Cement coin. July. 2009. Isaac Cordal.
I want to include a post related with the parallel work I’ve been doing outside the MA because I consider it has points in common with my proposal. This work I have called Cement eclipses (reflecting on those moments when the concrete and glass buildings obscure the sun). This project is related to street art as there is a merger in which the small figures that I make camouflage with street furniture. This is why I chose the subtitle of the human being becomes part of the urban furniture.
The pieces are repeated over and over again for silicone molds. The original piece is done in clay and the copies are made in cement. The use of cement is to draw attention to the use and abuse that we make with this building material, which has become a default “footprint” of human beings on nature from the last century. The use of cement refers to our physical presence, our activity, linked with evolution, and devolution of our society. We build and destroy everything around us in a natural way. Our physical presence, with cement as a standard, creates a distance with nature, which we have become what we see from one city to another. We could talk about a kind of “cementization” of all. The process in which we feel part of the furniture as a natural environment.
The use of the cement in the construction field has become a track that betrays us against the nature. In Spain 54.2 million tons of cement were demanded in 2007. The construction boom, hugely devastated the seaboard as well as the interior of the country converting to the ground in a kind of board game, where many businessmen speculated on the value of the land. It is curious the parallelism that exists among the destructive capacity of the termites devouring cellulose and our activity that destroy the nature in order to expand our cities. The nests of the termites can possess enormous dimensions, of various meters of height and several tons of weight. Our pheromone has handled as construction material cement.
These tiny figures of cement are the representation of a species of metamorphosis in which the human Being abandons his role as a citizen to be adhered to the city in which becomes part of the urban furniture and in this way confirms its voluntary isolation from nature mimic with the sidewalks, the streets, the walls, etc. This work has been in progress since 2006 under the title “Cement eclipses” in which present us with figures of small dimensions made with cement and semidetached by an adhesive material to any surface. The duration of the figure detached to the surface, it just depends on its own luck in the urban jungle. Usually, by the next day there is just two or three out there left. This can be compared to the graffiti that can be found in the same space, and also shares the same fate of being erased, painted over, and so on. Perhaps the next place that this particular work can be discovered is on the shelf of the person
who found them or the figures’ fate would finally be to be converted in part of the urban rubbles.
Sleepwalker. Urban Installation. Hackney. London. April 2009.
Climate change expedition. Urban Installation. Hackney. London. April 2009.
Remembrances from nature. London. May 2009.
Anonymous suicide of a piece of cement. Hackney. London. November. 2009.
The figures are of small dimensions (25 cm.) they are made with cement and duplicates through molds of silicone. The figures represent routine scenes, a purchase, a phone call, a long wait, etc. Scenes that contemplate puzzled the demolition and the reconstruction of everything that surrounds us.
The cement is one of the materials that more betrays us in our relation with the environment that surrounds us. Is the footprint of the human Being in the nature scene, our more recognizable trace. A mark that make us to believe that nature is “that” that we see from a city to another. In the case Galicia (Spain), the place where I come from, the coast that is converted in the endless flat city. One of the points of reference to carry out these small figures were based on those stunning images of the attacks of the 11S in which many of the survivors for a moment became part of the furniture, filled with dust and surrounded by debris.
Domesticated nature. Hackney. London. November. 2009.
Anonymous corpse over paint stain. Barcelona. Octubre. 2009.
Public swimming pool. . Camberwell Green, London. May 2009.
Filed under: practical project, Research
