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FREELOAD
DENNIS ADAMS
Naumon, La Biennale di
Venezia, September 9 – 11, 2004
Barcelona Pavilion, September 8 – October 30, 2004
The American artist Dennis Adams presents Freeload,
an installation created exclusively for the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion
on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of its construction.
Adams has produced a portable replica of one of the eight mirrored
cruciform columns that support the Pavilion.
By installing a miniature video camera at each of its ends, the
artist has transformed the column into a bi-directional camera designed
to record forward and rear shots of a procession through La Mina,
a social housing project on the outskirts of Barcelona.
The route of the procession was determined by the Plataforma d’Entitats
i Veïns de La Mina, a group of community representatives, and
the column was carried on the shoulders of two members from the
local Greco-Roman wrestling club.
The procession began at the boundary between the Forum and La Mina
and continued through the neighbourhood, terminating at the Rambla
Camarón, the symbolic centre of the community.
Returned to the Pavilion and installed in front of the small pool
under the silent watch of Georg Kolbe’s sculpture, the column/camera
is supported horizontally on two video monitors that display the
recorded footage of its journey.
Adams selected La Mina for its location within Sant Adrià
de Besòs, the town where the workers lived that constructed
the International Exposition of 1929, including Mies’ original
Pavilion. For the artist, both the Pavilion and La Mina are architectural
icons that bracket the history of Modernism, framing both its utopian
promise and social reality.
Since the late 1970s, Dennis Adams’ works have framed Blindzones
within public space and architecture. In relation to Freeload, Adams
explains, 'by exempting Mies’ column from its function as
a vertical support, I envisioned the release of all that compression
as a kind of extension. Turned horizontally, it becomes a sight
line free to probe the physical and symbolic limits of the Pavilion.'
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Production by:
Elke Lehmann, Cameras
Zac Poff, Assistant to the artist and editing
Diane Gray, Curator
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