Project

2004. Sans Façon. S/T (theoretical data)

 

Sans Façón is a collaborative practice between an artist and an architect. Our works are defined by their relation to places, incorporating the situation and the qualities of any given environment as an active part of an installation.

We use the interventions as a filter through which one can look differently at a place, Exposing the conditions of this place, the workings, the structure, by the slightest intervention creates a shift that allows the site to be seen anew. We aim to create something that can be celebrated, not for its magnificence but tor what it reveals, what it allows to be seen, enjoyed and thought about: the site. We use interventions as a tool to enrich our perceptions.

«She was te/ling him: "I don't see what you see" and him: "It is possible that I add, I admit it, but the essentiei is in the things, their power to provocate l. .. I. it's indisputable and my sole interest as a guide is to be able to reveal them to you."»
Yves Berger, Santa Fé.
  

Our proposal for Madrid Abierto is based on the depósito elevado. This building is a very good example of a banal urban object with no pretension, it is technical and useful. It is the kind of structure that passers-by don't look at beca use it is not labelled as worthy, it's just a water tower. But what a water tower and what a setting tor it.

Our installation intends to make people look again, not to look at an artwork on the side of it but enjoy and appreciate this emblematic and impressive structure.


We propose to clad the pillars ot the tower with acrylic mirrors. Firstly creating a different experience of this object, the buildings reflected on the pillars present a new reading of the surroundings, the reflections create an ever-changing appearance to the structure.

Furthermore it plays with and expresses the architectonic quality of the building. The reflections create a sort of transparency, the weight of the concrete tank becomes much more present once the holding structure disappears (whilst remembering the unfinished stage the building was in for 7 years because of political turmoil). This big mass of concrete hovering in the air creates a disturbing and uncomfortable vision of the building, this technical construction doesn't seems to fulfil its structural function anymore. The altered aspect of the water tower questions the immutable state of our built envíronment.

The intervention transforms the depósito elevado into a "sculpture" just by renewing temporally the experience of looking at it.

For a period of time the depósito elevado becomes an event. Previously just part of our everyday peripheric observation, it acquires a new existence through memory and imagination once the event has passed.


«Lite itseft has summoned into being this poetic deity which thousands will pass blindly by, but which suddenly become palpable and terribly haunting for those wtio have at last caught a confused glimpse of tt.»
Louis Aragon, París Peasant.

 

 

 

 

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