Installation

A Perfect Place. Diptych / Utopia takes as its starting point the construction in Asturian territory of one of the largest robotic logistics centers in southern Europe to examine the tensions that arise in a post-mining region facing a change of production model.

The work explores the strategies of control of bodies and subjects that have characterized two industrial stages in Asturias: the extractive and metallurgical of the 1950s and 1960s and, more recently, the logistic and digital of the 21st century. Recreating a Human Exclusion Zone -spaces reserved for the circulation of autonomous technologies, governed by implacable operational logics inaccessible to human understanding-, the installation invites the visitor to access a diachronic space where Asturian industrial and domestic imaginaries intermingle in a choreography of bodies and products beyond the human.

A Perfect Place. Diptych / Utopia delves into the historical roots of this kind of imaginaries, connecting them with an example of disciplinary tradition with deep roots in the territory: the former Labor University of Gijon (1946-1977), built by the Ministry of Labor during the dictatorship to provide technical, ideological and moral training to the children of industrial and mining workers, and which today houses the Art Center that hosts this exhibition.

Through copying and humor, the work questions the hope placed in the new technological developments that, all the more invisible, continue to shape the productive bodies at the service of the interests of a few and poses an urgent reflection on how and for whom we build progress.

Artist: Elisa Cuesta

Work included in the exhibition Digital Machines: Technology, Industry, Society.

CREDITS

Based on the previous work Un Lugar Perfecto (A Perfect Place) produced with the support of the Asturias Joven de Artes Plásticas 2019 Award, convened by the Asturian Youth Institute.

Historic furniture designed by Miguel Fisac for Biosca commissioned by José Luis Moya Blanco for the former Laboral University of Gijón. On loan from Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura.

Design and printing of 3D elements: Antonio Pinar Pinar.

Sound technical assistance: Simon Labbé and Pedro Neira.