Ephemeral - Spatial Transformation - Back To Life
The EPHEMERAL Installation is the outcome of the cooperation between curators Lorenza Manfredi, Abraham Hurtado, platform AADK Spain Centro Negra and TCA Think Tank, together with students and professionals from Spain, Italy, Germany, Norway, India and Czech Republic. The intensive 3-day workshop had created the installation realized through the mountains and ruins of Blanca, exploring the qualities of the context around Peña Negra, insisting in understanding the context, attracting visitors and starting a long process of revaluation of the abandoned areas.
The EPHEMERAL Installation is one of the results of a sequence of activities realized by the Spatial Transformation Workshop – Blanca Back To Life, an experimental project aiming at a thorough understanding of the context through different artistic approaches.
Blanca, a small town huddling at the foot of Peña Negra, a volcanic black rock, is reinventing parts of its structure, thanks to the impulses from artists’ platform AADK Spain. The first step is to rediscover the actual potentials of a shrinking city; then the workshop Back To Life created an integral process in further developing these impulses.
At Centro Negra, 20 international participants in the creative fields put their focus onto the urban situation of Peña Negra, where the town meets the steep rocks. Here, a set of small informal architectures originally served as micro ‘‘subsistence city’’, were mainly used for chicken-raising and husbandry. These abandoned structures are now in ruins through various stages of decay or reconstruction.
The EPHEMERAL Installation is the outcome of the cooperation between curators Lorenza Manfredi, Abraham Hurtado, platform AADK Spain Centro Negra
and TCA Think Tank, together with students and professionals from Spain, Italy, Germany, Norway, India and Czech Republic. The intensive 3-day workshop had created the installation realized through the mountains and ruins of Blanca, exploring the qualities of the context around Peña Negra, insisting in understanding the context, attracting visitors and starting a long process of revaluation of the abandoned areas.
The Installation is composed of several areas, each one of them connected with a specific experiential quality of space. From the top of the mountain, a roll of textile is released to travel through the narrow and steep alley in between the ruins. Here the installation became a dense place to explore. The textile divides into 2 elements with curves to layout the space around the entrances of the ruins. The folds vary in size, from wide scale to allow the interaction with more people, to small scale for solitary contemplative experience of nature, small portions of structures and texture of materials.
Along different natural elements changes the space, modifies and moves with the wind, creating unexpected shapes in interaction with the arid environment. The place, ones dead, re-animates and fills with movement in the little exposed street. The place is to be explored, observed and attracted to. The Installation is to be examined from various viewpoints around the valley, from the other side of the mountain and from the main square of the village.
The Installation terminates with the joining of elements back to one section, rising on top of the ruins. It is raised with helium balloons, suspending the textile. This is a participatory installation, a tool to integrate the interaction between creators and users, who are invited to add elements and to affect the height of the structure as a direct modification to the installation.
The entire system reveals 3 main spatial composition shaped by a single textile element, exploring different qualities of space. The ‘line’ is an unreachable space visible from a distance, its strong effect created an EPHEMERAL landmark, visually connecting people’s attention from afar. The space then evolves into a physical connection made of folds, stairs, doors, bushes, an unexpected track to cross through and interact with. Eventually the EPHEMERAL structure floats over the heads in variable positions, suspended by pure shapes, suggesting continuity between the structure and the space around, inviting the observer to stay and reflect about the actual and future possibilities of the area.
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Credits & Info:
Ephemeral – Spatial Transformation Workshop – Back To Life
Designer: Pier Alessio Rizzardi
Partecipants: Lorenz Krauth, Sarika Jhawar, Marta Martini, Jesús Sánchez Díaz-Hellín, Jana Doudova, Giuliana Elia
Curator: Lorenza Manfredi
Organizer: Abraham Hurtado
Dimentions: 150m
Materials: Nonwoven fabric, Balloons, Helium
Spatial Transformation Workshop – Back To Life: Organized by the creative platform AADK Spain in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of professionals, architects, professors, artists and reporters.
Tutors: Pier Alessio Rizzardi, Sverre Aune, Elena Ferrari, Jorge bermejo pascual, Greta Colombo, Roberto Carrasco, Enrique Nieto, Thilo Folkerts
