Gloved hands open that steel stopcock so that the water, well measured, runs through the ditch and irrigates the fields, making its way between the ridges, those functional furrows that, with a hoe, human work drew on the earth. It is also well-measured water that enters that concrete mixer to mix with the aggregate and cement in the right proportion, so that the concrete can then penetrate correctly between the reinforcement and stop where the formwork appears. A gray surface that is then watered and cured with care, since it has to set at the right pace, just like the brown earth in the fields requires a certain humidity and just like crops need very specific times and climate. The trade of the land and the work is learned. Those who plow the fields and those who vibrate the concrete wear hats or helmets and also boots. Just like those who drive trucks distributing food and construction materials. Tractors, excavators, donkeys and cranes move and circulate. Meanwhile, tomatoes, onions and zucchini sprout, in that landscape of embankments, crops and mills; of props and hurdles; of hammers and sickles; of sulfates and additives, where there are the cranes, the ditches, the canvases and the adobes.
CAUTION!
Danger due to construction.
Video
Andreu Signes
Structure and ironwork
Decortruss, Juanjo Valverde
Photographs
Ricardo Ruíz, Miradors de l'Horta
Precaució! aims to warn of one of the multiple and complex dangers that threaten the survival of the Valencian orchard: construction. The meaning attributed to this warning sign is part of this dual game, as it can also be, depending on the eyes that look at it, the symbol of a farmer working the land. Thus, from afar, the crane could seem real, as much as the designers who, dressed as workers, visit the construction site. Warning! Danger! Another plot of rural land being urbanized! Up close, however, we understand its sculptural dimension of toy and farce: how hard it is soft, how heavy it is light and the tower that is an abandoned electric pole. What would happen if this field were urbanized? Almost all of us would probably experience a feeling of loss, since the garden is an anthropized landscape, the result of human action, which is part of our identity. Focusing on one of the problems of its disappearance and making us reflect through the alert were the objectives of the project.
Currently, the València orchard has the PATH, a planning tool that protects it. However, when it comes to the layout of infrastructures that exceed municipal power, orchard lands are paved, urbanized and built anyway (as has happened recently, for example, with the expansion of the V-21). The loss of continuous and connected agricultural surfaces fragments the garden as a territory and subtracts the ecosystem services that this productive and industrial landscape offers. The orchard, so beautiful and green, and yet it is a polygon.
The initial location proposed by the Miradors de l'Horta festival to carry out this project met a series of key conditions. It was an urban edge with a car park practically entering the orchard, resolved with yellow road signs, and with the particularity that, between the cars, a wooden bench appeared looking at a field of tiger nuts (which during the of the festival was burning), with an abandoned electric pole in the middle. It was thus decided to generate an entire scenography in which all those elements of the place participated and related to each other, meaning, using the abandoned electric pole, which would also allow us to take advantage of the resources and be able to build a high-rise installation; a symbol in the middle of a horizontal landscape. Neighbors and farmers told us about the inconvenience that these abandoned light poles, which they had tried to eliminate through legal means, caused them. This argument reinforced the idea of intervening on the structure of the pole to simulate a construction crane, which would allow the viewer to live, in first person, an unpleasant experience: the destruction of an orchard field as a consequence of the construction. Unfortunately, the farmer in the countryside did not allow the intervention to be carried out: he had bad references about the damage caused by the festival in previous years. Discomfort that, with the excuse of design and culture, was generated in the orchard fields that farmers like him worked hard all year round. We used this idea when transferring the proposal to the other field, fencing and marking it, and dressing the designers and architects who carried out the visits with uniforms and construction helmets, so that they themselves were part of the scenography; They were also warning and danger. Thus, from a distance, the trompe-l'oeil effect was produced: the crane and the workers could seem real; and the groups of designers were part of the danger. Although, in that sense, the visit with the mayors of l'Horta nord was the most fun...
