Confined Buenos Aires
by María del Socorro Bairés

SHIFTA, Barcelona, Spain
Graduation year: 2022

portfolio shortlisted call 'BLURRING THE LINES 2022', 2022

“In the slow motion in which it has forced us to live, the Pandemic has revealed never-before-seen frames of the movie of our lives; many times they contained the face of the murderer, or the ascending of the angel. And by imposing immobility on us, it has opened fourth dimensions that had been abandoned.” What we were looking for / Alessandro Baricco. In 2020, suddenly, the pandemic and confinement impacted globally. Cities (and life) were held in suspense, causing unprecedented tension between inner space and the outer world. Confined Buenos Aires aims to graph, metaforically over the walls of the city, the emotional fluctuation that the longest compulsory confinement in the world meant. It pursues to reflect through holes that seek - and do not always find - the doses of oxygen necessary to survive 233 uninterrupted days of isolation. The hole – or the cut – is presented as an airway, an escape route. It pierces from within the dense veil of matter, making its way to the uncertainty of the outside. Confined Buenos Aires is an attempt of reunion with the well-known city that, facing the impossible, reveals itself as a new world... a fragmented experience. The exit is in our minds… like a book, or a stationary journey. The project is an invitation to celebrate the pulsion for life of those who, in spite of the context, did not stop looking for some way of freedom.


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