La calle es una construcción, July 2021
[The Street is a Construct(ion)]
Aragon Park | Coslada, Madrid - Spain
When thinking of the building where the show was held, this year and last, I come to the conclusion that this one is not (for it never got a chance to become) an interior space. The graffiti on the walls tells it off: This is the streets. An up and down of public space, of crossroads; or perhaps a park made of concrete. I have been reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where apart from delving into the potentiality of streets, Jane Jacobs contends with the seemingly mysterious fate of park abandonment within the urban territory, even though we tend to think that greenery is what is lacking in urban life. She argues that “if a generalized park cannot be supported by uses arising from natural, nearby intense diversity, it must convert from a generalized park to a specialized park. Effective diversity of use, drawing deliberately a sequence of diversified users, must be deliberately introduced into the park itself." Jacobs is stating the obvious: Use defeats abandonment. The graffiti artists know that; they occupy and populate the walls. Youngs guys and girls do too, as they might otherwise have no place to get together for drinks. A soccer field—just another possibility. A space to create freely: That is a specialized need of all artists living in a city, and that is what the streets are for. I’m sorry for the police officers who in vain attempt to control circulation and convince us that this is not a neighborhood…. This is the streets, mate, and the streets are public.
“A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It means something only in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it, or border other sidewalks very near it. The same might be said of streets, in the sense that they serve other purposes besides carrying wheeled traffic in their middles. Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city's streets look interesting, the city looks interesting.”
- Jane Jacobs
Views of the soccer field, painted on the 2th floor of the building, where participating artists organized matches to celebrate the wrap-up of the exhibition.