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Operational Aesthetics

Chapter · January 2014

DOI: 10.5130/978-0-9872369-9-9.c

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Operational Aesthetics
Lucy Orta

Introduction
This chapter coincides with the twenty years of my practice
as a contemporary artist, so it seems fitting that I cover the
evolution of my work after having left the Parisian fashion
industry, through founding Studio Orta with my partner and
husband, Jorge, in 1991, and its development into a large
team of interdisciplinary artists and theorists committed to
creating and communicating with an artistic format that is
both representational and operational, Operational Aesthetics
(Aesthetic en Fonctionement).1
Although Jorge and I both have solo practices—Jorge
throughout the difficult dictatorial years in Argentina between
1970 and 1982 and in Paris from 1983, and my own since
1992 — we have always worked collaboratively, provoked by the
same key questions:

How can art practice pave a new critical role, faced with
the growing problems in this world?

How can it erase the contradictions between formal

aesthetics and social function?

How can works of art empower and nurture constructive

dialogue?

What contribution can we as artists make to human and

environmental sustainability?

Our artwork is widely exhibited in galleries and museums

worldwide, but these public presentations represent just
a fraction of our multifaceted studio production and

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 Art in the Global Present

communication processes. We strive to create artistic forms

that ‘speak’ different visual languages within varying contexts
and for diverse audiences, be it within the confines of the
white cube or the intimacy of the home, the playground of the
public space or interacting with the wider community.
We employ a huge diversity of media — from drawing, print,
embroidery and couture, to welding, carpentry, silkscreen
printing, installation, glass blowing, architecture, interven-
tion, light projections, sound, performance, photography and
video — but we are conscious that the vast array of resulting
artefacts cannot just represent our complex and changing
epoch. On the contrary, they should be active within people’s
lives, reactive to and act as trigger catalysts for solutions for
society at large.

I: Portable architecture
Just as I was beginning to make a successful career in the
Parisian couture houses, the first Gulf War exploded, followed
by stock market crashes and the consequences of the devastat-
ing economic recession. My encounter with Jorge in Paris in
1991 triggered my gradual transition away from fashion design
into contemporary art, inspired by his work and an increasing
need to become more socially active and to find a new creative
medium with which to express the effects of the social instabil-
ity around me.
The first visual manifestation of my work was Refuge Wear
(1992–98), a response to dual global crises: the humanitarian
aid appeals for shelter and clothing for the Kurd refugees
fleeing the war zones, and the increasing numbers of homeless
people on the streets of Paris. The first sculpture I realised was
Habitent (1992), a portable habitat designed for minimum per-
sonal comfort and urgent mobility for nomadic populations.
Habit implies a garment for meditation and spiritual refuge,
the inhabitant suggesting a human presence as an occupant
for the dwelling. The aluminium coated one-person tent with
telescopic armatures transforms in a matter of seconds into a
wind-waterproof poncho.
Using my design expertise, I went on to explore further
individual convertible shelters. The forms allow for the
minimum vital space around the body and the materials used

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 L u c y O r t a : Op e r a t i o n a l A e s t h e t i c s

1 Lucy and Jorge Orta

Life Nexus —The Gift, 2002/2010

2 Lucy and Jorge Orta

Nexus Architecture — Harness, 2007/2010

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 Art in the Global Present

are chosen for their ‘comfort-seeking’ properties, further

extending the metaphorical aspect of each artwork. For
example, a combination of microporous Rip Stop with a PU-
coated polyamide protects against abrasion during mobility,
but at the same time takes into account basic physical needs.
The Habit-Bivouacs (1993–94) incorporate carbon armatures
that raise the fabric above the chest to eliminate the effects of
claustrophobia. These supporting structures are lightweight
and telescopic, evoking pop-up architecture. Refuge Wear of-
ten has arm or hood appendages and converts into backpacks,
or pockets containing both functional and symbolic objects.
The transformation from shelter to clothing and vice versa is
fundamental to the concept of freedom of movement, free will
or choice, new relationships and new cultural exchanges, the
homo mobilis.

Workshops
In 1993 I was invited to exhibit Refuge Wear at the Salvation
Army shelter in Paris (Cité de Refuge). The show ‘Art Social
Function!’ marked the sixtieth anniversary of the hostel
designed by Le Corbusier. On one of the Refuge Wear bivouacs
suspended in the entrance hall of the hostel was silkscreen
printed text: ‘Living without a shelter for prolonged periods
rapidly deteriorates physical and moral health. The lack of
adequate sleep increases stress, weakens the immune system
and accelerates the loss of identity and de-socialisation.’
The artworks became the focal point for discussions with
the residents, and so we created a drop-in workshop with
the hostel staff to channel their feelings through dialogue,
drawing and poetry. This led naturally to a series of Refuge
Wear ‘trials’, which resulted in confessions about residents’
homeless experiences and suggestions on how their precari-
ous conditions could be ameliorated with numerous stopgap
solutions. These emotional encounters marked a change in
my studio practice as it became apparent that workshops were
more than just an artist offering a skill. A highly rewarding
creative exchange and partnership could be nurtured between
participants and artist— co-creation. In the words of the
director of the Salvation Army: ‘I am convinced today that in
the launching of socialisation, it is difficult to have access and

