Walls by the side of A-2 Highway
These actions are documented and someday I will edit them, but for the time being I have decided to break that premise.
The desertification of the territory is not just a geological issue. The true desertification is social, though rarely is this mentioned in the media. For instance: creating an AVE railway line means having to close up many regional ones, with the interruption of territorial exchanges this entails.
In the end everything becomes polarized in the major urban centers and the rest of the territory loses services such as schools or health centers… all in all, it becomes poorer.
In this context, people are forced to migrate and the dream of the equipotent space that the web promises disappears or is insufficient. Nobody works on the land and that social desertification ends up bringing about geological desertification.
The Madrid-Zaragoza divided highway (as so many others) has turned the towns linked to the old highway – that in part was their way of life – into a desert. The structures that remain here and are no longer in use can be abandoned, become ruins and eventually disappear. To face this situation, the “walls” try to prevent these buildings from falling apart, suggesting that they may remain upright and in place as reminders of the economic and territorial model to which they owe their condition.
The action of these “walls” consists in extending death certificates (or of hibernation) to structures that are now worth nothing. They are sealed with whatever is “at hand” on the plot, undergoing during the process a transformation that may endow them with a new identity.
The first premise of the action has been to document it (photography, video, etc.), as the only means to register a fleeting reality.
Tapiados en el Jalón en el margen de la autovía A-2. Localización: Autovía del Nordeste A-2, Km 220 (aproximadamente). Año: Veranos de 2005 y 2006. Cliente: Señores Lahorda y Gómez. Tapiador: Ángel Verdasco. Presupuesto: 0 euros (material reciclado).