Arquitectures for the event
(ON THE POSSIBLE REAL)
Marti Peran
This project comprises a whole series of specific propo-
sals which ought to be evaluated in themselves, whether
autonomously or as a whole. But it is also true that
“architectures for the event” is a project conceived with
an intention to undertake a multi-angled exploration of
such a complex issue as the relationship between con-
temporary culture and the real or, to put it more delica-
tely, this experience attempts to reflect on the
effectiveness and ways in which contemporary art could
benefit the development of a real experience by its
users. We make no claims for the newness or originality
of this approach. In fact, we have already been hearing
calls for the recovery or construction of reality from cultu-
ral practices for some time now. To take a case in point,
the thorough and profound inquiries or postulates repre-
sented by Hal Foster and Nicolas Bourriaud’were develo-
ped under this banner.
Somewhat heuristically, we could bring into play up two
reasons to consider the true appositeness of the issue in
hand. First of all, there is abundant evidence that we are
subjected to an inflation of fictions which relegate reality
to a totally secondary sphere. The so-called empire of
communication has turned the contemporary scenario
into a great big media show, surpassing even the most
radical predictions formulated sometime ago by Guy
Debord. Accordingly, confronted by this situation, it may
perhaps be warrantable to suggest that culture should not
act as a vehicle on an escape route towards the imagi-
nary but, rather on the contrary, it could serve as a critical
instrument to respond to the excessive weight of this fic-
tion by vouching for a true recovery of the real. Secondly,
and in an apparently opposite direction, we could even
advocate that what is really necessary is to provide
mechanisms to flee from established reality, trying to find
interstices through which to escape from a hyper-complex
structure which manipulates reality with a whole series of
strings. That is, to commission contemporary culture with
the task of finding a way out from a unique, hegemonic
and perversely articulated reality in order to then confront
it from the outside. No matter which of these perspecti-
ves we choose to adopt, there is no getting away from
the fact that we are still suffering from a quasi-traumatic
deficiency, whether of real experience or of alien exterio-
rity freed from a pre-established reality.
In another place, we roughly formulated an outline of
the mechanisms contemporary culture could avail of to
renew its relationship with the real2. In a synthetic pro-
posal, we suggested the existence of three different
albeit perfectly intersectionable ways, namely, to give
the word to reality, to intervene directly on reality, or in
its place, to attempt a construction of situations or the
coining of brand new real experiences. To make it more
immediately intelligible, the first option turns art, to
some degree, into a “documentary” operation through
which the reality silenced under the weight of fiction can
find a platform from which to express itself. There are
several possible illustrations of this option. We would just
have to recall, for example, the recent works by Victor
Burgin who also made a call in favour of new realisms. The
second option is illustrated to perfection by parapolitical
practices used in contemporary culture to directly act on
some of the wounds of reality, yet without limiting itself to
a mere denunciation but explicitly contributing to their pos-
sible solution even if interstitially or in an quasi-testimonial
way As may be easily imagined, we are referring here to
proposals ranging from the ideation of dwellings for the
“homeless” – at this stage, almost a genre in itself within
contemporary art- to the setting-up of welcome camps on
the beaches of Tarifa. Finally, the last option we contempla-
ted in this superficial outline was the impulse to build
enclosures, spaces, devices, or channels, in order to cons-
truct, either in them or through them, a real experience
which would probably turn out to be ephemeral, occasional
and largely insignificant yet nonetheless real for all that.
The thematization of this third possible option, which could
be identified under the expression of an “art of the event”3,
is most satisfactorily resolved in what is now known as
relational aesthetics.
Naturally these three possible operational alternatives
have their respective champions and, equally logically,
they have stirred up countless debates and controversy.