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 L u c y O r t a : Op e r a t i o n a l A e s t h e t i c s

go towards art and culture, they must come towards our public.
Culture must be included in the world of exclusion.’2

Interventions
As urban theorist and philosopher Paul Virilio has often
pointed out, the industrialisation of vision in the modern
world has led to the over dominance of images within our soci-
ety. To be homeless in a media culture such as ours is therefore
to be rendered invisible, to melt literally into the margins and
framework of the city. ‘Out of sight out of mind’ is an aphorism
that has a more pertinent meaning to those disenfranchised
members of society who fall through this gap. Jorge and I
staged Refuge Wear city appearances —Interventions—to
challenge that act of social disappearance and to render the
invisible visible once more. Peripheral urban spaces, such
as squats, railway stations, housing projects, bridges and
subways, were chosen as arenas for simultaneous happenings
that were recorded for French and British television.3 The
Refuge Wear sculptures and the subsequent interventions in
the urban space acted as warnings, alarms or distress whistles
to signal certain aspects of reality that the media ignore or
simplify, before they evacuate it completely.

Collective
Meeting Virilio in 1994 was a significant turning point in my
practice. His research at the time focused on the breakdown
of the family unit and the need to reconstruct the social
link: ‘The precarious nature of society is no-longer that of
the unemployed or the abandoned, but of that of individuals
socially alone.’4 The Refuge Wear and Survival Kits I had been
creating were concerned with the notion of individual survival,
but it became more apparent that I should be investigating
the role of the individual within a community structure —the
collective body.
Virilio’s philosophy and social criticism encouraged me
to explore new structures and processes for stimulating
dialogue and interaction. I went on to create Collective Wear
Body Architecture (1994–99), larger-scale domes and collective
tent-like sculptures that sought to promote the opposite effect
of the individual isolated units in the Refuge Wear series. The

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 Art in the Global Present

surface skins of these Body Architecture enclosures have many

facets and appendages — demi-bodies — that represent indi-
viduals within a community and at the same time evoke the
complexities of sharing space. The first in the series was Body
Architecture × 4 (1994), exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne
in Paris, installed alongside Refuge Wear. In the study Body
Architecture Soweto (1997) the external membrane of the
tent-structure is covered in second-hand clothes, purchased
from the community markets in Soweto townships in South
Africa during a research trip for a commission for the 2nd
Johannesburg Biennale.

Communities
Connector Body Architecture (2001–06) marks the transition
from the Body Architecture studies and expands the metaphor
of community interaction. Jorge and I created Dome Foyer
(2001), a structure taking the form of a meeting hub, a central
axis onto which six to eight bivouac pod units could be zip-
pered on and off. We presented the Connector Mobile Village
(2002) at the Lothringer 13 gallery in Munich, Germany. The
same pods were docked into a connective channel in the form
of linear modules, each with a numbered docking bay. The
green node allowed different structural configurations and
the open-ended possibility to create larger connector net-
works, replicating the rhizome-like fabric of our community
interactions.
The Connector project became a fascinating subject for
workshops, which we ran simultaneously in different cities
and community groups across the world, from Mexico to
Japan, from France to Florida. During the workshops, ideas to
diversify the habitable pods were developed into prototypes,
allowing for huge variety of individual units among the
expanding population of this mobile village.
The Connector Guardian Angel was created together with
ex-voto painters in the Zocalo district of Mexico City, depict-
ing scenes they witness daily in the streets. This segment was
commissioned for the annual Historical Festival, which aimed
to bring culture to the heart of the Mexico City, where crime
and poverty is at its highest density.
The Makrolab Connectors, anoraks-cum-sleeping bags,

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 L u c y O r t a : Op e r a t i o n a l A e s t h e t i c s

were a wearable environmental manifesto imagined dur-

ing a residency on Makrolab — an autonomous travelling
research station that relied entirely on sustainable energies,
positioned on the environmental reserve Rottnest Island, off
the coast of Western Australia. The anoraks are prototypes
for crew uniforms, fashioned with thermochromic textiles,
silkscreen-printed with an environmental charter. They have
an integrated portable solar panel designed to power a mobile
phone or laptop. The rucksacks unzip from the jacket and can
either attach to walls of the laboratory, doubling up as storage
space, or connect back onto the metaphoric Connector Village
sculpture.
Created during workshops with fashion students in the
French town of Cholet, the Cholet Connector, with its gestural
extending arms, is one of the most pertinent responses to the
notion of interconnectivity, extending out to others to feel part
of a larger connective social structure: detachable, mobile, yet
inextricably connected.

