Parkings (2006)
4 photographs 100 x 67 cm. Ed. 1/5 + 1 P.A
Courtesy: la artista y Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid
In Parkings, as cars are parked in any given place they gradually define an architectural space. I am especially interested in a city’s lifeless places, those which Gordon Matta-Clark already devoted special attention to, and that are more and more in danger of extinction in the current city, considering that property prices are going through the roof. All places are potential building sites and, as space becomes more and more synonymous with luxury, uninhabited areas gradually disappear.
Car parks are usually delineated by stripes, defining the arrangement of cars, theoretically making the most of available space and “democratising” a universal use of space. However, in areas of open ground and ad-lib places in the city which people use to park their cars but without any official regulation or stripes on the ground to guide us when parking our cars, the improvisation of the individual driver comes into play. Available space is gradually filled up in a “logical” fashion, and when it is completely occupied, then the true creativity of the drivers appears, forcing them to make space where there were none before. To invent new spaces. I am interested in what emerges when “anything goes”. Cars create architectural spaces (the same as cities that grow following no planning or zoning, shanty towns or Sunday markets), as well as streets and alleys where once there was open space.
If cars occupy parking spaces in a logical fashion as they arrive, the departure is just the opposite. Cars leave randomly, depending on the personal reasons of their owners. This process of random withdrawal leaves vehicles in places without any sense, their spatial distribution following a logic we are unable to grasp inasmuch as the organisational elements or factors escape our control.
– MAIDER LÓPEz