However, in our opinion and at least up to this date, it is
more pressing and interesting to delve into the common
territory shared by these new realisms – making no
effort to sidestep the confusion likely to be caused by
this knowing use of the term- rather than adding to an
elitist and academic debate on the subtle nuances which
would allow us to establish a differentiation between
artists by categorising them as anthropologist, documen-
talist, neo-situationist, activist, relational, contextual or
any other acceptable adscription. Far be it from us to try
to conceal the existence of a crucial background issue
which must be discussed and stubbornly refuses to agree
on one single and simple drawer to file away the totality
of these praxes. The crux of the matter basically lies in
how to ensure that none of these options get away with
being allowed to represent a mere play or mockery of
what should be understood as a social nexus within the
public sphere. Indeed, those re-encounters with the real
are all covered by an elementary political overtone by
which they attempt to favour differences in the frame-
work of the deteriorated territory of the public, a lauda-
ble attempt which cannot always be successful. There are
many parameters which will determine the profile of
what may or may not be eventually achieved -whether
we are working or not in an institutionalised context, the
concession of a certain degree of playful spirit, the reso-
lution or not of a real interaction with the social context
where the artistic proposal is placed… and so many other
perfectly predictable factors. In any case, and without
overlooking these problems, “architectures for the event”
is a project in which we have attempted to locate oursel-
ves in the areas of greater intersection among the three
lines of action we identified above. As we will see, none
of the projects we are presenting here can in fact be
neutralised under the strict label of the documentary, the
activist, or the merely relational. From our viewpoint, all
the proposals are resolved within a fuzzy amalgamation
of many different elements. Expressed in terms of
urgency, and to follow the same guidelines which have
led us here, our idea has always been to unite the docu-
mentary, the political, and the playful yet not forgetting
what it means to work within the specific framework of
the EAC’C inasmuch as it is an institutionalised artistic
venue, and to act in the context of the city of Castellon.
In this sense, we would like to interpret this project as
an articulation of all that the above-described possible
realisms have in common. And the overlapping area they
all share in common is not negligible, as we will now
proceed to demonstrate.
In this intention to forge a basic nucleus for these new
realisms, we must first underline a set of issues which at
this stage might almost seem too obvious. First of all, we
should highlight the subversion of the traditional creator-
artist now transformed into an “operator” of situations; a
subversive subject -whose actions subvert the dynamics
which organise the real from hegemonic perspectives- or,
at its worst, a mere cultural entertainer if our only success
is to have turned the artistic space into a banal recreatio-
nal centre. On the other hand, together with this questio-
ning of the traditional profile of the author, conventional
spectators are also converted by these praxes into users
or accomplices from whom a predisposition to action is
expected, whatever its form, with their involvement in
events as apparently banal as banquets or the playful
gatherings which prove so irritating to the more funda-
mentalist advocates of the strictly activist strain, or per-
haps their hypothetical incorporation into a street
demonstration organized by these latter “operators”.
Beyond all these considerations, but still in the sphere of
the patently obvious, the encounter with the real should
also bring with it, with a nearly absolute neutrality, the
definitive loss of any other redeeming pretence as well as
of any desire for continuance. To some extent, we could
even state that this last consideration is practically non-
negotiable. In the context of contemporariness there are
hardly any doubts that the real can only be conjugated in
the -ing form, as something happening in an incessant
movement of disappearance and new presentation.
Together with this panoply of observations which has
practically become a commonplace in the literature
accompanying the above-described new realisms, anot-
her perverse operation, which would also demonstrate
the existence of effective areas for encounters, has been
made possible. We are referring to the fascination they
share for a list of very significant touchstones: Georges
Bataille and his suggestions on the depense; or potlatch
as an alternative device for production and interchange;
Pierre Klossowski and his portrait of the artist as a “living
currency” underscoring the human as the true notion of
value; Felix Guattari and his definition of the new pro-
duction of subjectivity; Michel de Certeau and the notion
of “practices” able to construct meaning; Jacques
Ranciere and his association between the aesthetic and
the political as fragments of the same mosaic; Chantal
Mouffe and her defence of antagonism and hostility as
principles of the democratic space…”. Naturally, this list of
sources could go on, particularly if we were to embark
on a genealogy of the subject which would virtually force
us to sublimate the figures of Guy Debord and Michel
Foucault. Something that should not surprise us because,
even admitting that they are not so disparate, the fronts
we are proposing carry with them highly significant pro-
blems. To insist on our attempt to unfold it didactically,
we could just claim that when talking about certain cul-
tural or artistic practices which try to give the word to
reality (what we might call documentarianism), or con-
front hegemonic structures (para-political activism), or, of
all things, create territories for the construction of real
experience (the art of the event or relational), all of
them must include in their respective commitments the
difficult mission of clarifying just what is behind their
idea of “reality” and whether the diversification of a criti-
cal attitude towards it is actually possible as we would
like to believe at this moment in time. It is precisely in
the exploration of these imperatives that the above-sour-
ces, from Bataille to Mouffe, offer the most efficient gui-
delines for any “new realist”, whatever the option within
which he operates with his postulates.