Mobility
Jorge and I also develop itinerant vehicle structures, Mobile
Intervention Units — MIU (2002, on-going), and we’re not
alone in addressing the needs of humanity with these kinds
of mobile dwelling spaces. A range of artists have been work-
ing on the ‘containerisation’ of living space, exploring the
overlaps between architecture and urban planning to realise
sculpture as fully self-sufficient and mobile social spaces. Joep
van Lieshout’s AVL Projects are modular living units; Krzysztof
Wodiczko Homeless Vehicles provide marginalised groups with
a ‘street tool’ to transport the basic necessities of a survival
economy. Dré Wappenaar’s tents function as dens, attracting
a diverse range of people to gather inside and engage with a
message of awareness. Andrea Zittel, Alicia Framis, Tobias
Rehberger, Jorge Pardo, N55, Plamen Dejanov and Swetlana
Heger, to name but a few, are all artists whose work is
grounded in the social dimensions of collective action and the
understanding of itinerant communities.
Like the goals of the Connector Mobile Village, our MIU are
itinerant civic vehicles that address important issues relating
to presence and speech in delivering an itinerant platform for

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communities who cannot reach centres of power. Two of our

most pertinent works, reconditioned Red Cross ambulances,
were positioned in front of the city hall in Trieste, Italy, for
the G8 Environment Summit in 2002. The visual imagery
and graphic signifiers applied to their façades quite explicitly
referenced the combined social and environmental subjects
needing urgent attention: the foot-and-mouth epidemic, waste
food mountains, water shortage, extreme poverty and much
more.
Dwelling X (2004) evolved from a series of co-creation
workshops on the theme of personal and shared space
held with a local youth group in the city of Nottingham.
Responding through drawing and model making, a series
of architectural floor plans became a focus for the motifs
silkscreened onto an inflatable membrane, alongside the
silhouettes of each participant. The balloon-like membrane,
synonymous with the womb, becomes the extension of a huge
mesh heart, an architectural proposal combining two distinct
evocative spaces. Nestling on the lorry in the centre of the
busy market square, its diaphanous form acts as a mobile
beacon for the new contemporary art museum to be built in
the city; at the same time, it provides a public platform for
interrogating and engaging with new forms of public and
participative art.

Nexus
When I first began making work that physically connected
people, Virilo commented: ‘Each individual keeps an eye
on, and protects, the other. One individual’s life depends on
the life of the other. In Lucy’s work, the warmth of one gives
warmth to the other. The physical link weaves a social link.’5
The body of work Nexus Architecture (1994–2002) (Figures
1 & 2) is regarded as an emblem of my practice. Nexus means
link or bond and the symbolic content is more important
than functional. In this work clothing becomes the medium
through which social links and bonds are made manifest,
both literally and metaphorically. The links of zippers and
channels, while enhancing the uniformity of the workers’
overalls, create androgynous shapes that defy classification
by the usual social markers, and attempt to give form to

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 L u c y O r t a : Op e r a t i o n a l A e s t h e t i c s

the social, not the individual body. As fashion sociologist

Dr Joanne Entwistle states: ‘Instead of differences, we are
offered a powerful vision of possible, momentary collectives
or networks of being, whose connections are rendered visible
and visceral in time and space.’6
The connecting elements are direct embodiments of a
social link, a ‘social sculpture’ worn in public spaces and used
for ephemeral interventions in contextual locations. During
the interventions performers and passers-by become physi-
cally involved in the construction of each scenario, which is
filmed and photographed: climbing into the suits, zipping the
Nexus, walking, moving in unison, creating an unusual close-
ness, questioning interdependence by being part of it, physical
and visceral. The recurring public manifestations of the work
create a poetic series of interrelated segments regardless of
religion, sex, age or social status.
The surface fabric of each Nexus suit is adapted to the
context of each public intervention, and is silk-screen printed
with inscriptions relating to current affairs. A segment of
sixteen suits created for the Venice Biennale (1995) were
inscribed with newspaper headlines reporting the genocide
in Rwanda and worn by architecture students throughout the
biennale opening. Participating in the Global March Against
Child Labour (1998), teenagers from an orphanage I had
worked with communicated the UN Declaration for Children’s
Rights as they marched across France.
For the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale commission (1999) I
chose to use traditional textiles from the colourful Dutch wax
prints and African Kangas purchased in South Africa, and
this formed the basis for a community workshop for migrant
female labourers from a local city shelter. The women were
inexperienced in sewing and were given a demonstration
on the basic processes of cutting and manufacturing so that
each woman could gain a skill. They selected their preferred
graphic designs and each cut and stitched a suit. The result
was a stunning patchwork series of Nexus links, and a moving
intervention of solidarity in the city of Johannesburg as we
created a magnificent human chain chanting anti-apartheid
freedom songs. At the end of the workshop the women
adopted the suits for personal use including the social link,

