JORGE CONDE

"A World-Size House" project

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Created as resident artist at the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome.

Supported by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID).

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Artistic investigation on the social, architectural and environmental impact derived from the current urban model based on mass tourism and its logistical needs. The project primarily concentrates on those districts in the city of Rome with degraded areas being initially recuperated through cultural initiatives of different sorts. In most cases these newly-born cultural institutions counterbalance the model's excesses. To do so, Jorge Conde explores up to seventeen obsolete, disused urban areas or abandoned buildings that in the past three decades have been rescued from oblivion and given a second life as cultural institutions.

The transformation of disused spaces is a fairly effective strategy widely-used by the public and private sectors in may countries and diverse territories not only to promote creation, speed up the cultural scene and articulate society, but also to stimulate growth, provide a gain of prestige, and reactivate declining urban areas. Inserted within a more ambitious renovatio urbis process, this strategy undoubtedly establishes new paradigms and introduces a clear notion of cultural utopia.

Internationally, this strategy has also produced some negative effects such as the application of flawed, inefficient cultural policies, abusive real estate speculation, mutation of urban identity, social division, gentrification, and ghettoization. In Rome’s case specifically, it frequently happens as an exercise of industrial archaeology, a response to a conflict of interest or a way of dealing with a social emergency.

In the city of Rome there are plenty of such examples of urban rebirth, newly-born institutions of different types, ranging from public museums, art production centers and privately-run foundations, to occupied, self-managed, barely legal cultural centers or even historical sites, along with many other hybrid initiatives. All of these projects have to some extent modified or recuperated the memory of several of the most distinctive Roman “quarteri” being strongly affected by the current city model based on mass tourism.

Thumbs-up / Thumbs-down, 2016.

Libro de artista autoeditado. Edición de 15 variaciones firmadas y numeradas, todas ligeramente distintas.

Medidas: 21,6 x 33 cm. (exterior); 124 páginas (103 + 21 encartes). Idiomas: inglés, italiano y español. Realizado con material original y de archivo, planos y fotomontajes.

Self-published artist's book. 15 slightly different copies, all numbered and hand signed by the artist. 124 pages. Size: 21,6 x 33 cm.

Languages: English, Italian and Spanish. Composed with original photos, floor plans, collages and archival materials.