If we were to take a look at the possible dimension of
the idea of reality contained in these practices, we would
see that all of them share -as far as realisms are concer-
ned- a denial of any hope for the ideal. It is in fact a kind
of “conquest of the present” by which even the most
conventional dynamics of sociability would only be effec-
tive inasmuch as “theatricalized”‘, that is, set into motion
in a here and now. Indeed, there is no room whatsoever
for any ideal stage setting capable of offering a happy-
ever-after. In the “realist” proposal we are trying to defi-
ne, there is subsequently a kind of dramatic paradox
which finds it impossible to resolve, or support, any
given circumstance: the present can only be conquered
under the condition of accepting its volatility. The world
is nothing but a found world, always other to itself. It is
true that culture is an instrument providing a reasonable
sense of direction for circulating through the interstices
of reality; but it is a mode, a manner, and not a repre-
sentation able to capture and freeze it. At the end of the
day, this has been the great virtue of all realisms: the
acceptance that the greatest depth lies precisely in the
changing surface of things. That is, so to speak, the solid
nucleus of the notion of reality shared by the practices
we are studying here. In their case, their way of circula-
ting through the real does not attempt, in any case, to
constrain or submit it; on the contrary, it underpins its
never-ending mutation.
Therefore, the different cultural or artistic strategies which
renew their pacts with reality share, in the first place, that
notion of the real as something radically magmatic, subor-
dinated to a continuous process and not subject to inter-
pretation under any mechanism of objectivisation.
However, in spite of that remarkable coincidence, it is
even more significant the fact that they share the convic-
tion that this encounter with reality forces a critical rela-
tionship with it. It is not only about the acceptance of our
condition bereft of any categorical truths, but of acting and
pronouncing ourselves vis-a-vis the intrinsic chasm implied
in the acceptance that the non-sense of reality might spre-
ad like an unstoppable desert’.
It is perhaps in this need for definition of a critical attitude
vis-a-vis the real that the differences between the tactics
that we have recognised from the beginning may become
more visible. Hence, the proposals focusing on the cons-
truction of platforms to facilitate the expression of the
peripheral, secondary, anomalous, or simply minority of
reality, are probably characterised as a mid-intensity criti-
cal gaze inasmuch as they focus their action on the restrai-
ned localisation of conflicts, no matter how horrific they
may be. In turn, those practices which we identified as
parapolitical or activist, would develop a high intensity cri-
tical perspective due to their untimely and frontal action,
whilst on the other extreme, those proposals known as
relational would represent a low intensity critical realism
given their inclination to explore the playful and the
unproductive, with all the triviality this seems to imply. It
is true that we are consciously using these expressions in
a free and easy way to insist on our call for a recognition
of differences between these practices but, at the same
time, to accentuate what they have in common. This
determination is what encouraged us to take the liberty of
measuring the levels of critical attitude which may be
identified in each one of the new realisms. However, now
we are not interested in judging their levels of effective-
ness or appeal. At this point, our stance is merely focussed
on ensuring an equal recognition of the legitimacy of the
various procedures with the one proviso that, in each par-
ticular case, the problems to be solved are completely dis-
tinct. Thus, for instance, to intervene in a recognised
artistic space or to work with public funds will probably
lead to something very different insofar as it affects one
critical modality or another. We must not, for example,
confuse a possible critical act from within existing structu-
res with a mere depredation or parasitic action on the
same structures to help them maintain their position of
prestige. On the other hand, to provide more examples as
if that were necessary, the outcome is completely different
according to whether the actions are programmed or not
and whether they are rehearsed from the very option in
which they are circumscribed.