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 Art in the Global Present

perhaps in their minds the most important feature of the

design. In Johannesburg, the Nexus Architecture experience
produced the most beautiful suits, but more importantly it
was a process of bringing forth the possibility of solidarity in
a fractured environment where solidarity can be difficult to
muster and maintain.
Nexus Architecture later evolved from the linear configura-
tion to a crisscross of connections evocative of the molecular
structure of atoms. Several hundred suits existed in this
series and the full installation carried an extremely powerful
message. This included a gathering of over fifty performers
and passers-by in front of Cologne Cathedral to mark the
opening of the exhibition ‘Unwearable’ at the Angewandte
Kunst Museum (2000). In the city of Cholet, a city devastated
by closures of some children’s clothing manufacturing plants,
we staged a public intervention to coincide with a survey
exhibition at the museum of fine art. Over one hundred local
children and their parents participated in workshops led by
the museum to learn about the UN Declaration of Children’s
Rights (2002).

Survival
The Life Guard series (2002, on-going) is based on an adapta-
tion of the worker’s overall block. It is used as a starting point
for a multitude of different assemblages to create both object-
based and performative detournements. The extension of the
garment incorporates Red Cross army-surplus articles, camp
beds, tarpaulins with their rigid frames and stretchers and
bed linens with protruding handles. The first-aid stretchers
transform into connected figures, which are both supportive
structures for the wearer and transportable aid devices for
the bearer. Camp-bed mattresses detach from their frames
and morph into sleeping bags, rucksacks convert to multiple
habitats and linen tarpaulins mutate into collective harnesses.
Even rubber dinghies deploy to create wearable life rafts, and
lifejackets pop out of canvas courier bags.
Urban Life Guard formed the central discourse of my
exhibition, The Curve, at the Barbican Art Gallery London
(2005). Comprising 23 suspended stretcher beds incorporating
over sixty figures, I reflected on the notion of assistance and

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 L u c y O r t a : Op e r a t i o n a l A e s t h e t i c s

the assisted, whereby the body is not only understood as the

measure of one’s capacity to overcome ordeals or support for
others in distress, but also as a fragile structure to be preserved.

Portable Protest
Portable Protest (2004–08) is a response to the second Iraq
invasion in 2004, and builds upon work that Jorge and I have
been developing since the outbreak of the 1991 Gulf War. The
work was commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum’s
late night performance evenings to be held on 25 June 2004,
just five days before the hand-over of sovereignty to the Iraqi
government and the start of the withdrawal of US and allied
forces. Together with 50 volunteer performers, we staged a
passive protest for peace wearing gold-printed combat suits.
For over two hours we silently meditated the future fate of Iraq
and its citizens amid the tombs, sepulchres and war trophies
from historical battles and combats.
Eyewitness accounts conducted by Dr Jonathan Holmes
for the verbatim play Fallujah, on which we collaborated
and which was performed in 2007, recount the desperation
of medical staff, the horrors of combat and the voices of the
citizens from inside the siege of this Iraqi city. We became
even more anxious to reveal the truth behind this political
manipulation and media censorship through our work, so
Portable Protest and new sculptural works were used as the
backdrop for a seven-week performance in London. The
independent NGO project ‘Iraq Body Count’ estimated that
over thirty-four thousand civilians were killed in Iraq in 2006
alone, 1.8 million were driven from their homes and over two
million fled to other countries. What happens to the people
whose livelihoods, homes and daily routines are permanently
and irrevocably changed through the violation of their basic
human rights in the name of Western democracy?
In keeping with the flexibility of our work, Portable Protest
also toured in the form of a static installation to the 2006
Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, a city famous for student
protests against the dictatorial regime and now a symbol of
the country’s pro-democracy resistance —a movement with
special poignancy in light of the political situation that still
divides the peninsula.

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II
In this section I focus on four areas of collaborative research,
marking the shift away from the body to the global altruistic
themes of human rights in the project Antarctica, or food
and water scarcity explored in the themes of 70 × 7 The Meal
and OrtaWater, and the most recent body of work, Amazonia,
which interrogates the importance of safeguarding our natural
resources.

HortiRecycling
HortiRecycling (1997–99) points a finger at food waste in
European cities, yet it is also a reflection on the inequalities
of food distribution globally. The works begins its life as All
in One Basket (1997), an installation of artworks centred
around an open-air buffet in Les Halles, Paris, produced
from over three hundred kilograms of discarded fruit that we
had gleaned from the local markets. We enlisted the help of
the famous chef-pâtissier Stohrer, who helped prepare and
cook the produce into a variety of gourmet dishes, thereby
‘re-civilising’ this so-called abandoned food. Samples of jam,
jellies and puddings were available in small taster bowls for
free, and in the adjacent Galerie Saint-Eustache we installed
a collection of artefacts constructed from wooden fruit crates
containing our homemade preserves, alongside photographs
of mounds of discarded market produce. Visitors could buy
souvenir editions of our bottled and labelled preserves or
listen to personal stories from the community of gleaners at
the weekly markets in the form of audio recordings from the
Walkmans integrated in conservation unit trolley sculptures.
During the course of the opening, thousands of members of
the art community, shoppers, children, tramps and students
stopped by to discuss both art and food issues.
Two years later we staged a second phase of Horti­Recycling
(1999) in Vienna, thanks to a commission for the Weiner
Secession. Taking advantage of the proximity of the local fruit
and vegetable Naschmarkt opposite the gallery, the energetic
Secession curators helped us carry on the legacy of the
Viennese manifesto, ‘to every age its art and to art its freedom’.7
After reflecting on the cycle of food recycling, we perfected our
methods of collection, processing and distribution to provide

