COLLAPSE & REGENERATION MANIFESTO

 

Every twenty years it happens: a ceremony of renovation and reconstruction to dismantle that sanctuary and re-erect it in a different place. Exactly the same. With its two shrines dedicated one to the sun goddess and the other to the harvest goddess and her heart-pillar. This is the last piece to move. The link between what was and what is. Between life and death. Between collapse and regeneration. This has been happening since the year 692 somewhere in Japan. But it could also happen anywhere else, for example right here: hidden between these lines, or in any intercellular space of your organism.

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Twenty years ago something happened: in a place on the coast of Almeria a man who casuistically is my landlord managed to stop the works of a twenty-storey hotel dug into the side of a hill. Two months before it was to be inaugurated a judge said: this is protected land. The people of Carboneras were divided: some saw it as a possibility for economic development and others as an aberration. The hotel kept the name of the beach where it is, Algarrobico. And it is still there. Before practicing law, my landlord was a pilot. He once told me that it was while flying over the coast of Murcia and Almeria, when he saw what it was turning into, that he decided to study law to take on environmental protection cases. Most of the cases he has handled have been in retirement. Seeing things from above always gives you a certain perspective. And to be able to do one thing or another.

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I don't know what kind of contract death has with ruins that leads you to walk through them. There are many types of ruins.this particular type are ruins that were never finished. Witness to the time of apparent splendor. Most of these ruins were built in protected areas between the eighties and two thousand years. Now they emerge again as a symptom of the times we are living in. So, yes, we need to take care of the symptoms before they become catastrophes. Most of them are in paradisiacal places and have privileged views. Some of them come out to meet you, others summon you in some strange way.

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Then you get to one of those places and you sit down on some stone you find, or on the ground and you visualise what the place was like before. Before there was anything there. The moment when someone cameto the place and had that idea, not another but THAT idea. The idea of what you see now. Then you look and

you see the silent film of how it all happened: from the first excavator that arrives to the exact moment when all the cranes and the last worker leave and the site becomes empty. All the moments contained in that space appear. All the gestures that were once made. And those that will be made. Then you enter.

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Inside are all the possibilities.

All times.

 

Of all these possibilities there are some that manifest and some that do not. What makes some manifest and some not manifest? Millions of decisions. Decisions that were made and that were not made so as to make that which you are seeing the way you see it. That which is present even though we cannot see it.

 

So: Ask questions of the place.

Observe.

 

Answers lie in what is there, in what appears, in what is and at the same time is not. Twenty years ago most of what is present today did not exist in the same way, and in twenty years’ time

everything around us will have become something else. I don’t know how to talk about this without it being overwhelming, without vertigo. Transformation is always vertiginous. We walk on heights over surfaces on the verge of collapse in order to

learn how to handle fear. The fear of vertigo. Every step, every decision becomes extremely important. Every step contains what will happen in twenty years’ time. So yes: our presence and our gaze have the power to transform the ruin into something else. To search within oneself for what is alive and to offer it to the ruin. Dancing to the ruin: moving within oneself what was to be that never was, what no longer is, what is vanishing. Visualise an image that belongs to the future and offer it to the ruin. One of all the possibilities that exist. That image is reflected in the ruin.

 

That image is a seed.

A seed of possibility.

 

Surrendering to causes of unknown origin. Unveiling the whys as you walk. As you climb hills and squeeze through holes. Looking for the ways in. The cracks that shake what seems impregnable. Enter and leave a seed planted. A seed of possibility. Tomorrow it will be something else. Come and plant a seed, shout the ruins. And the bodies answer: let’s go.

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POROESTRATOSFÉRICA LA CALDERA BARCELONA PUBLICATION.

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BODY, SPACE, PLACE. PERFORMATIVE CONFERENCE. FACULTY OF FINE ARTS CUENCA

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JORNADAS DE INVESTIGACIÓN EN ARTES. PUBLICATION.

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https://www.academia.edu/120227905/Manifiestodelderrumbeylaregeneracion_EstherRodriguezBarbero_full

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Parada I. Bailar en las ruinas (del techno) - 2020

Parada II. Poder y ruina - Surge Madrid - Octubre 2022

Parada III. Las ruinas. Un ensayo sobre la posibilidad - La Caldera Barcelona BRUTAL - Diciembre 2022

Parada IV. Manifiesto del derrumbe y la regeneración -  Publicacion Poroestratosferica La Caldera - Enero 2023

Parada V. Las Ruinas. Las ruinas albergaban semillas y estrellas. - NOW. Nauestruch Sabadell - Marzo 2023

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