Photography Video + 3D Printing

Heterotopias seeks to describe the transformation in the structure of post-industrial cities, especially those whose socio-cultural organisation has been affected by the cessation of industry. In many of them there is a situation of population and urban decline, a palpable but unregulated spatial confusion, which is exacerbated by obsolescence and emptiness. This open, unplanned permeability characterises the urban landscape of Avilés and constitutes a space of indefinition: heterotopia. A state in which the concept of place is dematerialised between architectures, relations, processes and information.

By means of visual registration and digital representation, the research focuses on the urban landscape of this city. In it, a critical duplicity appears: on the one hand, with the image of overcoming its former factory character constructed by means of artifices – recreational-cultural strategies typical of the post-industrial era -; on the other hand, a “counter-image” of decadence that favours the indeterminacy of urban planning instruments.

Starting from this double condition, the work raises the critical situation of the contemporary landscape. The tension between the image promoted and the image perceptible in situ has repercussions on urban space and society and provokes a constant volatility – just like the very condition of the post-industrial era.

Acknowledgements: Municipal Archive of Avilés