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 L u c y O r t a : Op e r a t i o n a l A e s t h e t i c s

market vendors with brightly coloured collect units. This ena-

bled a rapid and more hygienic gathering of produce, instead
of collecting it directly off the street. At the end of each market
day we fetched the bags using our specially fabricated process-
ing units (mobile kitchens) and pulley systems installed inside
the gallery. Thanks to these functional sculptures with fully
integrated sinks, hotplates and freezers, we were able to clean,
cook, bottle and freeze the ripe food on the spot, thereby put-
ting into place a novelty recycling system with the potential to
be adopted one day.

70 × 7
Following the success of the social gatherings and the passion-
ate discussions ensuing from the open-air buffets, we devel-
oped a third phase of these gastronomic works in the form
of an unfolding series of meal performances: 70 × 7 The Meal
(2000, ongoing). This participative body of work is inspired
by Padre Rafael Garcia Herreros (Colombia, 1909–1992), who
initiated a series of benefit banquets called El Minuto de Dios
to fundraise for a major urban social development programme
that would radically transform one of the most abandoned
zones in the city of Bogotá. The dinners were so successful
that they raised enough funds to build El Minuto de Dios, a
whole district complete with community schools, homes
and gardens, a theatre, a contemporary art museum, small
factories and a university.
The symbol 70 × 7 has its roots in the biblical signification
meaning Ad Infinitum (Lc. 17.4) that serves as a pretext to
bringing about multiple encounters between guests, who are
invited to dine in surprising installations and participate in
an ‘endless’ banquet. Seven guests invite seven others, and
so on, so the act of creating the meal happens through the
chain-reaction of human interaction. We are merely triggers or
enablers in a process.
70 × 7 The Meal series is an invisible artwork taking the
form of our most cherished rituals and mimicking the es-
sential human needs to eat and to unite. Only small signals,
such as the limited edition Limoges porcelain plates and
hand-printed tablecloth created for each event, leave a trace
that something unusual has brought these guests together.

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 Art in the Global Present

We hope that these clues remain discreet so as not to incite

a ‘fear of art’ and to allow the catalyst encounters to blossom
naturally. Setting the meals in an urban space is a return to
the need for spontaneous general assemblies around specific
subjects, bringing people to concert, to reconcile, to reflect
together, with the potentiality of an artwork that is active in
the heart of a community. The invisibility of the art renders
this tool more effective by erasing the fear of ‘not belonging’.
One of the most successful of these community gatherings
was 70 × 7 The Meal, act IV (2000). This was staged in Dieuze,
France, a rural town of three thousand inhabitants with a
culturally divided population of air force servicemen, miners,
farmers, immigrants and unemployed. Commissioned by
the local youth centre and in collaboration with seven local
associate groups, we contacted every inhabitant in the town
using word of mouth, press, radio and door-to-door mailings
to encourage the largest possible participation. We closed the
main street and installed a half-kilometre table, adorned with
a red runner. Special limited-edition Royal Limoges plates
were inscribed with the hopes and wishes of the inhabitants,
which had been collected during the 18-month period prior to
the event. Its success was marked by a tremendous turnout—
over half the population and over seven hundred and fifty
porcelain dining plates sold on the day!
What started out as an intimate dinner for seven members
of the farming community at the Kunstraum in Innsbruck
(2000) has evolved through 32 meals installations across the
world with thousands of people involved in the act of creation.
Our fiftieth act, covering several miles of streets starting from
Tate Modern and running across the Millennium Bridge
to Guildhall, the historical centre of London, hasn’t been
realised yet, but from past experience, and with our 70 × 7
multiplication strategy, we know it is possible to unite several
thousand people around the same table. Each act of the meal
has served as a forum for proposing new political, educational,
social and environmental debate, as well as fund-raising
for important social or environmental causes. Nobody can
change the world with a meal, but each meal, and its infinite
accumulations, has the potential to change the world, even if
it’s in a small way.

