ESCARAVOX
Agrosocial infrastructure to grow crops of voice-equipped citizens
ESCARAVOX are assemblages of discarded rural infrastructures, reprogrammed as voice-giving public devices.
In Madrid, contemporary art centers and other large cultural institutions tend to concentrate along the axis that joins Avenida de América with Legazpi Square, aligned with the city center. In contrast, small music and theater groups or poetry associations are for the most part evenly scattered throughout the capital’s extensive territory.
Although individually these small groups culturally stimulate the local contexts in which their activities develop, considered as a collective they constitute the biggest cultural infrastructure in the city, making a large impact in terms of cultural promotion and debate activities.
Matadero Madrid is a former slaughterhouse that has been turned into a cultural institution that describes itself as a “public space for contemporary culture, with views on the river.” The aim of our project is to endow it with the necessary material devices and institutional protocols to prompt a connection between the aforementioned models of intervention in the cultural field, activating their potential as a broader collective network.
To achieve this, the scheme proposes equipping the open spaces of the old abattoir with varied types of large-span mobile structures with sound-amplifying systems, stage lighting, and audiovisual projection systems, so that in combination with sliding stands, they may serve as auxiliary structures for public performances. The use of these facilities is organized following the conventions of the local municipal tennis courts, which are booked by the hour.
The structure’s materials are based on the idea of an odd assemblage of inexpensive elements: irrigation systems, polythene fabric from the greenhouse of the Spanish province of Almería or cheap plastic chairs. A composite of ready mades, using existing technologies in ways different from their original intent. It is a technological reappropriation process, which the office relates to the possibility of queer uses of available systems.
A project by Andrés Jaque Architects / Office for Political Innovation
Ruggero Agnolutto (Project leader)
Fernando Arocha, Ángela Bailén, Almudena Basabe, Elisa Bua, Álvaro Carrillo, Catalina Corredor, Roberto González García, Michal Just, Jorge López Conde, Marco Marcelletti, Paola Pardo, Khristian Serena, Patrycja Stal, Dagmar Stéeova, Silvie Talackova.
Structure_ Bomainpasa
Equipment_ Juan Carlos Lafuente, Álvaro Zamora
Sociological Research_ Silvia Rodríguez
Client_ Matadero Madrid
