Mexico City, 2011

Produced as part of the “Hand to Hand with General Cárdenas” project by Antimuseum of Contemporary Art in Mexico DF.

Curator: Tomás Ruiz-Rivas

This replica of the Monument to the Third International designed by Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin in 1920 but never actually made, is a paradigm of utopian architecture and a symbol of the revolution that always remained unfinished. The replica is made from such materials, and in a size and colours which lend it a child-like touch, turning it into urban furniture, a children’s climbing frame.

It was installed temporarily in the gardens of the Parque España (Condesa colony), close to the monument commemorating General Cárdenas, a revolutionary officer and President of Mexico (1934-1940). The monument was later moved and finally installed in the gardens of the Faro de Oriente cultural centre in Iztapalapa, in the impoverished outskirts of Mexico City.

Installation. 2 models, table and fluorescent light.

Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona. 2010

Project produced for the exhibition “Salvat-Papasseit, poetavanguardistacatala”.

Curators: Pilar Bonet and Maia Creus

Joan Salvat-Papasseit, Catalan avant-garde poet and revolutionary, was always optimistic about social change and defended education and culture as basic tools for revolutions and to achieve emancipation.

In 1924, at the age of 30, he died of tuberculosis in his dark, damp flat in Argenteria Street in Barcelona.

Ten years later, in 1934, during the Republic, members of the GATCPAC (J.L. Sert, B. Subirana and J. Torres Clavé) were commissioned by the Regional government of Catalonia to design the first tuberculosis health centre (1934-1938) located at the heart of el Raval neighbourhood, as part of the programme to socialise hospital care and fight against tuberculosis. This revolutionary, regenerating action to improve living conditions for the working class was commissioned by the republican regional government of Catalonia and backed by the most modern thinking professionals and intellectuals in the country. However this project was violently aborted in 1939 following the victory of fascism.

This fracture of 10 years, spanning the death of the poet and beginning the hospital became a tragic metaphor emphasising the distance between desires and dreams and the (always slim) chance of achieving them.

In a completely white room lies a large table. Upon the table lie two wooden models: the model of the house in Argenteria Street where Salvat-Papasseit passed away and the model of the Tuberculosis Hospital. Lying like isolated pieces at each end of the large table, highlighting this fracture.

Model maker: Oriol Poch

Idensitat #5

Manresa, 2009/2010

The artist proposes the construction of a replica of Plácido’s Motocarro (tricycle) as part of a training and professional reintegration program for youngsters. Plácido (a film made in 1961, mainly shot in Manresa, considered to be one of the best films of Luis G. Berlanga).
The tricycle would be turned into a mobile “commemorative monument” , an ironic device and a capsule of critical memory, and through its movement around the streets would restore a landscape and would recreate the others’ landscape.Plácido’s Motocarro could be used in many forms and be the catalyst for different events; as a small, mobile multimedia display, the support for an open air video projector, or it could use its loudspeakers to communicate and spread the activities of different collectives. Also it could be used as a means of transportation for “alternative tourism” in emerging urban spaces of Manresa.

With the collaboration of Jordi Aligué Pujals, Balan Mihaita Catalin, Dima Nicolae Alexandra, Joan Segarra Jordana, students of the Institute Lacetènia tutored by Professor Pere Maria Izquierdo.

Living without leaving a trace

Ostende, Argentina, 2009.

Project:

Engage a professional sign writer to hand paint a banner with the words by Walter Benjamin “Living without leaving a trace”.

To hang the banner (called “pasacalles” in Argentina) inside an abandoned half-built house and leave it there.

It is quite usual in Argentina –both for political organisations and trade unions to divulge their messages, and for individuals to announce birthdays, etc…– to engage professionals to hand paint banners and murals.

Perpignan, 2008

Domènec Project with the collaboration of Michael Barnabé, Séverine Peron, Nicolas Daubanes and Elric Dufau for the pediatric ward of the Hospital in Perpignan, kindergarten for the children of the hospital staff and the residence house parents of hospitalized children.

Project carried out under the public program “Art at Hopital” coordinated by Isabelle Narcy.

Jerusalem, 2007

4 colour photographs on aluminium. 45×60 cm. each. Edition of 3.

Four images of night time in Jerusalem, two taken in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Beit Hanina in the east of the city and two taken in the west of the city. Despite their similarities, two scenes with fire and two buildings in darkness, closer inspection highlight the conflict and underlying violence of the occupation.