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Ortawater
This body of work began its life as an exhibition proposal
titled ‘Drink Water’, commissioned by the Fondazione
Bevilacqua La Masa for the Venice Biennale (2005), which
toured to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam
(2006). The initial premise was Venice, a city built on water
and dependant on it for its livelihood, but more importantly
our research process and resulting artefacts were designed to
focus our attention on the general scarcity of water, and the
issues surrounding the privatisation and corporate control
affecting access to clean water for all.
Starting from an analysis of this crucial issue through
visual and textual research, together with international
interdisciplinary workshops and seminars, we collectively
brainstormed ideas for sculptures, large-scale installations,
public artworks and pilot projects that would both evoke the
cycle of water and prompt ideas to design and implement
clean-water projects for communities in need. Catalogued
in sketchbook format, the resulting drawings aimed to pose
questions through the surprising juxtaposition of hand-made
structures, and the incorporation of functional found objects
referencing a wide range of water issues. We reflected on
cycles of water from the source to the pump, from the purifica-
tion to the packaging and distribution. We created small MIU
urban vehicles, such as the Ape Piaggio, low-cost manpowered
distribution structures and water reservoirs, mobile water
fountains, Venetian-style transport trolleys, vitrines, boats
and water Life Guard artefacts, which oscillate between the
metaphoric and the functional/operational.

Fluvial Intervention Unit (FIU)

The hundreds of low-cost water purification devices we
discovered during our research were of particular significance.
We went as far as incorporating a fully-functioning filtration
system into the FIU Pumpstation sculpture, which pumped
the filthy Canal Grande into the immaculate Venetian gallery,
through a filter circuit of connecting pipes in the artworks
directly to the brass taps inserted in each object, to simply dem-
onstrate, through the act of drinking, that the filthiest water
in Europe is drinkable and available to taste for the thousands

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of visitors to the exhibitions. In Rotterdam we pumped the

Emmasingel Canal through the rear door of the museum in a
network of pipes and bridges that wound their way through the
historical fine art galleries, among the Van Eycks and Breugels,
into the exhibition space. Once again, the general public could
just turn on the taps and take a drink. As the engineer we
collaborated with demonstrated, it’s not rocket science!

Editions
One of our dilemmas was how to incite people to drink the
filthy canal water and partake emotionally in the experience
of the water’s transformation. ‘If it were in a bottle would
it please you more!’8 We drew on the bottled water product
of our market system to create limited edition artwork,
OrtaWater (2005–06): clean water, bottled at source from the
canals and available for the general public to take away.
Reflecting on ‘Operational Aesthetics’, our approach as
artists is to contribute proactively to the widening of our
understanding of the dilemmas ahead, and of course this
is impossible to do alone. We conduct interdisciplinary
workshops to engage industry partners with students from
art, architecture and design schools across Europe; among
the participants are graduates from the University of the Arts
London, Fabrica Italy, Design Academy Eindhoven, Willem
de Kooning Rotterdam, Delft University, Città dell Arte Italy.
The Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum workshop conducted
throughout the duration of the exhibition was instrumental in
establishing a ‘Water for Women’ think-tank. This was aimed
at improving access to clean water in the community of Bwaba
in Burkina Faso, which has no running water and only one
aquifer, situated 20 kilometres from the village.

Antarctica
As part of Jorge’s project for his representation at the 1995
Venice Biennale, we presented a draft proposal for the
Antarctica World Nationality and the proposal for a new
Utopia in a project that became know as Antarctic Village—
No Borders (2006–08). This idea focuses on the only unclaimed
landmass on earth, Antarctica, which is governed by the
Antarctic Treaty signed by twelve countries in 1959. This

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peace treaty was the first Arms Control agreement established

during the Cold War, and it declared this sixth continent as
a scientific preserve, establishing the freedom for scientific
investigation, an environmental protection zone and a ban on
all military activity. Antarctica is a unique, peaceful territory
to which we can all aspire, and the Antarctic Village represents
a place of welcome for those fleeing their countries to escape
political and social conflict or environmental catastrophes—
a physical embodiment of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘global village’.
In 2006 we began producing a temporary encampment
of over fifty dome-shaped dwellings. Reflecting qualities
of nomadic shelters and temporary campsites, the Dome
Dwelling components were assembled in our studio and
hand-stitched together by a traditional tent-maker, with sec-
tions of flags from countries around the world together with
extensions of clothes and gloves symbolising the multiplicity
and diversity of people. The flags and fragments of clothes are
silkscreen-printed with motifs proposing a new article for the
UN Declaration for Human Rights, Art 13.3 – No Borders. This
mobile village is a symbol of the plight of those struggling to
gain the freedom of movement.
Thanks to a commission by the End of the World Biennale
in Ushuaia in 2007, we were able to embark on an expedition
to Antarctica, to found the Antarctic Village. At the end of
the Austral summer during the months of February–March,
we were physically able to install the village in Antarctica,
travelling from Buenos Aires aboard the Hercules KC130
flight on an incredible journey. Aided by the logistical crew
and scientists stationed at the Marambio Antarctic Base, the
ephemeral installation of the first Antarctic Village was finally
realised in four locations across the continent after twelve
years of research and development.
On our return to Europe, we exhibited the dwellings in an
important touring survey show at the Hangar Biccoca spazio
d’arte in Milan, Italy, and the Galleria Continua Le Moulin
in Paris, and were given the opportunity to create many more
artworks in the Antarctica series.

