Action: the active spectator in front of the landscape

Location: Torroella, Girona (Spain)

Year: 2018

Framework:  Life Pletera Project

#Art #Reflection

n´UNDO carries out an artistic action to reflect on the beauty of the lost and later recovered landscape and the fragility of the natural balance in built environments.

As part of the dissemination work of the Life Pletera Project, whose first objective is the total and definitive restoration of the coastal lagoon system of La Pletera (in the Estartit in Torroella del Montgrí) to recover its ecological functionality, which is currently altered as a result of the partial urbanization of the space. To materialise this restoration and recovery, the whole urbanisation built in the lagoon has been dismantled.

The best way to appreciate and value any landscape is to confront it with its massive exploitation. Looking head-on at the horrors that a society obsessed with economic profit is capable of producing in natural enclaves forces us to confront this situation: I like it / I don’t like it. This is what n´UNDO raises in the Pletera action, with the aim of understanding the value of the territory and the intervention of recovery of the Estartit beach through its process of deurbanization. The action was conducted within the interventions organized by the artist collective BUIT.

An advertising campaign is launched announcing the reactivation of the paralysed real estate development, promising direct views of the sea and exclusive dwellings in the typical housing blocks that are built along the national territory. A telephone number is provided to ask for more information, where the interested individual is informed of the negative impacts derived from his desire to be the owner of a view and a landscape that does not belong to him. At the same time, some chairs are placed overlooking the land where the development will be built in order to imagine the future construction. Once seated, there is no option to look other way. The viewer must decide: either a natural beach for everyone that preserves its natural characteristics or a real estate development that generates economic and private benefit by destroying the landscape and the coast.

Girona TV echoed the artistic action developed by n´UNDO and it´s exhibition in Bolit (Contemporary Museum of Arts of Girona), dedicating part of its cultural programming to these events.