PANORAMA
audio podcast in four languages, installation, booklet and video
AIR Wro in San Sebastian/Donostia, Spain |2015-16|
“Panorama” is an unbroken view of the whole region surrounding by an observer. It is the story of one place that become a story of another one and a way to get to know your city through the prism of recorded conversations between the stranger the resident. Through the project I’m looking at the people as the heart of their city. Urban landscape doesn’t exist without the community, which is the main history creator. What I am searching for are “memorabilia”: urban legends, tales and histories. A simple set of memories being located in the topography, or rather: geo-biography.
The “Panorama” project has been chosen for the Artist-in-Residence Program A-i-R Wro ESK and was launched in San Sebastian/Donostia in October 2015. During the residency I worked on the project in cooperation with the local community (I meet elderly people in the senior house: Hogar de Jubilado, I gave workshops for students from the Zurriola Ikastola High School, meet with Louis Childa from the Chillida-Leku Museum and cooperate with local artists (ARTEK Lab).
The first phase of the project was based on interviews and talks with people I have meet in different locations of San Sebastian. Through many encounters with local community I got to know the stories of the city’s inhabitants – both personal and and factual information, as well as some legends significant for the region. This narrative became the main line for recordings, that has been divided into sixteen tracks and attached as a CD to a booklet with pictures taken by my on location.
Next year the project “Panorama” has been expanded to a video and a mix media installation that has been presented during the “BASK 2016” festival in Wroclaw, Poland. The exposition presented audio recordings with maps of locations, video and the “retouched” flag that was based on a well known sign in a Bask Country (Northern Spain) - a white fabric with the slogan: “Bring Basque Prisoners Back Home”. By displaying the flag in the window or flying it from a balcony people expressed their support within the Basque Country.The flag I have created has no political signs though, it is shorten to one key word: “home”. According to the Basque writer and anthropologist Mikela Azurmendiego, the word “Etxea” in Basque language means both “me” and “home”, which I found very metaphorical and powerful.