There is still one more factor we want to underscore in
the framework of this obsession to pinpoint what docu-
mentary, subversive and relational art have in common
(at this stage it is probably just as well to use these
denominations as such): the explicit acceptance that
these different realisms carry with them with regard to
the rifts and heterogeneity of contemporary subjectivity7.
It is also true that in this point, the ways of making visi-
ble what is common are radically different. Returning to
the almost superfluous style we chose to try to put for-
ward in our exhibition, we must say that whilst docu-
mentary art tries to resolve the question by
acknowledging .the existence of the infinite variety of
voices with respect to which it occupies hegemonic plat-
forms, subversive art opts for a stimulation of antago-
nisms and conflicts which, in its vision, should
re-establish the public sphere as a territory for disparity
and disagreement and, finally, relational art seems to be
orientated towards the creation of voids from which it
may deploy a multiple subjectivity, already outside the
outlines of an identity built under the light of its constant
confrontation with the other. In any case, and beyond
these possible differences, what we want to underline
here is the fact that in no case is the purpose to recom-
pose the fragmentation of that subjectivity. Furthermore,
as a matter of fact, the different modalities of realism
are based on an impossible and unnecessary reconcilia-
tion of differences. Contemporary subjectivity develops at
once in apparently contradictory directions -we are all
one thing and at the same time the opposite: actors and
spectators, producers and consumers, native and
foreign,…and all these kinds of multiples are also transla-
ted, at a greater scale, into the social body in the form of
plural identities, strident differences, licit dissidences. The
acknowledgement and exploration of this rich fragility of
the self is, in our opinion, one of the most interesting
political contributions of the praxes we are dealing with,
for it corrects one of the most perverse slogans of our
time: the continuous calls for tolerance. It is not about
allowing differences, or tolerating them from a position
of privilege which boasts its own supposed generosity.
The disparate and the different is something we have to
rub shoulders with, accepting the inherent friction, ack-
nowledging the dispute of places and the alternation of
narratives, whether individual or collective.
As we have already stated, “architectures for the event”
is -perhaps with some risk- a project for a simultaneous
exhibition expressing different projects capable of exem-
plifying all these considerations about what the different
“realisms” share in common. That does not mean that
each work must fit in with a fixed and predetermined
reading. Only that, in our opinion, all of them allow the
cross-detection of many of the considerations which we
have used to underline the shared ground of the diverse
options for a development of encounters between art
and reality. The title itself responds to this same purpose
in a merely indicative manner. What the notion of “archi-
lectures” attempts to underline is simply to stress the
plurality of formats used by contemporary art to activate
this re-encounter with the real. In turn, the notion of
“event” speaks about the need to tackle reality as what
fleetingly, immediately and vividly unfolds always in real
time and which, with Baudelairesque memory, undergo-
es a permanent displacement and develops through irre-
gular and paradoxical procedures. It is no less true that
-beyond what we have explained up to this point- the
expression “architectures for the event” also attempts to
clarify that the project in question wishes to turn the
very space of the exhibition venue into a kind of a bat-
tery of physical devices aimed at the consummation of a
non-contemplative experience.
In many cases the real involvement with the specific
context of the city of Castellon has been crucial, due to
the very nature of the project. This has certainly implied
some added difficulties to what would be the usual exhi-
bition, but has also helped to unveil many unforeseen
opportunities and concordances. In this sense, the real
life of the city and its environment -all those actively
visiting the exhibition, but also some very specific collec-
tives, such as the students of the School of Arts and
Crafts of Castellon, a group of former students of the
Faculty of Fine Arts of Valencia, the staff and patients of
the Hospital General, the local newspaper
“Mediterraneo”, or the countless passers-by lending their
spontaneous collaboration to the project by Raimond
Chaves – has given us a lesson in trust which we hope to
be able to live up to.
