Art en Urbex
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
INTRODUCTION : ART IN URBEX Association
Art in Urbex is a collaborative cultural structure uniting the association En lugar de creación,
Seville, and Le Labo des Arts Urbains, Toulouse. The overarching goal of the association is to
organize events – exhibits, concerts, choreographies and film shoots, amongst other
activities – in Urbex (urban exploration) sites. More broadly, Art in Urbex's mandate extends
to include the development, dissemination, programming and consultation services related
to Urbex sites and other urban fields of art such as street art. The events it organizes are
destined for a general public of all generational ranges, private companies and public
institutions.
CONTEXT : URBEX ART
Over 4,800 abandoned spaces, factories, warehouses, hospitals and other infrastructures
have been indexed in over 50 countries worldwide. Closed to the public for safety reasons,
many of these spaces have been looted, defiled and/or squatted. Urbex (urban exploration)
proposes a means of rehabilitating these sites, giving them a new life and value, and even in
some instances making them profitable. As of recent years, the discovery and investment of
these sites has notably offered a range of new venues in which to disseminate the work of
artists of many disciplines, and in parallel, new ways for spectators of experimenting art in
unusual environments.
Many of these spaces remain in more or less the same condition as when they were left in
abandon. They consequently conserve and can potentially transmit valuable information
about the social, cultural and economic customs and activities of people in other periods of
history, thus serving as a bridge to, and record of, past times. Additionally, constituting a
sort of "no man's land", these sites, for adventurous individuals and for artists in particular,
offer the possibility of occupying a space as one's own while also promoting its care through
conservation and respecting basic rules of non-destruction, non-usurpation. A form of
unorthodox participatory activity is thus generated.
Art in Urbex proposes to optimize this experience and make these spaces accessible to a
greater number of people. If to date, these sites have remained largely unknown to the
general public, difficult to access and/or posing certain safety concerns in some instances,
Art in Urbex offers a personalized service and access for the exploration of the various
possibilities these spaces potentially hold, also carrying out tailor-made activities within
these environments.
On the other hand, given the increasingly costly and limited number of available spaces for
the creation and diffusion of independent professional artists' work, Art in Urbex proposes
solutions for these problems in a short time and at a reasonable price. The idea is to act as a
cultural mediator with a series of Urbex sites, providing information, advice and services
ranging from an introduction to and exploration of these sites to other programmed
activities. Further, Art in Urbex's mandate is to expand activities conducted and/or
presented in Urbex sites to other cultural and private spaces, other countries and/or
territories.
Innovative, sustainable and intending to bring benefits to society through nourishing
communities and generating participatory cultural activities, other activities presently under
discussion by the Art in Urbex team include the creation of an online service for the
dissemination of audiovisual material, photography, documentaries, archives and news,
along with other services such as training, advice, audiovisual content of clients, a meeting
space and platform to promote the services of thematically-related companies, education,
leisure, culture, sales, collaboration, assistance, sharing and a RD department for specific
and innovative demands. The impact and potential activities are great as they both draw on
the potentiality of Urbex sites themselves, affording multiple possibilities for promotion and
use and at the same time, inspiring new artistic and personalized content.
Art in Urbex projects the realization of specialized programming designs and the
development of an Urbex network, including the programming of meetings concerning
technology-related subjects such as coordinating hacker and media-lab meetings, other
communities invited to participate in and bring new life to Urbex sites. We have also studied
the possibility of associating the theme of fashion and other design modalities with Urbex
sites and more specifically, the creation of an Urbex fashion mode, similar to the creation of
the Ibizan Ablid fashion.
A FIRST ART IN URBEX PRODUCTION: Copy of Paradis0, live web-streamed performance
On July 29, 2022, Art in Urbex produced its first event in an Urbex site called IndaFriche,
located in the Essonne department south of Paris. The event was a live, streamed
performance of the choreography Copy of Paradis0 by Spanish choreographer-performer,
co-founder of the Art in Urbex project, Salud López.
