Lara Almarcegui: Guide to the wastelands of the Bilbao river estuary

Lara Almarcegui (Zaragoza, 1972) spent the last year working on a new project that takes as its framework of reference the banks of the Bilbao river estuary and the constant processes of regeneration and transformation to which they have been subjected over the recent decades. The individual exhibition in the sala rekalde’s Abstract Cabinet shows the artistic results that have been achieved within this context. The point of departure for this undertaking is related to other work in which the artist develops processes of investigation that cast an attentive eye upon empty lots or abandoned spaces in disuse which are either not contemplated at all from the town planning perspective or, on the other hand, are on their way to a possible future transformation. The result of these studies is presented in a publication format that Lara refers to as “wasteland guides”. So far she has published three guides exploring such spaces: Guide to the Waste Grounds of São Paulo (August 2006), Guide to Al Khan (December 2006) and Waste Grounds of the Lisbon Port Area (September 07).

Lara Almarcegui: Her work

Almarcegui’s artistic practice concentrates on the margins of constructed urban space in order to explore the possibilities of freedom they might offer. Through simple but direct actions, such as opening up a closed off section of wasteland to users and visiting it with a group as an artistic action, negotiating with local authorities so that an empty lot be protected within the new Rotterdam port extension or calculating the weight of the city of São Paulo from the materials employed in the construction of its buildings, the artist sets off new lines of reflection both around the constructive hypersaturation that affects contemporary cities and also the excessive control exercised by urban design on the daily use of space.

The artist is drawn to wastelands because they are the only city spaces that are not designed by architects, urban planners, politicians or builders, although these places may have their owners or their existence might be tied to a future or past urban renewal plan, and for diverse reasons they have remained suspended in time. In the excessive rationalisation of the contemporary European city, wastelands are the only places open to the possibility of citizens finding somewhere they can feel free. A wasteland is terrain that has not been built on and where there is no garden, park or defined natural area. Frequently, plots of this kind are forgotten places with no use, hung without meaning between new communications maybe, or the product of industrial closure or the removal of infrastructures that leaves a legacy of vast empty gaps. There are many ways in which wastelands can be used spontaneously, but they are of particular interest not so much because of uses they could be put to, as for their significance as an “open possibility” and their evocative potential. In these places all kinds of processes that the city generally conceals can be experienced: entropy, decadence, nature in the wild and imagination.

Lara Almarcegui: Guide to the wastelands of the Bilbao river estuary

The Guide to the wastelands of the Bilbao river estuary, published on the occasion of Lara Almarcegui’s exhibition in the Abstract Cabinet, presents a selection of vacant lots taking in the two banks of the Nervión from the locality of Basauri to the mouth of the estuary in the Bay of Biscay. This guide to vacant lots along the River Nervión constitutes a journey through the city’s industrialisation, crisis and rationalisation.

Bilbao is, in fact, currently going through a time of powerful and accelerated urban transformation comparable even to its experience at the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th, when it was transformed into a big industrial port city due to the development of the mining and iron and steel industries and to ship building. The industrial crisis of the 1980s caused the closure and modernisation of important industries within the environs of the river estuary, which meant the recovery of the banks of the Nervión once port activities were transferred towards the outer bay.

The Guide can be obtained free of charge when visiting the exhibition at the sala rekalde.

Lara Almarcegui
Guide to the wastelands of the Bilbao river estuary.
Kurator: Leire Vergara