RAIMOND CHAVES
Raimond Chaves has previously worked with the idea of
drawing and always with the spontaneous collaboration
of the people from the street, for example in “El Dibujo
24 h” which was developed in a number of cities world-
wide. On this occasion, “Retratos al paso” is, in the words
of its creator, an open invitation to use the power of dra-
wing to make those who are absent appear, and bring
those who are gone closer. Following an advert inserted
in a local newspaper, over the space of a few days a sort
of touring office was set up in different points of the city
of Castellon with the mission to compile, with the colla-
boration of anybody willing to contribute, all sorts of des-
criptions of loved ones who are missing or far away and
in this way an oral material bank was created with the
contributions. Once in the EACC, this range of the most
varied descriptions was put at the disposal of visitors so
that they could draw the people described. As the dra-
wings grow in numbers, they are arranged on the floor
or in boxes. In this way, an unpredictable gallery of por-
traits is created in the venue. After the closure of the
exhibition, the amateur drawers who have left their
addresses will receive, at random, one of the portraits
made throughout the project.
This proposal contains some elements we would like to
dwell on a little further. On one hand, thanks to the
direct participation achieved through the drawings we
have achieved a sort of collectivisation of the traditional
“clairvoyance of art” -all the participants can use their
abilities to make something visible thanks to art, with
the singularity that there is no messianic artist behind
the operation. At the opposite extreme of that same con-
sideration, and because of the possible multiplication of
different drawings based on the same description, the
failure of any attempt at objective representation is also
made patent. At the end of the day, speech and hand
can only build languages, yet the real might not be what
can be described through those languages but rather
what happens in their very use.
From the perspective of the general observations we
have made above, “Retratos al paso” emerges as a tou-
ring architecture which, by working in the streets compi-
ling information, suggests the possibility of turning the
public space into a place where art disappears to give
the word to the real. But the project is not constrained
to a merely documentary action and, in fact, almost the
opposite of the programmatic option for the dissemina-
tion of art inside the public field is what happens becau-
se, ultimately, art multiplies itself endlessly in this
project, and the street becomes the place where art
itself settles with the intention of multiplying, poetising,
transgressing, and infecting the ordinary real with the
power of drawing. Going even further in the same direc-
tion, Raimond Chaves’ proposal consists of reversing the
direction of something as ordinary and common as the
street-portraitist in such a way that, through that subver-
sion, it is no longer the latter who executes with dexte-
rity an agreed representation but, on the contrary, is
now the agent responsible for making the representa-
tion explode towards the multiple and uncontrollable. In
other times, drawing – “il disegno” – was something like
the science of the line, of the stroke, imposing bounda-
ries on things in order to capture them. In the hands of
occasional portraitists, drawing now becomes a platform
for the diverse and, ultimately, a perversion of drawing
takes place in accordance with the new notion of the
real as that which is not objective.
JENS HAANIG
The significance of the project by Jens Haaning –
“Untitled (EACC- Hospital Provincial de Castello, 2002) –
is not as different from that by Raimond Chaves as may
have been thought at first sight. The starting line is
again the same idea of passing the word over to reality,
only that this time the heterodoxy of this’fake documen-
tary lies in its focalisation on a very specific and acute
area of reality and, above all, in the subversion of the
direction of the gaze. Indeed, the aseptic room build in
the EACC is furnished with a web-camera broadcasting in
real time what happens in this space to the mental
health section of the Hospital Provincial of Castellon, thus
turning visitors to this exhibition into a kind of external
piece of news infiltrated into the habitual territory of the
health centre. During the process of creation of the pro-
ject somebody said that, plainly speaking, now we were
turning the sane into a spectacle to be consumed from
mental disorders.
With this project, Jens Haaning not only articulates a dia-
logue between two totally disparate physical and social
spaces, but, above all, forces us to rethink the condition
of marginality under the light of one of its most subtle
manifestations, namely, mental pathology. The first con-
sideration which may be deduced from this operation
underscores how this condition of discrimination is based
on the hegemonic ways of observing reality. It is, indeed,
a mainstream way of seeing that determines what is
anomalous. Hence the pertinence of reversing the direc-
tion of the observation to the point of turning ourselves
into prisoners of a certain viewpoint. Reality is always
defined from a particular way of seeing it and through
this dynamic, any judgement of it ought to take into
account its intrinsic weakness. .
