of individuality, is erased in order to maintain the public space clean. Due to this normal practice, public spaces end up being empty of memory, they are completely amnesiac, only full of present, the only time that cannot be cleaned yet.
In contrast, memorial seats introduce private messages that remain in the public space. This process, that governments use to raise fundings, collides with their “cleaning policy”; these messages remind us that the streets can be places for memory, rather than for walking or spending. Moreover, the park benches reveal an interesting contrast when they are understood as “funerary” architecture that is placed within leisure spaces.
The work that we are presenting stems from this concern and merges with the idea of language, place, name and identity which are key to our practice.
The piece will consist of 40 different short stories - of which this presentation displays the first 32 -, about the issues of private space and common space, delimitation and relation, the absurd and the real. Each of the stories corresponds to one of the 40 benches in the park and all of them are based on the names of the tributed, whereas in some cases, both the place and the physicial conditions contribute to the plot.
The resultant pieces will be printed and placed upon the benches so to be read by the passers by, constituting a choral play in which the object of the plot will remain unrevealed.