Drop Parachutes and Life Line

Drop Parachutes (2008, ongoing) is an extension of the

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Survival Kits (1995). The pieces resemble mini drop-para-

chutes using fragments of the textiles left over from the domes.
As in many other works, we find an explicit reference to the
tools and objects of emergency rescue missions. In this case,
the model is the kind of parachute utilised by humanitarian
expeditions to rapidly distribute vital supplies.
The Life Line (2005, on-going) life jackets refer to both
physical-material rescue and symbolically to the spiritual
needs of man. Employing materials such as steel, textile,
silkscreen print and assemblage, the combination of found
utilitarian or personal objects suspended from handcrafted
steel frames reference the recovery of a lost social dimension,
such as affection or solidarity.

Antarctica World Passport

No country is complete without its identity document, and so
we have imagined the Antarctica World Passport that can be
delivered from the Passport Delivery Bureau (2008, ongoing).
The bureaux are constructed from the makeshift furniture and
supplies we collected along our journeys, and a passport is
distributed during special events that aim to raise awareness
of issues affecting a freer, international migration.
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article
13, currently states that the inherent dignity of every member
of the human race and their equal and inalienable rights
constitute the fundamentals of liberty, justice and peace in the
world. However, it does not mention the freedom to move, or
to cross borders. If we were to amend this article we could take
into consideration the rights of the hundreds of millions of
men and women hunted from their native lands by economic
ruin, war and political intimidation. The passport serves as a
testament to this reflection and here we find a new article to
perhaps be adopted one day:

Article 13.3: Everyone has the right to move freely and

circulate beyond the state borders to a territory of their
choice. No individual should have an inferior status to that
of capital, merchandise, communication or pollution that
traverse all borders.9

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From the days of the rudimentary analogue data-collection

that was employed for the first passport distribution at the
Hanger Bicocca, and thanks to an ongoing collaboration
with a visual arts program at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, we now have an online database where you can
log in to receive a passport in return for your adherence to
the basic principles of human rights. Each Antarctica World
Passport distributed is an extra citizen in the database and
an extra voice. The first edition of ten thousand passports is
printed, and with five thousand distributed so far we have a
huge potential to harness a powerful lobbying force.
Inspired by the motto of the End of the World Biennale,
‘Here, at the end of the world, is another world possible?’,
Antarctica is a driving force in this dream.

Amazonia
Our most recent body of work is Amazonia. This was com-
missioned by the contemporary art program at the Natural
History Museum in London to coincide with the International
Year of Biodiversity in 2010. As part of the research leading up
to the exhibition we embarked on a second expedition, this
time to the Peruvian Amazon. In terms of species diversity the
Amazonian rainforests surpass all other forests in the world. A
single hectare plot easily contains more than two hundred and
fifty tree species and fifteen hundred species of higher plants.
The region is home to about 2.5 million species of insects, tens
of thousands of plants, and some two thousand birds and
mammals.10
Organised by Cape Farewell, an artist-run, non-profit body
dedicated to communicating the effects of climate change
through arts–science collaborations, we travelled with a group
of artists and scientists from the Environmental Change
Institute (ECI) at Oxford University. This four-week journey
took us 4,500 metres up to the Glacier Salcantay, down to 3,500
metres to the Cloud Forest tree line and the science station
Wayqecha, down the Andes to 1,500 metres along the Trocha
Union, the infamous Inca path through the rainforest, to the
Amazon Basin to the tributary river, the Madre de Dios. We
navigated a 350 kilometre stretch of Amazon forest, stopping
in science stations in the Manú Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO

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world-heritage site where the highest rate of biodiversity in

the world is recorded, to our final departure from Puerto
Maldonado. As part of the research, we participated in various
scientific data-collection research programs and at the same
time recorded this beautiful oasis of diversity through pho-
tography, video and sound. The Manú region proved to be an
emotional and conceptual starting point for new work that we
hoped would restore our focus on the world around us—both
its beauty and its imperilled state. On our return to Paris, we
began imagining an installation for the exhibition comprising
2-D and 3-D work as well as audio and film.

Drawings
The drawings Amazonia Expedition Sketchbook are a reflection
on our first impressions of and responses to the journey. The
works on paper conceptualise the experience of the Amazon
and our understanding of the connections between us and the
natural environment. We are part of nature and the iconogra-
phy in the drawings playfully depicts the mutual dependency.
But in fact we are more dependent on nature than nature is on
us— our presence brings about nature’s decline and human
decline with it, unless we choose to change and find solutions
to these local and global problems by placing us within nature,
not outside it.