In the picture of fire, which was taken in the Palestinian zone, a burning waste bin can be seen; although Palestinians in Jerusalem pay the same municipal taxes as the Jewish residents, the city’s waste collection services never collect the waste in the eastern area. Residents there are forced to burn it. The other picture containing fire is the traditional Jewish feast of lag Ba’omer. In the western neighbourhoods of the city and in the Israeli settlements bonfires are lit and people dance in circles around them.

This apparent similarity may also be seen in the other two photographs, two buildings in darkness. Yet one, left half-built is like a ship beached in the outskirts of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Beit Hanina. The other portrays a house in a residential area in the west of the city, just the awning on the right of the picture tells us the house is inhabited and breaks down the feeling of a phantom fort.

Super-size block wardrobe-size house

Museu Nacional do Conjunto Cultural da Republica, Brasilia, Brazil. 2007

Two prototypes measuring 220 x 80 x 65 cm each.
Wood, blankets and plastic objects

A scaled down recreation of two buildings in the huge blocks of residential housing in Brasília, called “superquadras” or giant blocks of houses; designed by Lucio Costa. Made into prototypes of individual shelters for the “moradores da rua” or homeless.

Project made for the exhibition Moradias Transitórias. Novos Espaços da Contemporanidade.
Organised by: Nicola Goretti

Israel/Palestine, 2007

DVD, 22’
Images, script and direction: Domènec and Sàgar Malé
Vtr editing: Kilian Estrada
Participants: Jaffar Istayeh, Marta Ramoneda, Jamil Sawalmeh, Refugees in Ramallah and the refugee camps of Al Fara’a and Balata
Acknowledgements: Farid Liftawi, Ze’ev Maor, Association of Refugees in Lifta
a documentary film by MAPASONOR
Mapasonor ACD 2007

Five interviews to different Palestinians who lives in refugees’ camps from 60 years ago. After each interview, the refugees shows to the camera a sign with the name of the place that they come from. The next image shows the exactly place today. In 1948 the United Nations decided to split the Palestinian territory into two areas in order to create Israel in one of those areas; a state for the Jewish people claimed by the Zionist movement. Instead of including the native Palestinian people in the new Jewish state, Zionist militiamen kicked almost one million Palestinian men and women off their lands who then became refugees. Israel demolished most of the original Palestinian villages and wiped their names off the map. For 59 years one million Palestinians and their descendents have lived in refugee camps in the Occupied Palestine Territories and neighbouring Arab countries. Israel celebrates its day of independence the same day as Palestine commemorates its Nakba (misfortune).

See video:

https://vimeo.com/66678603

Israel/Palestine 2006-2007

Curator: Nirith Nelson

Wooden structure with sign, printed material and four DVDs.
Publication: Real Estate.
Free printed material, unlimited copies, 20 pages. Black and white, 23.5 x 33.2 cm.
4 DVD: Real Estate #1. 23’41’’, Real Estate #2. 8’01’’, Real Estate #3. 10’37’’, Real Estate #4. 5’45’.
Tel Aviv Artists’ Studio, Tel Aviv, May 2007 and La Capella, Barcelona, September 2007. Espai Zero1, Museu de la Garrotxa, Olot, December 2008. Produced by JCVA and ICUB.

Real Estate is the result of a long process of delving into the Israeli/Palestinian problem and began in late 2006 following an invitation from the Jerusalem Center for the Visual Arts (JCVA) to carry out a period of residency in Jerusalem and was continued in subsequent visits in 2006 and 2007. The Real Estate installation is presented as a pretend real estate sales office which offers a series of materials (photographs, videos, interviews, free printed material…) which attempt to be visual proof of the complex, problematic relationship within the territory and housing in this context and to show how architecture and urban planning are part of a war strategy staged by the state of Israel within the context of Palestine occupation and these in fact these become one of the most effective systems of domination. An advertising supplement for “Real Estate” can usually be found in Friday’s editions of the country’s newspapers. In these colourful supplements it is quite common to find advertisements for affordable apartments and suburban houses; it is often only after reading the small print that one notices that these houses lie within the Occupied Palestine Territories and are in fact illegal buildings according to international treaties. This project’s ironic use of the title Real Estate aims to highlight the colonial relationship of “property” which the State of Israel and part of Israeli society holds regarding the Occupied Palestine Territories.

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