Jens Haaning has been working on a regular basis in
this double perspective of research into marginality
and the arbitrariness of the perspectives provoking it.
In this line, for example, he turned immigrants set-
tled in Finland into handsome models sporting expen-
sive fashionable clothes. The operation is, yet again,
the same: bringing together radically distinct realms
in order to underline, even if negatively, the essential
role of external reading in the constitution of each
one of the parties covered by the exercise. In this
sense, his work illustrates to perfection the idea we
have proposed above by which the real does not
develop as something objective occupying in turn a
determinate place; on the contrary, reality demands
conflictive areas of intersection where its different
readings are also executed.
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
With “Ceramic juice”, Josep Maria Martin and Rirkrit
Tiravanija have conceived a kind of synthetic portrait of
the area of Castellon by remitting themselves to two of
the most significant industries of the geographical area
in which we were working: citrus growing and ceramics
manufacturing. The outcome is a singular object: a cera-
mic orange, made at a one-to-one scale with artisan
meticulousness, is offered to visitors totally free of char-
ge so that they can smash it, should they so wish,
against the wall of the EACC. Around 2,000 oranges have
been created for this apparently absurd purpose thanks
to the collaboration of the School of Arts and Crafts of
Castellon. A rough wooden catwalk has also been built to
act as a kind of shooting gallery, equipped with an
amplification system which turns each impact on the
wall into a real clap of thunder. Finally, next to this pre-
carious architecture, a conventional industrial machine offers the thrower the possibility of drinking a glass of freshly
squeezed orange. Through all this, this apparent game
enhances the appeal of the invitation to take part.
Behind its playful and cathartic appearance, the proposal
confuses the conventional parameters of working and pro-
duction, dissolving them. It is true that we could even stop
to accentuate the anomaly involved in that simple conver-
sion of the museum into a place where works are “oblitera-
ted”. But it is in another direction where we think the
project focuses its peculiar gaze. In the same way that we
are used to establishing a difference between productive
time, which requires an effort, devotion, and even aliena-
tion, and free and unproductive leisure time, determined
only by one’s own wishes, now the very object -the cera-
mics orange- which may remit us to one of those opposite
worlds, condenses them in one. The working and playing,
the making and unmaking, draw one single circle, no longer
expressing the insurmountable opposition imposed by the
orthodoxies of the market system.
What we want to underline in “Ceramic juice” is also discer-
nible in the projects by Raimond Chaves and Jens Haaning,
but it is here where it becomes most radically visible. We
are referring to what Michel de Certeau calls “metaphori-
sing the prevailing order”8, and which consists in using
laws, objects, and the conventional mechanisms of repre-
sentation differently In the words of the artist himself, it is
about “building new sentences with a given vocabulary
and syntax”. Indeed, turning oranges and the ceramic
industry into the object designed for the totally unproducti-
ve act of breaking it in a sort of playful ritual, amounts to
an appropriation of the established which, so to speak,
would overlap the documentary and the subversive accor-
ding to the previously used notions.
MINERVA CUEVAS
Of the several different proposals made for “Architectures
for the Event”, Minerva Cuevas’ is undoubtedly closest to
the subversive realisms we have just invoked by the hand
of Josep Maria Martin and Rirkrit Tiravanija and which,
naturally, may unfold actions which can even be openly
classified as social and political activism in the most genui-
ne sense of the expression. At the end of the day, the best-
known work by Minerva Cuevas is the creation of the free
services company on the Internet called Mejor Vida Corp
through which users may request fake credentials, bar
codes, and other instruments to interfere with and sabota-
ge the market(9). For this occasion, Minerva Cuevas has
developed the project “Nuevos Mercados” (2002), a monu-
mental mural painting in which the logotype of Telefonica
coexists with the slogan “coloniSar” on an old view of the
“new world”, giving way to an unequivocal reading: far
from representing a mechanism for the regeneration of
depressed areas, the economic globalisation exerted by the
big multinationals over the third world is nothing but the
latest version of Western colonialism. The project -clearly
linked with the allegoric and celebrative nature of traditio-
nal Mexican mural painting- is accompanied by some small
stickers bearing the same image which visitors may take
away with them free-of-charge.
