Instant City Hans Diemel
Colophon
This book was made within the framework of the Postgraduate of Creative Illustration at the EINA School of Design and Art - University of Barcelona.
Concept and illustrations: Hans Diemel. Advisor: Philip Stanton.
Special thanks to: Miguel Melgares for his layout advice and the people of the MACBA Museum for their generous cooperation.
Instant City Seeing people moving around is something that I really like, mostly then when they feel free to do as they like. To see how they behave, if they are alone or together, how they are dressed etc. Seeing all these different people gives the impression of so many little stories, that’s the beauty of it. There are certain places more suitable then others for this. I like big cities and their stations, parks, airports, libraries and museums that are like small cities themselves. Last week I went to the MACBA (the museum of contemporary art in Barcelona), which is a beautiful building, giving lots of space to it’s visitors to wonder around.
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topia is possible: a documentation of an architec-
ture congress. The Congress took place in a remote rural place in Ibiza in 1971. The whole ambience of the event seemed to be about freedom and experiment, it felt like a big 70’s party. I wondered how all this could take place during Franco times. Victor a 26 year old employee, graduated in art history, who happened to be from Ibiza, told me that then (before he was born) Ibiza was a kind of protected bubble from the mainland’s oppressive regime and for that a great place for such a congress with a mix of architecture design and experimental forms of art.
One of the projects of the congress was’ Instant City’; using then unconventional materials as plastic to explore its possible uses in architecture and design. Immense inflatable objects turned adults in to children as could be seen on the many videos and photo’s in the place. Victor said: “Long after the congress took place the plastic could be found around the island and the leftover plastic was later used in the ‘invernaderos’ (greenhouses) by the local farmers.”
The documentation that could be seen in the MACBA took two years of preparation and resulted in a very nice exhibition. The best (in my opinion) was how the curators
People lingering
recreated some of the ambience. All over the place there
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were big pillows and little white cubes for the audience to sit on or stretch out on completely. Together with the seventies music and the happy displays of the people in the videos and photo’s, it made the MACBA visitors linger, move, relax, kiss each other, gaze and ‘waist’ time in the spaces.
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Things waiting to be seen
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Others really concentrated
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Looking after their children
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Looking at each other
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Closing time
One of the people visiting the MACBA documentation was a woman of certain age from Taragona, who, as I approached here, was moving her head to a song of the 60’s 70’s. She said she ended up in the MACBA because she was visiting Barcelona with her daughter who is working in the art field and her little grandson. It was a Monday and most museums where closed so they came here. She seemed to be having fun, like most of the people. She said it brought her back some memories of other times.
Nice, how it all came together that Monday in the MACBA. The space, the pictures, the music, the Ibiza bubble, inflatable plastic cities, huge pillows with lingering people of all kinds and ages.