VALENCIA.
The Ekklesia Pavilion is an installation made with cardboard tubes with a metallic appearance atop a mosaic made of 96,000 wooden pieces.
During the Fallas festival in Valencia held every year the ultimate goal of these installations is to be burned to celebrate the arrival of spring. In this context they built a structure entirely of cardboard and wood joints. The purpose was to investigate to what extent they could carry up this type of structure, and also to place in a traditional context a contemporary image to provoke the debate between tradition and modernity.
The installation represented a temple where citizens can meet and realize the power they have to change things through debate and confrontation of ideas. Hence the title Ekklesia, as this was the ancient Greek assembly that met once a year between elections to decide if someone was annoying for the polis, and if that was the case expel him from the city for ten years.
The facility was visitable and columns were screen printed with real political messages with critical messages of citizens, trying to highlight the emptiness of political discourse and the need to provide it with content to generate discussion and be owners of our future.
The stage on which the installation was settled was a mosaic of 96,000 pieces based on designs of Nolla Mosaic, a traditional Valencian ceramic that was lost in the middle of 20th century. On the one hand its function was highlight a lost heritage and to emphasize that any innovation in a traditional context should be based on a thorough knowledge of tradition.
At the same time they also wanted it to be a participatory project and therefore the completion of the mosaic was made in different workshops with children at risk of social exclusion and various neighborhood associations.
The Ekklesia Pavilion is a project of Pink Intruder.
Photos: Noel Arraiz.
