FAHR 021.3: La hoja

Over the course of the last few years, Intermediae’s Nave 17 at Matadero Madrid has been a space in which different artists and architects have been invited to participate. In dialogue with the architecture in which it is contained, the historic building of the old Legazpi Slaughterhouse, FAHR 021.3. now presents this new piece, La hoja. The prototype of this piece was originally designed for the public space, for the street, and was only intended to be temporary. Now, however, the intervention has taken on a greater dimension and is envisaged as an open experiment, an activity with no instructions for use in the context of the creation centre.

La hoja is one of those inclusive and non-productive spaces of calm and beauty that enhance the collective and relationships, that are part of what is common to all of us. It is a place where you can spend time, where you can programme, where everyone can write their own little story through an experience, no matter how short it is. The simplicity of the lines, the almost-empty, the light and ecological, the non-standardised. It is a space-workshop, conceived for a diverse and heterogeneous public, whose design is completed through experiences and diverse and free uses. In search of surprise, welcome, with the gesture of an open hand. Open to action and the coexistence of the many different kinds of things that take place on this illuminated plane, in this place.

We are currently witnessing a certain scenario of exhaustion in terms of the kind of activities that are situated in the interstitial spaces between architecture and design, between art and architecture, urban planning and activism: actions, pilots, rehearsals, prototypes. For one reason or another, the prototypes do not develop into more meaningful experiences. The structures on which they are intended to act are weighty, and the inertia is enormous, leaving them unaffected. A new look at the ambition and vocation of art has not yet found sufficient consensus to consolidate its basic concepts, methodologies and aesthetics. Or so it would seem. From the conventional and established, these activities are read as scenographies. Seen from this perspective, the idea of representation in art remains intact.

Fair enough. Let’s do it again and in another way. La hoja is all about insisting on the possibility of thinking stubbornly but sensitively about the public space as a place in which to meet. A space of culture as a place that is not finished, not conclusive, not entirely determined, in which someone, something, is always missing. And on this occasion, to stage the opening, to become a gap into which others can fit. A concave theatre. In the irrelevance of the playful or in the time of the irrelevant, something happens that links and connects us.

Curator: Javier Peña Ibáñez
Assembly: Gerardo Gorris Escamilla
Lighting design: Carlos Alzueta Bengoetxea
With the collaboration of Garnica