Production

2006. Virginia Corda + Paula Doberti. ACCIDENTES URBANOS (published text)

 
URBAN PERFORMANCE ACTION
Accident: Alteration or change that appears in a thing without it losing its essence or nature

The idea is to reflect upon accidents and various other instances so as to obtain records that salvage, symbolize and graphically represent change, overlay and/or urban accidents.

Any contemporary city requires a fleeting moment of attention. Setting out from movement, angst and constant change, we envisaged, by contrast, the aim of this urban action: to pause and cast a salvaging, poetic and distinct and openly resignifying gaze.

The saturation of images, deafening noise, multiple icons and glut of sensory stimulation leave the passer-by in an overexposed torpor of brutalized surfeit, evasive introspection or sensory blockade. This overlay of chromatic codes, self-referential metalanguages, universalized symbols and inaccessible dimensions causes what Benjamin calls urban shock.

Memory is a component of time that records the vicissitudes of man’s passage through life.

The highlighted accident is memory, the history of an inhabited place, in whose peculiarities the passer-by participates.


METHODOLOGY

• Highlighting of urban accidents by means of zooming in on them

• Location: Paseo de la Castellana (or environs of the Madrid Abierto circuit)

• Legal discourse shall be used as a methodology

• The artistic work shall unfold in three (3) stages

1st. FIELDWORK

1-A. Observation of the stretch of the avenue most appropriate for performing the action and the highlighting.

1-B. Obtaining of photographic records of urban accidents.

2nd. PERFORMANCE ACTION

2-A. Once the site has been established and a due record taken, the highlightings shall take place with blown-up photographs at the site.

2-B. The action is designed to be executed with a performance, with a photographic record being left at each site.

2-C. Statements on our findings shall be taken from passers-by.

2-D. Minutes shall be drawn up and left at the site once the action is complete, together with the photographic reference, the highlighting. 

3rd. RECORD

As a dossier and due record of the event, an art-book of the action shall be produced containing photos, opinions, minutes, observations and actions.

 

 

 

 

 

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