INSTALATION #1 (puertas al infinito)

...as found on the streets of Weimar. *part of thesis research

"En un cuento de Cortázar se narra lo que podríamos considerar como un buen día para la percepción en el entorno de la ciudad. El protagonista del cuento efectúa su rutinario viaje matutino disfrutando con su imaginación, a la que le ha dado por retener tan sólo partes de lo que el ojo va captando, abstrayendo la realidad. En un momento dado ve desfilar solamente las orejas de la gente, luego, sólo botones de chaquetas, más tarde abstrae la comida bajando por los aparatos digestivos, etc. Aunque felíz, el día acaba mal para él, pues pierde su trabajo por continuar ensimismado el juego aún dentro del entorno laboral. Si al parecer una percepción poética así no encuentra en la ciudad su lugar natural, está claro que al menos esta dificultad genera un disfrute característico. Llegar a un estado de percepción poética notable, en una ciudad conocida, requiere un esfuerzo especial, pues el "estado vacacional del espíritu", como lo llama Agnes Martin, que permite esta mirada poética, necesita entre otras cosas una inversión de tiempo que la ciudad nos suele robar descaradamente."

For the complete article go to:
http://www.jaimegili.org/treviews.htm#calles

COMING SOON...

A former shopping center called “am Inselplatz” served as the starting point for exploring the idea of light and architecture in the city of Jena, Germany. Opened only one month before the wall came down and now empty for several years, this immense entity seems to have reached a profound state of invisibility. Covered by graffiti, posters, wild plants and construction materials; the place constantly portraits the failure of its own structure. And thus becomes a place deprived of any potential use due to its own nature and its advanced state of neglect.

In the back of the building four light spots hanging from the façade were found, pointing to a previously used advertisement wall, but today there is nothing to be illuminated. So was triggered the question of how a small action can make a whole space change and in someway unveil how alive a structure can be.

For this intervention the entire wall was ‘cleaned’ by painting it completely in white and the four light spots were lit again, using a nearby street lamp as the power supply. For the duration of the exhibition the wall became an empty lit screen, a place for imagination, a portrayal of the state of the building, of this constant wait, when everything is there for something to happen but it actually never does.

Still, the structure waits, for something that perhaps is coming soon…


+ This work was part of the exhibition Wackelkontakt (Loose Contact, Illuminating the Public Sphere) in the city of Jena, Germany. A collaboration between the MFA of Public Art and New Artistic Strategies, Bauhaus Unversität in Weimar, Germany; Jenoptik AG and the Jenaer Kunstverein e.V. February 2-17, 2007.

_INSEL_

This is a backup plan I had when things started to look really bad with permissions and the technical needs for my project. I still like this idea, we will see if I can make it happen :) Im actually thinking on doing a couple of other things in this place with to very dear friends I meet here. Sandra and Naya, lets start working!!

+discovering the INSELPLATZ+

Ok, so here is how the story goes. Our project for the semester had the theme of 'light and architecture', a bit crazy but anyway, and we where working in the city of Jena, just 15min by train from Weimar.

There are a lot of funny and annoying stories about this building that we went to look just because the name of the place was "inselplatz", insel is island in German and we thought it was interesting. Well, as it turned out it definitely was! If you want to look at some more images of the place you can check this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/i-mperfect/sets/72157594558115191/

_5 Euros, 3 Hours, 1 Intervention_

We where going a little bit crazy with our projects so one of our professors decided to make this activity to loosen up a bit of the tension. We where given an envelope that reads as follows:

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Instant Interventions (5th of Dec. 2006)

Look for a spot or situation in you near surrounding that triggers your imagination. Change it, highlight it, comment on it with a site-specific intervention. Be economic in terms of time and duration – easy does it. Take this as a mental and artistic ‘stretching’, a playful exercise of improvisation in comparison with the work in Jena. “Entertain” yourself – and hopefully others too.

Material: free choice, all you can buy for € 5 or more

When: 3 hours from now on, meeting again at 13:00 in the MFA

Where: outside the MFA within a walking distance of not longer than 10 minutes, on a location of your choice.

How: instant, intelligent, sensible, poetic, open minded……. realizable

Try to be open but concentrated. Be playful, allow spontaneity. Be alert to situations you find in the city. Use the eye, not only the brain. Try to develop the work from the location as a starting point. Work rather like a poet than like a scientist.

We will meet again at 13.00 in the MFA rooms to then go together to the different locations.

Good luck and have fun!

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Jesse Hemminger one of my colleagues and I where interest in the same location and decided to work together. This is what came out of it, after funnly losing much time thinking about the paint color we should use for the doors jaja.

