January 2021
Eleven doorways and a parking

1
I have hung a piñata at the square next to my house. It is covered with a material that I often see in the area, the thermal blanket. I live next to the SIS Baluard and in the surrounding area drugs are consumed and sold.

 

2
I order chronologically at the hallway the images of the building taken by Google Street View from 2008 to the present. The text of El Rigor en la Ciencia by Borges warns us on the wall of the possible intentions of such technology. Meanwhile, the eye of a satellite watches the building from a corner.

 

3
I stand behind the mirrored glass door of my portal, from there with a flashlight I delimit the perimeter of the surface, crossing out the door itself, and then move the light away to the end of the main corridor and return to the starting point.

 

4
In the hallway there is a faux leather sofa that is cracking in different areas. I sit on the same sofa to sew it with a black thread, which contrasts with the garnet color of the leatherette, exposing myself to the neighbors, visitors and workers who pass through that place, and establishing relationships with them.

 

5
Gathered in front of my house, in the passage –a semi-public space-, I invited a volunteer to come by. Inside we had lunch while the rest watched us through the window. Little by little, some of the spectators take the initiative to knock on the door to join us. That afternoon four of the eleven of the group inhabited the house. Although the house is far from the public life of the street, the window exposes us daily to the neighbors.

 

6
In the building where I live, we are all tenants. For many it is a place of passage. At the portal, on weekends we usually share objects that we no longer need. With the neighbor of 1º1ª we share books and absence for a whole decade.

 

7
When I was a child in my building we used a basket with a rope to carry food up to the floors, we also played a typical game of where when who what to create a story. From the window of my room I unhook a box with this game proposal for the group, thus combining two places, my portal in Sanming (China) and my current residence in Barcelona.

 

8
Every working day I spend between 3 and 4 hours in going from my home in the outskirts to the places in Barcelona where I develop my day to day, so today I’ve decided to convert my car into a place for work and home for seven hours and receive there my mates.

 

9
At the main entrance I draw the hopscotch game, I invite the participants to play by going through the doorway. Inside I invite them to go up to my house, to eat and have a drink. We toast. The game and the celebration make us comfortable.

 

10
An image of the staircase covers the front door of the house, anticipating its appearance. On it, there is inscribed the statistical formula by which it is possible to know, in approximate values, the amount of cement used for its construction, all the hidden but evident material that holds it.

 

11
I propose to blindfold the participants and guide them in a row holding hands, walking from the gate of my house to the seashore. Almost daily I do this route to start the day, I follow the road from my house that ends in a straight line at the beach. I was born and raised on an island. The sea is my portal.

 

12
The staircase in the building where I live has two skylights. In the first one I hang a mobile made with a PVC structure, two loaves of bread and nine onions, alluding to the expression “With you, bread and onion” used to declare unconditional support between two people. In the second, I hang from the top floor different objects and everyday items, precariously attached to each other.

 

This text is an adaptation of the publication made by Donny Ahumada, Salua Arconada, Adrià Gamero, Oscar Gartín, Rosa Llop, Andria Nicolaou, Romina Pezzia, Sergio Quiroga, Joan Solé, Gabriel Tondreau, Lluís Vecina Rufiandis and Ying Ye, as a result of Luz Broto’s workshop, in the context of  ProdArt – Master in Production and Artistic Research, line ACI – Intermedia Art and Contexts, University of Barcelona, from the 16th to the 20th of Novmeber 2020 in Barcelona. It presents the interventions they made that days in the doorways of their houses.

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