Legado Cuidado
- Legado Cuidado
Pasatiempo Park was created by the Naveira Brothers (returned emigrants from Argentina) between 1893 and 1933. Due to the neglect it suffered for years, a collective was formed to demand its care. The artistic intervention, installed on May 25, 2024, was the result of the participatory project "Legado Coidado," which aimed to raise awareness and highlight the care of the park. It has been mediated by Fran Quiroga and promoted by Concomitentes (a non-profit organization that develops participatory artistic projects and is part of the European network New Patrons) together with the conmitentes (Asociación Amigas Parque do Pasatiempo Lara Dopazo Ruibal Jesús Castro Óscar Górriz), residents of the Betanzos region, and the municipality itself. After a mediation process led by Fran, I was commissioned to develop the artwork.
The formalization of the intervention consists of a series of seven modular pieces based on a fictional breakdown of the Neptune Fountain, a missing piece from the Park that was located at the intervention site. This fountain was located over a canal, an element the intervention seeks to reclaim. An old reed bed, a source of collective pasture for the community since the city's establishment, the canal fed the Pasatiempo fountains and connected to the river. The presence of water also underpins the entire charitable work of the Naveira brothers (the park, the river, the wash house). Sometimes reconnecting a thread, as in this case the passage of water, helps tell the whole story. I found a thread in that vanished canal that connected the natural reality, the Mendo River and the reed beds, with the Pasatiempo complex.
The current disappearance of the Canal disrupts the interpretation of the original Park's sculptural and landscape ensemble. The changes in elevation, the interruption of the water flow, and the disappearance of elements prevent this. But this absence is also a space for the imagination. It creates horizons of expectation within which all individual desires fit. That is, it allows other visions less tied to the memory of things to emerge, overflowing into the memory of places: the relationship of the place with the tides, with the river, with the washhouse; the possible routes between the elements... all these visions serve to create a community. That was the place where I wanted to situate myself.
As if it were the remains of the canal, the intervention aims to mark a space of memory and help create an imagination of the future. In the production process of the pieces, lost decorative elements of the fountain were recreated, over which recycled cement was poured. The pieces are a metaphor for absence, as they seek to simulate the mold of those lost pieces. They are installed with the intention of being visually united from a specific point of view and are distributed in the place where the canal once stood, as if the fountain were to disintegrate and its remains were scattered throughout the land. I have in mind those images of an almost forgotten Pasatempo, which was merging with the vegetation. Thus, these recycled cement pieces will emerge from the vegetation. A vegetation with that restorative idea conceived in the garden designed by Iñigo Segurola.
And, at the same time, they aim to transform a space of passage into a place of relaxation. They will be able to be used as benches, stairs, tables—modular pieces that can help generate a collective use of the space. They will not be cemented, but will simply sit on the ground, even considering the possibility of sinking slightly, understanding the logic of a territory that was once a reed bed.