La entrada urbana



La entrada urbana was the first intervention in the Mapocho River that was undertaken as part of this investigation. After reading Mapocho Torrent Urbano and the chapter by Mario Perez de Acre, that inspired the Mapocho 42K project and which described the point at which the Mapocho River enters the metropolitan area of Santiago, I thought that I should visit this place. It is a bridge in the municality of lo Barnechea. Of the bridge's design and structure, it is nondescript, in fact, it is simply perfunctory, not in the modernist sense but in the sense that it has no relationship to the design of a bridge as establishing a relationship through the fourfold elements (earth, sky, mortals and divinities) of which Heidegger spoke. The mains water pipes that it covers or carries are more pronounced for the pedestrian and are not a deliberate design element (a la Pompidou Centre) and, as you will note in the image here, electrical cables hang as if they were thrown across the river. At this place, I decided to frame the urban entrance (la entrada urbana). I used a collapsible frame that I could assemble on site and travelled to this point on the bus after taking a metro to Manquehue. Mounting the frame on a photographic tripod gives reference to the dominant image of the city: the photographic image. The format of the frame is that of photography 2:3. I would use this idea again in other interventions, most notably Photoshopping and in the exhibition OPT to hold the work Respirando el río. In the exhibition the frame was used as a screen and the image transferred to slide and projected over and beyond this frame

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pop UP Tourist Information Centre

Image
  Open PUTIC. Triptych 3M X 1M,  Scale model 1:10. Re-mounting of author’s “Modernity’s Bridge” (Project Anywhere 2020). Infographics split on the convex side of mirrors: global survey about the unprecedented violence and destruction in Santiago de Chile: respondents knew or heard: Nothing 40%/Very Little 30%/Something 24%/A Lot 6%,  yet 50% believed the urban insurrection would improve equality.  PUTIC, one-third open, Ground Zero site map. Embracing the tourist are three symbolic sites of destruction in Ground Zero: Centre, Plaza Baquedano - Earth; Left, the GAM - Paradise; Right, the Police Monument/Church - Purgatory. Uniting each: graphic representation of the Andes Mountain range taken from a commemorative box of Andes matches as the horizon; Midground, Metro public transport map with some of the arson attacked stations in flames; Base, Event chart, October 18 to November 25, 2019,  P eace accord signed but peace never came then 1.2 million marched. Some 2...
Read more

Re-Constitución

Image
In the attempt to transform  Santiago into a European city at the turn of the 20 th C, the canalisation of the Mapocho River solved the flooding problems but caused great social disruption. Until the late 19 th C it held a place in the public imaginary as one of Santiago’s four icons and was represented in landscape painting as such (Felsenhardt, 2017). However, the episodic torrent that was previously part of daily life was transformed and managed into a marginal place and a public space associated with rubbish and disease. The canalised causeway became the site of homelessness, drug addiction and suicide. During the military dictatorship of General Pinochet (1973-1989) this public space was both the site of creative protest (see the work of UNAC Cultural Union below) and, in the words of writer Roberto Ampuero, a site where “the dead that floated in the Mapocho with the marks of torture and a bullet in back of the neck” reminded all of the regime’s brutal response to o...
Read more

la ciudad enferma es rescatable

Image
La ciudad enferma es rescatable  is a temporary, site-specific installation suspended from the Racalamac Bridge, Santiago, Chile. It consists of 288 builder’s plumb bobs, each inscribed with this phrase and suspended on plumb lines to trace an inverted form of the bridge. The work spans the 35 metres of the river section of the bridge and creates a moving arched screen of 11 metres at the counter zenith that touches the river that is a torrent. The title phrase is attributed to the 19 th C Intendant of Santiago,  Vicuña  Mackenna, who changed the city’s form through the creation of public spaces that included the canalisation of the Mapocho River.  The Racalamac Bridge is a 1950s pedestrian bridge designed to span two flows: the flow of the canalized Mapocho River and the flow of traffic on one of the expressways that changed the city form and public space in the 20 th C.  La ciudad enferma es rescatable  manifests these urban design intentions and ...
Read more