Sculpture
Life on our planet is in constant flux. There has been life on
earth for 3.5 billion years. Since then there have been five mass
extinctions, which caused changes on earth. Extinctions are
a natural part of life, but the current rate of loss is about one
hundred to a thousand times what it should be. This decline
in plants, insects, birds, amphibians, sea-life and other living
organisms has become known as the sixth mass extinction,
and has one distinguishing characteristic: it is caused by
humans.11
Using this as a starting point and drawing from the col-
laborations with researchers in the paleontology department
of the Natural History Museum, larger-than-life aluminium
sculptures, titled Bone Variation, are modelled on fossilised
dinosaur bones from the museum’s collection. Despite their

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colourful, iridescent finish, they remain relics of death, a

reminder of the many forms of life that have been shaped
through evolution, giving us a tangible sense of the contempo-
rary and of times past.
In contrast, the works Collection: Aepyornis, Gallimimus,
Allosaurus, Palaeomastodon are delicate sculptures made of
fragile porcelain casts from actual specimens in the Natural
History Museum collection and imprinted with tiny fragments
of life: the egg from the elephant bird Aepyornis, the limb
bones from dinosaurs Gallimimus and Allosaurus, and the
elephant ancestor Palaeomastodon. Bones are memento mori,
reminders of death, but the egg is birth, the start of life. The
flowers, butterflies and insects that populate these works point
to the cycle of life and the beauty and wealth of our planet.
There is an underlying melancholy of the end of time, and the
hot breath of extinction. Seeing ourselves as occupying a mo-
ment in time, through the reflection of the mirrored surface
of the glass plinths, allows us to question our arrogance over
nature and the need to work with it rather than against it.

Photography
The Manú Biosphere Reserve became an important visual
focus for the photographic installation Perpetual Amazonia
(MLC | one-metre-square | S12 48 21.6 W71 24 17.6). Partaking in
the scientific research in Manú, we mapped out a one-hectare
plot of rainforest and recorded the plant species, the height
and diameter of trees that are monitored for the purposes of
ecological and climate research. We captured in photography
every flower we encountered, enhancing the hidden details
such as a stamen, pistil, seed pod, crushed petal or minuscule
insect, and continued this photographic methodology during
our travels elsewhere, adding to an important database of
plant species from around the world. Back in the studio we
edited a series of images to which the GPS coordinates in
the title and on each photograph refer. We then divided the
hectare into ten thousand subplots, each marked with its plot
reference and UTM coordinate denoting the exact location of
the metre-square plot in the Amazon.
Each photograph is for sale and is accompanied by a
60-year certificate of moral ownership decreeing the rights

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to protect the plot and its biodiversity, to contribute to the

research and at the same time an obligation to pass on the
accumulated knowledge to a second generation. This artwork
poses many complex questions about ownership, indigenous
land rights and the common rights of this natural herit-
age — we know that land is being expropriated or compulsorily
purchased from indigenous populations for exploitation of
natural resources and we all know the effects of this daily
devastation. In the past 50 years, a third of the world’s rain-
forests have been felled and burned and the UN convention
on biological diversity states that in the last eight thousand
years about 45 per cent of the earth’s original forest cover has
disappeared, cleared mostly during the past century! Or as
E.O. Wilson so eloquently states: ‘Destroying rainforest for
economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook
a meal.’
As it was not possible for us to sell the photographs in the
Natural History Museum, we proposed a public engagement
project for the visitors who were invited to take a Perpetual
Amazonia poster and in exchange make a contribution to
preserve in perpetuity the metre-square plot it represents
and, in doing so, become a steward of the Amazon rainforest.
The posters are an extension of the notion of Relational
Aesthetics12 — they are freely acquired yet engage an active
participation; at the same time we prompt the audience to
reflect on how we value a hectare of forest, because the loss
of nature has a price! With over forty-one thousand visitors
to the NHM exhibition, over eight thousand posters were
distributed and we raised more than £4,000 for research in the
Amazon. Even we are surprised with the achievement—this
emulates the theory of Operational Aesthetics. Amazonia has
marked an important transition in our practice, which is not
only aesthetic. It has become a state of mind through which
we strive to revive our deep enjoyment of nature and to convey
its value to our daily lives and to our survival.

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Notes
1 N. Bourriaud and G. Williams eds, Lucy Orta (London: Phaidon Press, 2003).
2 P. Ardenne and D. Lebaillif eds, Art Fonction Sociale! (Paris: Cité de Refuge Paris,
1993).
3 Cercle de Minuit, France 2, France, 1996; Dazed & Confused, Channel 4, United
Kingdom, 1998.
4 P. Virilio and L. Orta eds, Refuge Wear (Paris: Editions Jean-Michel Place, 1996).
5 Ibid.
6 J. Entwistle, Refuge Wear and Nexus Architecture, exhibition catalogue (Havana:
9th Havana Biennale, 2006)
7 Phrase carved above the entrance of the Weiner Secession, founded in 1897 by
artists Klimt, Moser, Hoffmann, Olbrich, Kurzweil, Wagner and others.
8 Advertising slogan for bottled water in an Italian magazine, 2005.
9 See <http://antarcticaworldpassport.mit.edu>.
10 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change,
Copenhagen, 2009.
11 B. Arends ed., Amazonia, exhibition guide (London: Natural History Museum,
2011).
12 N. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002).

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