“Death in the river”

The death I would like to talk about is a death, understood as a broad idea. Like a shadow that spreads, like the night. A death of invisibility. On the one hand, the death of the Madrid river, the Manzanares; a “Zombie” river, a river that has been mistreated for years and even decades. From the works of the expansion of the M 30, containing within itself, cement, rubble, by tons.

From time to time it dawns with strange substances and artificial foams, the product of discharges from factories. Now in certain parts, its flow is minimal, allowing us to see the basin of the poor river. Even despite all this, the river incredibly continues to harbor life, the “all-terrain” fish, by adapting to all the adverse conditions of its ecosystem. And there are those who go fishing in the river every morning.

I wanted to do a nocturnal intervention, under the cover of night, placing an ephemeral sculpture made entirely of plastic garbage waste, bags, packaging tape and found objects. In addition I also placed a wooden cross. This intervention was nocturnal, challenging a space of no one. I also lit dozens of candles as a sign of mourning, of prayer, as a secret and open ritual at the same time.

With this gesture I wanted to draw attention to the river, and to that dead space of dry sand, where the water should pass. A space for no one and for everyone. A space that was relatively easy to raid. These are the photos that I present as testimony of the action that I carried out in the early morning of October 12, the National Holiday of Spain. The installation dawned with the light of dawn, becoming more visible in the early hours of the morning. Another death was that of the intervention itself, since it was very limited in time. The installation had a life of about 11 hours. Around two thirty in the afternoon the river workers removed it, since they had to “clean” the area because just the next morning Mr. Gallardón was coming to visit the remodeling works on the Manzanares River… So from this precarious installation I wanted to make a public prayer.