GARBIBAI 2013

In the frame of the 2nd edition of GARBIBAI –the world first stand up paddle clean up river race, Gondolin Klub offered a workshop directed by antipodes café and Basurama with the aim of turning the garbage collection (treasures) into art.

The result of the workshop was an exhibition at “Punto Denda Fomento San Sebastian” (Government office for promotion of commerce) curated by both antipodes café and basurama and mounted by antipodes café.

Starting point

“We define LITTER as all what we get rid of, because we do not need it or because we do not want it closer anymore. We define TRASH, in addition, as all what we do not want to see again and therefore we try to hide. We do not want to know nothing about it since we take it out of our house, following the ongoing political process, and also from before, when it started disturbing our senses even if it has a hiding place in each house. In dark bags it boards blinded trucks that will hide it in far away dumping sites, where we know it will be broken down, it will be mixed together with the land, will be destroyed, maybe processed and hopefully recycled. ‘Eyes that doesn’t see, heart that doesn’t feel’ sings the popular chorus.

We find it quite curious throwing away trash into rivers as an alternative. Almost new objects, which we think will disappear when they get in contact with the water. We hide from them like kids, that covering their eyes feel that they are invisible. Without being destroyed, neither processed and far from reused, we think the river will take those objects far away from us, to that terrain –as in the ideas field– that when it gets deep, we act as if they don’t belong to us, as if we are no more part of our land, of our control.

Nevertheless, with Stand Up Paddle, we can almost walk on the water, and mix to that – so far and so close- aquatic domain. This old modality of surf is a sport for all the people and adaptable to several aquatic situations, which allows to convert GARBIBAI into an encounter. And incredibly, when we manage to take this trash out of the river, we meet those who took them there, with their histories of who achieved the impossible challenge of drawing a line into the sea.

‘You can not step twice into the same river’, says Heraclitus, and many philosophers took this sentence as the image of the eternal moving of the world, history and time. Treasures that we threw to rivers anchor that movement, at least to one time, to a moment in which someone wanted to get rid of something, hide from something. Take this trash and convert them into treasures, more than put face to face the people with their trash, it turns into a way of meeting and face our fears, as if this have returned from those places were we wanted to hide them. We unveil in this way histories that try to be hidden, but they just reappear full of mould.

To imagine how this objects arrive there, and why, in each case, attract us as much as the amount of trash that we will find, or our undeniable desire of clean river, empty of fears and full of respect. And it’s for that reason that the objects collected from the water are the main characters, as well as the whole process that evolves in this workshop and an itinerant exhibition.”

Alberto Nanclares (Basurama) + Felipe Ridao (antipodes café)

IDEA AND ORGANIZATION

Gondolin Kluba + antipodes café

WORKSHOP DIRECTION

antipodes café + Basurama

LINE PRODUCER

Marcelo Díaz

THANKS

Arteleku
FCC
Rafa Zulaika (background foto for the artwork “Muralla China” by Marcelo Díaz)
Ladis Rasla (cut of treasures for the artwork “Muralla China” by Marcelo Díaz)
and all participants