The street in any town is so much more than just facades and sidewalks. It is basically a place for human relationships. So, how can we represent it being ultimately an experience?
Looking for an answer we organized a contest open to the public. All were invited to participate in a photographic tour through the streets of Madrid. Participants were requested to send images that showed their personal view as users. We gathered over 300 photographs by 68 authors and used them to edit a video.
We warned: Pictures that focused on the ground were preferred. To shoot the ground in order to show it involved translating its image from the horizontal plane that we walk on into the vertical plane of a screen. Our first aim was for us participants to consider one of the most important elements –and hence may be one of the most jeopardized- in our shared urban space. To this end, we thought it would be a good idea to re-contextualize this space with a simple 90-degree turn, because the word ‘street’ is so worn out that it may have lost its meaning.
Secondly, as opposed to the many imposed images of Madrid where its inhabitants are reduced to simple figurants, this project tried to be a humble platform of opposition by making us its authors. With this multiplicity of subjective visions, we wished to include in the representation those relationships that truly built the street.
And, lastly, we attempted not only to take those relationships into account but also to produce them. To do this, we chose public art spaces with free access, where we held several gatherings and played the video, which we updated as photographs continued to arrive. We programmed approximately one event per month and expected that frequent meetings helped to bring together the attendants.
It was a method of reflection on the urban reality that we enjoy and suffer, a meek opportunity to question the image of Madrid told by the various powers, and a way of enlarging the public space by generating new contacts among its citizens. Now, let us reconsider the question that triggered our discussion –i.e. how should we treat the experience of the street with a representational system? By revising the results of this photo project, we can state that it was a success as much as it was a failure. That is, we can propose a plausible answer now only because of our past mistakes. One of them might have been to foster social relationships in a traditional public space. It is true that this approach managed to generate a small net based on strangers. However, it was too partial and short-lived as it included just a few participants and it lasted only for the duration of the events schedule. It is only natural that, after the last meeting, the precarious bonds that connected us came apart. Would a longer program have consolidated those early bonds? We do not know. We could not afford to keep it longer because of the investment of time and money that it required.
Another potential flaw, in some ways related to the first one, was the sparse use of the Internet for the program. We used Internet as an inexpensive way of mass communication to publish the contest rules, advertise it, receive the entries and organize the gatherings. However, we could have recognized it as something else: A new public space that may replace the traditional arenas for public debate. Developing this concept might have created a larger, virtual community with better chances of survival.
In conclusion, we think that the poor outcome of this project has helped us to find a potential way to solve the underlying problem. Thus, we believe that we can photograph the streets of any town as long as it does not lead to reductionist representations but instead it enlarges the public space.
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