The TreeTrash. “Christmas by pedaling”

A cardboard mountain with the shaped of a Christmas tree, which objective is to visualize overconsumption. The tree was illuminated by pedaling in several bikes of CiclaLab.

The TreeTrash was exhibited from 22 December 2015 to 4 January 2016 in Madrid City Council.

In Madrid tons of cardboard are discarded daily. The streets of the city, especially the most commercial areas, are filled with cardboard every day when stores closed. Cardboard is the maximum symbol of consumption. Almost every imaginable material: toys, clothes, household and electrical appliances… are transported in cardboard boxes from all over the world.

One of these giant cardboard accumulations became the Christmas tree of Madrid City Council in 2015. An icon of consumption built with the remains of consumption. We built the tree during 3 days with the cardboard collected after a Trash Safari in the streets of the city. The tree dimensions were over 9 meters high and 5 meters in his base. The construction was made together with volunteers during an open to participation workshop.

In the following video you can see the collection and construction process .

Instalación realizada en el marco de “Navidad a pedales“. Proyecto ideado por CiclaLab. Un icono navideño iluminado con tu energía.

 

It’s all yours Gulbenkian

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We are what we throw away! Our trash defines us, it is the shadow of what we are, part of our memory.

During  three months the Gulbenkian Foundation and Museum have carefully collected all inorganic waste produced, both by its employees and visitors. From the tips of the pencils, to bottle caps, to obsolete brochures or to all the little holes drilled on the paper sheets. A trash catalog of what’s making, doing and living left behind.

With all that waste we made an art installation in the main entrance of the Gulbenkian Museum, it was ordered by colors, textures … shaping a new landscape. A landscape that coexisted with the garden on the other side of the glass, and in which visitors are immersed. Visitors will walk trough all this ​​small treasures, looking, searching and selecting pieces. All those object will be converted into unique souvenirs, and exclusive piece for each visitor.

 

The Waste room of modernity

Invited to the exhibition “Haushalten in den Meisterhäusern: Wie leben wir morgen gesund und wirtschaftlich?” (“Householding” in the Master houses: how we will live healthy and economically tomorrow?) the first exhibition of contemporary interventions happening at the houses that Gropius designed for the teachers of the Bauhaus in Dessau. It was open from June, 12th to August, 9th 2015.

Researching about the house we were invited to (the Dining Room of Georg Muche), we realized that the house had a buffer space between the kitchen and the dining room, that originally had a window to pass the dishes to the dining room. In that room, the service put the plates together before passing it to the guests. The home of the masters of modernity not only had service living in the dark basement, their service was hidden and unvisible from them. If we think about the service at Downton Abbey, contemporary to them (1926), at least they see each other.

Obviously, modernity was clean because someone else was dirty. Our founding fathers, the Bauhaus and its domesticity did not contemplate any relation with care work. The house was to be a machine for living and creating, alright. But it needed servants.

The installation we proposed crossed those two realities of cleanlines and dirtiness, work and discourse: in the service room, we exhibited some of the photos we took around the world of the waste pickers we have been working with. They were exhibited in the most familiar (and patronising) way. Meanwhile, in the living room, eight thermal printers were printer every twit with the typical hashtags of the contemporary ecological discourse: #Recycle, #Waste, #Efficiency, #Reuse, #Sustainable, #Growth, #Ecology, and not surprisingly the less times twitted #Consumption, which is for us the key word for understading our relation with the world today. 58 days printing every twit with those hashtags, from 10h to 17h CET: Around 15000 mts of thermal paper, 200,000 twits.

While some make ecology work, and invent new methods of caring and householding , some of us dedicate our time to produce discourse, as empty as usual.

__________
This is the curatorial text:

Waste is contemporary, not modern.
Indeed, economy consists today of the production, transport and consumption of waste.
Gropius never included a “waste room” in the meister houses- in his time

There was not as much waste as today. BUT; also the servants handled that.

Modernity was clean because someone else was dirty:
What Gropius included is a room where the servants remained unseen and invisible- the “buffer zone” between the dining room and the kitchen.

Contemporary household produces waste
Indeed, we all work now for the recycling industry, sorting the waste at home, saving work to the recycling industry, not any other but the biggest companies on earth: packaging, mining, steel, aluminium and paper industries are THE recycling industry.
We paid for it and then we have to give it back for free because is “good for the earth”
The massive swindle that consists in buying for overpriced waste, take it home and send it back into the industry is the ultimate exploitation of contemporary economy.