In order to make a correct assessment of the dimension
of this work, we should point out that a previous edition
of the stickers in question had been distributed among
the demonstrators who took to the streets of Madrid on
the occasion of the meeting held in the Spanish capital
among heads of state from the European Union and Latin
America. In that phase of the project, the “artistic object”
played its true role by becoming an image loaded with
critical meaning and used in a real context. Its later con-
version into a mural image is, in any case, the mecha-
nism through which this iconography translates the same
content into an established artistic space. Subsequently,
the image now takes on the conventions, modes, and
predeterminations of an exhibition venue, without losing
a modicum of irony in the process. If the stickers had
been restricted to the art centre, their function Would
have been no more than testimonial. However, by retou-
ching the message with “artistic” content, its critical
dimension opens up a new frontline. Naturally, if we are
interested in putting the stress on that observation it is
because of its readiness to offer us the perfect occasion
to illustrate the feasibility of displacing or adapting to the
exhibition space a proposal which had been genuinely
conceived as a street action, as we have seen in
Raimond Chaves’ work.
KIT
“Autoskinning : Passive abduction no. 6” is an architecture
built by KIT using exploded airbags and cars which had
been crashed in real life. The hanging structures become a
sort of chrysalis inside which unusual sounds can be
heard, actually the computerised treatment of the noise
produced during the second in which the airbag explodes.
In spite of its initial appearance -visitors are allowed to
walk among these spatial structures- the proposal does
not limit itself to the construction of a large sound sculp-
ture through an accomplished operation of recycling. On
the contrary, KIT ‘s contribution to “Architectures for the
Event” consists in pointing out that the accident, even a
catastrophe and its remains, rather than annihilating the
real, take it to another level -different, apparently ano-
malous, but at the same time licit regardless of its func-
tion. Apocalyptic impulses also have a place alongside
conventional processes among the established dynamics
altering reality. It is indeed a radical example of one of
the ideas set out in our initial line of argument: the real
is nothing more than a sort of oedipal present perma-
nently consuming itself. When we express this idea we
do so from a perspective which might be considered
epistemological. That is, we attempted to certify the
impossibility of knowing the real as something consistent
and objectivisable. In this project by KIT, this idea close
to an entropic conception of the dynamics organising the
real world, takes on a new dimension: the ease with
. which the technologic mediation characteristic of the
contemporary space empowers this propensity towards
accident, failure, and the catastrophic unpredictable
which imposes a sudden turn on the course of events. In
fact, this implies a quite different reading of the usual
interpretation of technology as a hindrance in our rela-
tionship with the real. The convention presupposes that
technology promotes simulacra of the real in favour of all
kinds of simulations. For KIT, on the contrary, technology
only helps to accelerate the possibilities and the speed
-even if it is via violence and unpredictability – of the
mutations through which reality is permanently overex-
posed and saturated.
STALKER
Stalker defines itself as a Laboratory of Urban Art resear-
ching into real territory (10) with special attention on the
marginal areas of big cities. Hence they create a peculiar
work of mapping out the territory guided by the expe-
rience of crossing through it and of interacting with its
occasional protagonists. From this point of view, they
obviously represent in our line of argument an excellent
example of insertion within the real territory and, above
all, of acceptance and experimentation of space as the
only mechanism to shape it. For Stalker, territory only
exists insofar as it is mapped with our feet.
“Las sendas del mar” is a work perfectly synthesising all
these observations. At the door of the EACC the visitor is
suddenly welcomed by a huge amount of rubber boots
which they are invited to put on with the peculiarity
that, instead of protecting them from water, they are
there to walk “in” water. In this way, and with their feet
permanently underwater, the users of such odd footwear
may walk at will, inside or outside the EACC. Without
having to walk any further, a TV monitor located among
the myriad of boots offers the visual story of the move-
ments of the members of Stalker through the inhospita-
ble areas of Castellon until reaching the seashore. When
the visitors end their action and go to retrieve their own
shoes, they find a card revealing for them the true objec-
tive of the game: to pay homage to all of those who tra-
vel the Mediterranean in search of a better land.
