We were in Madrid at the Crítica Urbana hosted by Fragil and company at Patio Maravillas, a nice festival which operated self-managed and faced politics inside street art. Spy, DosJotas, Luzinterruptus, Neko, Dier, Noaz or Left Hand Rotation, among others, were part of it, there were lectures, discussions and film projections about what the title of the festival remarked: Critica Urbana.
Our participation was threefold: Javier Abarca, who organized the projections, presented our “Plantillas de Barcelona” the day before we had made a presentation of our activities as a collective and throughout the festival, we were doing our “artwork”. And this is where we would stop briefly; each artist’s participation in the festival was to intervene one of the rooms on the 5th floor of the Patio Maravillas. It turns out that we had always had “buts” to work inbetween walls. Therefore, we carried out more than an artwork, a process, and observe public reactions to our proposal.
This proposal was to settle in the gallery space, making our studio out of exhibiting space. This idea, nothing new I have to say, let us feel the pleasure of having a working space which we do not have in Barcelona. But moreover, it permitted us to observe the reactions of the public, which became part of the process. The general tone was that of: “uops, excuse me” when they opened the door and found something they were not expecting for.
[Nggallery id = 37]
In almost all cases, we assume that people understood that “there was nothing.”
The invisibility has been observed after in the Internet. 100 of the most relevant photos from Flickr tagged “critica urbana” only in 2 appear our workspace, and specifically the only thing resembling artwork that was in the room: a pair of unfinished graffiti.
[Nggallery id = 38]
Indeed, inside an investigation was being developed, our archives could be read and, above all, the everyone had possibility of setting up a dialogue, not with the work, but with the worker.