Performance art and recycled assemblages workshopInstructors: Policarpo Baquera, Inés Sebastián, and Derek Van Den Bulcke
Participants: Julia Clara, Adriana Fernández, Jone Miren Miguel, Fernando Manzanares, Paulina Paulova
IFAC International Festival of Art and Construction
Covarrubias, Burgos (Spain)
2014

Covarrubias is a municipality of 560 inhabitants located in Burgos that every summer doubles its population with tourists from the North of Spain. Some of them visited their families, and others only stayed for a few days sightseeing the village. In August 2014, the IFAC arrived in town and camped in the northern outskirts of the villa. During ten days, festival-goers and locals —known as racheles— cohabited in a dislocated regime where their traditions and routines intertwined in an unconventional agenda for a rural area. Streets and plazas turned into our only communication channel, and we decided to mediate this exceptional state by implementing a rural social network, Your Covarrubias Confessions: a physical and performative framework to moderate the different voices and agencies of this state of exception.



This network feeds on hearsay and gossiping through a portable infrastructure of recycled confessionaries that gather words and snapshots from villagers and visitors: the Downtown Feed (1) collect thoughts, fake news, and secrets all day long in the village, and The Toilet Cam (2) all night in the festival's Porta-Potties; Two Chatting Chairs (3), the Countryside Booth (4), and the Mobile Confessional (5) are performative assemblages that require the presence of one confidant to force the confession of their user. The participants in the workshop designed and manufactured all devices using recycled materials with manual assembling techniques. We showcased the final pieces in a final performance and exhibition that took over the town's main square.



– Selected Workshop for the 2014 edition of the IFAC International Festival of Art and Construction.



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