Unwilling Spectator (2010)
by Carlos Irijalba
Unwilling Spectator details the relative mechanisms of time and experience, with the support of parameters such as inertia or tempo. It takes the shape of an intervention upon one of those small gardened spaces set within a motorway ring road. A space that’s been encircled a thousand times by the circuit that defines it but has never been approached. A location whose experience is residual or null.
The first part of the intervention consisted of journeying every day over a number of weeks to the Laiguangying intersection on the 5th Ring Highway of Beijing in order to reconnoitre these spaces between roads and study how they are constructed so as not to be experienced. The incongruity of their scale in relation with one’s own, their layout, their tempo, etc. Having situated the subject dimensionally in relation to the place, it was decided as a second step to produce some spatial permutation by establishing a small bonsai forest within the isle the ring road encircles. A situation of synecdoche of the spot is thereby generated, where the radically contrasting tempos of both elements are dissolved and their absolute characters become more relative.
The first part of the intervention consisted of journeying every day over a number of weeks to the Laiguangying intersection on the 5th Ring Highway of Beijing in order to reconnoitre these spaces between roads and study how they are constructed so as not to be experienced. The incongruity of their scale in relation with one’s own, their layout, their tempo, etc. Having situated the subject dimensionally in relation to the place, it was decided as a second step to produce some spatial permutation by establishing a small bonsai forest within the isle the ring road encircles. A situation of synecdoche of the spot is thereby generated, where the radically contrasting tempos of both elements are dissolved and their absolute characters become more relative.
| Tags | conceptual, land art, public space |
| Technique | Installation |