There are no logos for reusing or reducing. All of them ONLY ENCOURAGE to recycle;
there are some informing the material COULD be reused, which material the product is made of, some ask you to be clean and some other to dispose correctly, nothing else. The Pfand, the only useful reusing system existing is, more and more, taken care of by informal workers to work while we party.

Housekeeping and budgeting in the XXI century must include a new waste production  and management culture, and that cannot forget the waste workers, who are the most delicate waste managers and the most thorough reusers. They are, indeed the only one proposing a culture of waste management that might help us reducing the CO emissions and having a happier life. Riding a bike, eating organic and being green makes you happier. “Recycling” (Sorting waste at home and putting them in the bins provided by the biggest companies in the world) is something that makes others happy.

“Huellas”

The project “Huellas” brings back to live the ancient tradition of drying the fishing nets in front of the port. It is a symbol of a way of life that shaped A Coruña historically, although nowadays it is becoming less and less present in its urban context.
The reused fishing nets represent the naval past that made this place one of the liveliest areas in town. A Coruña has experience a massive transformation and today it is only possible to find traces of this traditions in the outskirts of the city.
“Huellas” was a collaborative project by Basurama and local architects, designers and students. It was part of the Festival Mar de Mares.

 

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“The Whirlpool of waste” – Roskilde Festival 2013

More pictures here.

A whirlpool of waste emerges in the middle of an ephemeral city. An invented city to consume: Music, drinks, friends, drugs… RoskildeFestival is a great music festival that congregates more than 125.000 people during 9 days offering more than 100 concerts and activities, a great event of masses.


Instead of hiding and making the rubbish invisible, ” the whirlpool of waste” it’s formed as a visible monument of what we are: consumers producing waste. A trash monument that was growing while the festival days where going on. Savages consumers of excess.

A catapult helped the inhabitants of the new city to accumulate garbage in the great installation. A war field where the rubbish was the main protagonist. The game and the action to relate us on the same level with our wastes.


Basurama also made two workshops with the garbage generated during the festival:

  • Disguises and masks workshop.
    Musical instruments workshop.

Video of the catapult in action:

You can see more videos of the process and a broad view of the festival here (by Basurama).

Inhabiting Plastic Oceans.

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Inhabiting Plastic Oceans is an art installation designed and built by Basurama for the World Design Capital in Company Gardens, Cape Town during the month of November 2014. For the piece 240 kilos of plastic over 5.000 m of duct tape have been used together with 3 industrial fans to blow it up.

In Spain the garbage bag has radically changed in the last 30 years. While in the 80s our home trash was filled in with organic leftovers and broken items (furniture, clothes,….) nowadays the main waste substance in our bin is plastic, whether in the form of bags, bottles or packages. Their properties, their size and the easy way we dispose them make them instantly forgotten. But through each of those decisions and gestures we are actually feeding a monster of mythological dimensions.
In 2014 we were invited to create an installation for the World Design Capital Cape Town 2014 closure. South Africa is a country with 2500km of coastline and it is famous for its capes. Cape Point, in Cape Town, is the melting pot where two huge water masses come together: the Indian and the Atlantic Ocean. In recent years this two oceans have been invaded by one of the most non biodegradable contaminants: plastic. Recent studies show that plastic debris has increased a 90% over the past 10 years in South Africa. A large percentage of this plastic waste ends up in the oceans; and has concentrated itself on 5 vortexes causing enormous environmental problems, including the death of 1.5 million animals per year.
These figures are like mythological animals, abstract entities that we can hardly imagine. Inhabiting Plastic Oceans is an art installation that helps us to visualize through 3 habitable sculptures the dimensions of our consumption model. It does not only make it visible but it gives a dimension and makes it inhabitable. 3 cubes made out of plastic coming from recycling plants and that represent three scales:

 

  • A cube 3x3x3 meters representing the number of bags that a Cape Town citizen takes home each year.

  • A cube 9x9x9 meters that helps us visualize the plastic trash volume produced in Cape Town in one hour.

  • A cube 12x12x12 (the height of a building of 4 floors) that shows the amount of compacted plastic that ends up annually in the ocean.

 

The structure of the cubes is basically air from 3 industrial fans that blow them up. But the installation comes to life in contact with the wind. The wind smoothly shakes the cubes and once you get into the sculptures you can feel the strength of its waving and changes in the surface. Inhabit Plastic Oceans allows us to plunge into the ocean of our own consumption through these three delicate and impressive sculptures. It helps us understanding the world that surrounds us and to be aware of it, but also helps us to imagine new scenarios and give us shelter to scape away from the landscapes we inhabit.