0,00

Within the flower market frame we experimented with our little yellow signs, as a more spontaneous reaction to the place, with this idea of how a simple action can be so full of meaning, which turned out to be very interesting especially for the type of event.

I decided to repeat the action once more but this time condensed in one space, which I thought would perhaps allow for it to generate another space and somehow make the action more powerful.

For this purpose I choose a plot of land between two streets, that makes the space of a crossing, something that work on my favor since the cars have to stop at this point allowing the piece to address an unexpected audience.

Variable dimensions. Yellow plastic tags on the street and existing weeds.
Weimar, Germany

+GRASOUFLAGE+ [what is nature]

Since sometimes I work with plants I was invited by the organizers of the 10th Flower Market in Weimar, 2006; for a one-day intervention. I decided to collaborate with one of my colleagues and dear friend Andrea Sirch (Germany). And this is what came out if it. The following text was written for the catalog of the Master project “Weimar, day to day”.

Two impulses negotiate this reflection over nature in the urban sphere; on one hand, a surreal displacement of place and position between our body and the grass when it is brought to the table and the benches and on the other, a subtle gesture that calls attention on the wild life that germinates unnoticed in between the stones, a delicate comment on misplaced values and ownership over public space.

??¿./¿Can unexpected playful interruptions in the routine of common everyday activities generate new ways of relating to the immediate environment??. . . …\\^?¿?

Variable dimensions. Rolled grass on chicken wire and yellow plastic tags.
Weimar, Germany. 2006

POINT 1.0

I was given the chance to be in Leuven, Belgium for almost three weeks. Is always interesting the things that catch your attention specially when you spend more time in a place you are not familiar with.

I saw the city once more and all the little flaws that are part of it began to be visible. Everything is always there if we take the trouble to look. Sometimes the cracks need to be fixed, other times they only need to be pointed, is the way of being conscious, of understanding that the space its alive.

Variable dimensions. Thumb taps applied on cracks in different parts of the city.
Leuven, Belgium. 2006

+URBAN GARDENS+

 

Something cracks open and a piece of life emerges in the most extreme conditions. And with that a dialog between human and nature constructions starts. As cities evolve so does the concept of landscape and thus gardening. This is my version of new possibilities for urban gardens. This study continues to develop to the present day.

Digital drawings. 2006

(RE)Tracing Memory (?)

For the first semester in Germany our project was called "Art and commemoration", I guess that already says a lot, but it was an interesting idea to explore the city of Leuven (Belgium) from that point of view. On the side of the project I developed a series of drawings made on pictures of abandoned buildings, trying to re-trace to some extent what had disappeared.
More images coming soon...

Series of digital drawings applied to photographs

“________” [overexposure]

A long row of impossibilities accompanies the development of this work, unavailable sites, the distance in between the two cities, ownership over public space, bureaucracy and permissions, time frames... and in an odd way it is only because of all these things that this work is possible. So flourished an unplanned and unexpected dialogue with the city in an attempt to discover, and to some extend understand how 'invisible and abandoned' spaces work. thus we can re-think them, and by doing so commemorate and make perceptible the hidden traces of history embedded within them.

An intense observation of the remnants of one of these places led to a moment of serendipity, a fortunate discovery made by accident. The house was breathing so quietly it seemed almost dead. A crack in one of the wooden blinds covering the holes of once existing windows served as the starting point of this intervention. I peered inside but most of it was darkness. I took a picture and in the overexposure a new piece of unexpected knowledge was revealed.

The private is made public, over exposed: the voyeurism of peeking through the window, and all of this exhibited bare for anyone to see, intimately displayed just as if it had been there all the time, because everything is always there if we take the trouble to look.

Variable dimensions. Digital prints applied on wooden blinds.
Leuven, Belgium. 2006

+This work was part of the exhibition 577,4 the distance between a project of the Museum Site Leuven, Sint-Lukas Institute, Brussels and Bauhaus University, Weimar.

+LAND_SCAPES+ [garden to disappear]

Just before leaving to Germany I started wondering about those spaces inside the city that have been left to despair, that have no specific use, areas that we often overlook; places in which nature takes over in a clear attempt to reclaim its once owned territory, and that existing in contrast to how, where and why gardens are design inside the cities.

This intervention consisted on the simple action of cleaning a portion of this space, followed by the highlighting of the nature that surprisingly manages to exist there.

The site and the surroundings stated the ‘natural’ order. All the potential lied there, but the action made it visible, it underlined what already existed, in a way that didn’t deny or change the inevitability of its disappearance, a sacred process of making something that is not made to last forever, ‘planting’ the fragments of a new growth.

Bogotá, Colombia 2005

i-MPERFECT (made at home)

Am lucky if one person manages to scroll this far, but hey who is counting :) hope something here was of anyones interest.