Sticky Airs by C+arquitectos

Description of the project by C+ arquitectos

What can be the space to discuss The Dark Side of the Party through art installations, performances and round-tables? The dark side of the party has to do with ephemeral effects, with what is left outside the party, with the hierarchies and rejections enacted and with the sordid recognition of the space when the party is over and the lights are turned on. To build that space Sticky Airs chooses a material that responds to these characteristics and which is at the same part and parcel of parties: smoke. Because smoke is ephemeral, ever-changing, pure effect. And yet, it is used not only as an effect producer, but as the only material to define and qualify the space for the Dark Side of The Party, exploring and exploiting its capacities.

So we “built” with water vapor, glycerines, solid carbon dioxide, hot water, high and low temperatures and ventilators to achieve the biggest amount of effects possible, to define temporary areas, diffused walls, floating floors, freshness curtains, visibility barriers to host and intensify the artistic installations and performances.

The stage is covered with an immense “cosmopolitical sheet”, a folded cloth that contains the smoke and at the same tame emits water vapor to leverage visibility and reduce temperature. It works as a celestial dome which appears and disappears depending on smoke density, and whose pattern contains cosmopolitical components of the air like pollen particles, airplanes or virus, as if it were a visualization of the atmospheres created with the smoke.

The objective of Sticky airs is to work with the politics of visibility that perform, appropriate or redistribute some of the conditions of the dark side of the party. For instance: if in traditional exhibition spaces circulation is the empty space of visibility, here it is inverted and becomes a thick space of uncertainty, disorientation and surprise. This sticky space also blurs conditions of representation of visitors, diluting their age, gender or ethnicity. In regards to art installations, the variability of smoke gusts helps to trace different narratives between pieces, which are also perceived differently depending on smoke density. 

Working with water and smoke has also architectural implications that we recognized during the experimental design and construction process of the installation. It is a process that operates without defining shapes or limits. In fact, what is solid are not the limits but the interior space (making visible Sloterdijk´s atmospheres), qualified by emptying it with air. Walls are substituted by distributed infrastructures that solve the technical requirements of the space such as orientation, evacuation or accessibility with domestic materials like photoluminiscent stickers, ventilators or ladders.

Sticky Airs is then an experiment that explores blurriness, change and uncertainty, conditioning our experiences, sticking to our bodies and transforming our socialising practices, and disappears when the lights are turned off.