An abandoned military complex, originally built by German military forces before passing
into the hands of the French military, this Urbex site is comprised of several four-storied
buildings and an airstrip with adjacent hangars. After years of abandon, it was recently
occupied by French graffiti artist Réa, who invited 130 guest artists to participate in an
improvised artistic residency. Rather than exhibiting works on the walls of outdoor urban
settings, in a museum, gallery space or exhibition, the impressive quantity of artworks
created in situ generates emotion not only the diversity and impact of the works in their own
right, but also through the way they are integrated in the abandoned Urbex site,
reverberating with the soul of a wasteland environment in an equally impactful manner.
After an initial encounter with Réa, Salud López was able to negociate the possibility of
streaming a work-in-progress version of her stage choreography Copy of Paradis0 from the
IndaFriche site. An artistic collaboration between choreographer-performer Salud López,
composers Antonio José Flores and Alberto Carretero, and videographer Andrea Davidson,
the work was broadcast live on the website of En lugar de creación. Based on a premise that
thought processes develop in a relationship with events that are constantly evolving and also
adapt to a certain experience of fragmentation (dystopian perception) – because they are to
be considered both internally and as a continuity externally – the work extends to embrace
the idea that several « brains » can supplement thought thanks to different devices:
choreographic, corporeal, "screen-graphic", "softwaric", luminal, physical-sound,
photosensitive, electrical.
Adapting a stage choreography for video, and further, for a streamed broadcast from what
might otherwise be described as a hostile environment/conditions for a film shoot,
choreographer Salud Lopez and videographer Andrea Davidson set out to explore the eco
environment of IndaFriche, inspired by historical and architectural aspects of the site as well
as by the artworks. Developing a visual scenario – the equivalent of a single long camera
sequence – they imagined how a dancer might be seen evolving in different spaces
throughout a series of rooms on two floors of one building along with 2 hangar spaces
without a single editing splice typical of dance films and cinema. This particular filming
technique also creates the sense of a narrative trajectory or path of discovery crossing a
different space-time: that of the Urbex site. Together, images of the site, the exhibited
artworks and choreography intermingle in the camera's eye to create a powerful image.
What is viewed is the remnant of a place that once had another life, a space that has
exploded at the end of its life, leaving its remains behind, while the live choreography and
vivid artworks breathe new life into the environment.
To paraphrase Spanish doctor and popular science/media critic Ignacio Crespo, speaking of a
telescope image of the universe as "perfectly condens(ing) the immense complexity that
lives in the center of our galaxy », the video images recorded in the Urbex environment
perfectly condense the complexity of the spaces they embody. A current or "present" time-
space is revealed : that of the Urbex site – itself already housing a dual past-present
temporal reality – and that of a real-time representation – the choreography – unfolding
amongst the various "landscapes" of both the buildings' architectural details and the
artworks displayed on walls, doors, windows and stairwells, the full spectrum of which is
viewed by spectators at a distance, allowing them to explore places that are most often off-
limits to their vision – either because of physical distance or because of other impediments
to vision that here, are afforded by audiovisual media – miniscule details, rhythms, natural
light motifs picked up by the camera, themselves evolving in real-time. With its particular
form of dissemination, the video streamed image captures and amplifies the artworks and
choreography in such a way as to reach viewers' sensitivity as if they were physically in situ
at that very moment. The Urbex site as a nexus of all these different frequencies and
amplified by the camera and live performance broadcast is the reason this particular form of
artistic experience becomes so interesting.
Something more than distance separates us from the time in which these spaces were
inhabited: they are all the product of the intense heritage that exists in our world. These
sites concentrate matter in lines of time, as if they were rails that go from one pole to
another, tracing wide arcs of memory. Something like this also occurs when the
performance redirects attention to where its audiovisual field lines converge. Memories die,
others are born, spears of light weave through Urbex sites with generous threads.
It is their recovery and also their beauty.