FABRICE HYBERT
Fabrice Flybert has built a site specific work for the EACC,
consisting of a giant staircase to access the first floor of
the central body of the exhibition venue. Given the exis-
tence of regular and safe accesses, it is a rather absurd
architecture. However, this unusual artefact offers the
opportunity of viewing the space from an unusual vanta-
ge point. On the other hand, the above-mentioned stair-
case and the POF 92 (” Un bassin d’eau avec 7 hommes
de besines”), demarcate the area where a number of
POFs by Hybert are installed: trees kissing, a corridor built
with canvases, a liberated bonsai, a rather scatological
swing, among others. This peculiar universe of objects,
which may be used in some cases -from the architectu-
res of the staircase and the corridor, to the diving gog-
gles- consistently denotes the freedom through which
the subject builds its relationship with the world of
things. Reality is not a mosaic of pre-fabricated frag-
ments so that each one of them can occupy an equally
predetermined place in function of the others. Fabrice
Hybert’s proposal develops in just the opposite direction.
From the opulence of the economy of desire, freed from
any expectation of usefulness or productivity, things are
also at the disposal of the subject for the construction of
an effective or affective experience without agreed-upon
experiences nor any kind of previous arrangement.
Fabrice Hybert opened the possibility for this relationship
with the real objects seen in his long series of Prototypes
of Functionality (POF) (11).
As one can well imagine, here we are not interested in
the possible surrealist nature of these creations -in that
case we would have had to recover that particular
notion- but in what this consciously “incorrect” profile
involves: to allow the consummation of the plural subject
introduced into the world of things, reinforcing its poten-
tial to be the one who ultimately defines how to be
among them. Indeed, a very, very light kind of freedom.
________________________________________________
Notes
(1) Hal Foster: “El retorno de lo real”, Akal, Madrid, 2001. N.
Bourriaud: “Esthetique relationelle”, Les presses du reel,
Paris, 1998. For a more comprehensive view, we could also
mention many other works in the same direction, and at
least highlight among the latest contributions P. Ardenne:”
Un art contextuel”, Flammarion, Paris, 2002.
(2) M. Peran. “Espais reals” in AAVV: “Espais reals”. Col.
Art-vs n.1, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2002.
(3) This is the denomination we used in the work pre-
vious to this project. M. Peran: “Arquitectura del aconte-
cimiento” in Various authors: “En tiempo real: el arte
mientras tiene lugar”, Fundacion Luis Seoane, A Coruna,
2001.
(4) For these references, see: G. Bataille, “La parte mal-
dita”, Icaria. Barcelona, 1987; P. Klossowski,” La Mqpeda
viviente”; Felix Guattari, “Caosmosis”, Manantial, Buenos
Aires, 1992; Michel de Certeau, “La invencion de lo coti-
diano. 1 Artes de Hacer”, Universidad Iberoamericana,
Mexico DF, 1996; J. Ranciere, “La division de lo sensible”,
Centre de Arte de Salamanca, Salamanca, 2002; C.
Mouffe, “El Retorno de lo politico”, Paidos,
Barcelona.1999.
(5) We introduce this idea paraphrasing Michel
Maffesoli, “La conquete du present”, PUF, Paris, 1979.
(6) The expression is taken from the well-known
“Welcome in the desert of the real” from the film The
Matrix.
(7) It is well-known that Felix Guattari has developed
this question in length to the extent that it is accepted
as the most common reference for this subject. Among
the works where this issue is mentioned, see “Para una
refundacion de las practicas sociales” (1992).
(8). M. de Certeau. Ob. Cit.
(9) http://www.irational.org/myc
(10) See the group’s manifesto in this book.
(11) A complete list of them may be found in “POF.
Hybert”, UR edition, 1999.