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.
Osservatorio Nomade/Barcelona (Domènec, Pau Faus, Giulia Fiocca, Pere Grimau, Paolo Nadalin, Elvira Pujol, Anna Recasens, Lorenzo Romito, Glòria Safont-Tria, Jordina Sangrà, Laia Solé, Joan Vila-Puig, Debora Zanette)
2007
Routes around the Barcelona
urban area
Rieres/Rambles is a territorial research project promoted by Stalker, and organised by the OSSERVATORIO NOMADE/BARCELONA. It is part of a series of similar projects undertaken previously, such as Campagna Romana (Rome, 2006) and Barilonga (Bari, 2006). The project aims to find incidences of new models for interpreting territory in the Greater Barcelona Area based on direct, collective and transdisciplinary experiences that have the practice of roaming as their basis. Two phases of work: «Roaming» and «Variable Distances and Multiple Identities».
«Roaming»: A three-day group walk (12th-14th April 2007) with five different departure points and five areas of simultaneous research: Sitges and the Garraf; Olesa de Montserrat and the Baix Llobregat; Viladecavalls and the Vallès Occidental; Llinars del Vallès and the Vallès Oriental; and Sant Andreu de Llavaneres and the Maresme.
«Variable Distances and Multiple Identities» (2007-2009): This involved the creation of workshops and working groups in order to carry out research into, reflect on and promote new models for interpreting territory in the Greater Barcelona Area.
The exploration of the Greater Barcelona Area on foot as the basis for territorial research, involves adopting a position outside the guidelines that construct the standardised experience of everyday life. By observing and listening to the erratic roaming line we have been able to experience a reality that eschews superficial categorisations and offers multiple possibilities for research far removed from media simplifications.
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:
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.
Baltimore, West Cork, Ireland
March–September 2005
Intervention on the ferries that connect Baltimore fishing port with two of the many islands that make up the profile of south-eastern coast of Ireland and wich are used everyday by their inhabitants to go to work. Thousands and thousands of emigrants left the ports of this region heading for America during the famines of 1846-1848. Construction and placement of two signs on the roof of the two ferries with the words Here and Nowhere. Moving text writtten on the landscape.
see video:
Marseille, 2005
Curator: Martí Peran
Modified Remote Controlled Truck (160 x 64 x 19 cm), The trailer has been substituted for a scale model of the Unité d’Habitation of Marseille (building designed by Le Corbussier in 1947).
Video projection (DVD, 10′ loop), 2005.
Intervention in the interior of the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, February 25, 2005. Video recording of the remote-control unit circulating freely in the corridors, elevators and roof of the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille.
Video cameraman: Laurent Malone
Video editing: Rafa Ruiz
The video has been exhibited at places such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Rotterdam Architecture Film Festival and at the Vladivostok Film Festival.
*The piece belongs to the Museo de Teruel.
Photo series, Roma, 2004
Photo Series (11 photos 45 x 60 cm)
The Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, built by Le Corbusier in the 1940’s represents the beginning of a series of architectural projects concerning social housing with clear Utopian inspirations and a radical attempt to transform the common ways of life. We can state that Corviale —inaugurated at the beginning of the 1980’s— is, with all its complexity, one of the last conceptions of this transforming spirit which has finally been left to one side by the dynamics of market forces.
The Sostenere il palazzo dell’utopia (Holding the Building of Utopia) project consists of a series of portraits of Corviale’s inhabitants holding in their hands the model of the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, recreating a type of democratic and egalitarian version of medieval imagery (where the powerful: popes, bishops and kings were represented holding the city they had founded), in a modest poetical attempt to re-found the possibility of Utopia.
Rozebeke, Zwalm, Belgium, 2003
This proposal formed part of the exhibition “Kunst & Zwalm 2003”
The region of Zwalm has an urban structure based on detached houses with gardens, in which there are no examples of the modern architectural tradition. Strangely enough, many of these houses have a mailbox which reproduces an idealised traditional cabin, like those in children’s storybooks.
Wanting to introduce an ironical commentary in this context, Domènec substituted some of the traditional mailboxes with scale models of rationalist constructions, like the Vila Savoia and House no. 13 of Le Corbusier, the Steiner House of Adolf Loos and the Bolle House of Eugeen Liebaut.
*The piece belongs to the Museo de Teruel.