 

Inhabiting Plastic Oceans_1 (In Love We Trash Cape Town 2014)


Inhabiting Plastic Oceans_2 (In Love We Trash Cape Town 2014)

 

 

 

 

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Luxo é Lixo (Luxury is Trash)

//October 2014

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Exhibition at Estampa 2014 art fair in Matadero Madrid,  with Galería Moisés Pérez de Albéniz.

// July 2014

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With the occasion of the Third Meeting of Rectors in Rio de Janeiro, Banco Santander Foundation and Universia invited us to participate for creating a piece of art together with Brazilian university students.

Luxo é Lixo (Luxury is Trash) is a project tributed to the visual poem ‘Lixo/Luxo’ of Augusto de Campos.

The objective was to reproduce the poetry in an urban scale made up with trash. The selected waste were plastic bag, symbol of daily consumption, discarded in some minutes after taking the groceries home. Part of the plastic bags came from the inhabitants of Urca neighborhood, where we were working, another part was obtained through cooperatives and other were provided by the university students taking part in the workshop.

For 10 days students from FACHA and UNIRIO universities collaborated with us in the construction of the piece. Over 4,000 bags have been employed in the installation, which final dimensions are 7 meters high and about 26 meters long.

Working with plastic bags in such a large structure was a challenge, because the bags are lightweight, thin and especially Brazil, which makes them more sensitive.

Luxo é lixo confront the city, the mountains, make contrast to a way of development, to a way of thinking, we want the piece to interact with all these contrasts, with all these contradictions.

The piece was installed at UNIRIO University and also at Urca beach, just under Pan de Azúcar.

 

 

 

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Batumi and its self constructed outdoor itinerant cinema.

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Batumi, Georgia, is a city on the Black Sea and summer booming destination for neighboring countries (Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia) .The city is focusing its developement in the construction of infraestructures and apartments “sun and beach” style.

We were invited by the curators Tamara Bokuchava and Nini Palavandishvil to participate in the Urban Art Festival “Active Art” 2014, first urban art festival in Georgia.

The obejective was to recover discarded materials and give them a new use as well as visibilize that trash is only a “label” that we put on things once their are not more usefull for wath they were designed. We have been working 10 days with Georgian students in the Contemporary Art Center of Batumi (41N 41E) recovering tires to build the seats and packaging plastic for the inflatable screen. The result aselfcontructed open air cinema for summer nights.

The inflatable screen is available at the Contemporary Art Center of Batumi to be used by anyone who want it.  You just have to ask for it!

While tires chairs have been donated to the City of Batumi and will bespread around schools and city parks.

 

 

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Surrealismo Plástico – LUZ

Más fotos aquí.

Vivir/soñar en bolsas de plástico. Hiperconsumo, basura y deseo.
Taller de creatividad “Surrealismo plástico” en la Fundación Antonio Gala, Córdoba.
21 – 22 de febrero 2014.

Taller de pensamiento y acción realizado a junto con los jóvenes residentes de la Fundación Antonio Gala en Córdoba. Con escritores, dibujantes, artistas visuales y músicos. Rompimos su cotidianidad creativa para adentrarnos en la materialidad mundana del plástico. Proceso colectivo de experimentación para intervenir nuestros cuerpos, nuestros espacios.

Intervención final LUZ, a partir de letras habitables en patio cordobés, en el Palacio de Viana.
En cada letra habitable sucedía una acción. En la letra L (poesía) podías entrar para que te escribieran poemas. En la letra U (música), escuchar música a partir de sonidos plásticos previamente registrados y en la letra Z (dibujo) escribir/dibujar dentro y sobre ella.

 

La sutileza como arma arrojadiza.
Partiremos de la sutileza del plástico para gritar preguntas.
Invisibilidades, transparencias, contornos, sonidos, reflejos, colores, espacios, vacíos, presiones, ansiedades, pasiones, soledades.
La bolsa de plástico como sutil símbolo del hiper consumo.
En Surrealismo plástico abordaremos la construcción de escenarios de ensoñación a partir de las cualidades materiales de las bolsas en su relación con nuestro cuerpo y con nuestro entorno, que reflexionen y pongan en crisis nuestra relación directa con la sociedad de consumo.

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