Synopsis


Every society grows on its sewers. Every system tries to marginalize that which it abhors, that which frightens it and which grows unchecked from the outside. Drugs, poverty and delinquency have been dormant diseases in the life of a neighborhood born of hundreds of shantytowns. Built with the hands of its neighbors, hated and loved by those who live it every day and by those who suffer it, the streets of Orcasur are submerged in light and shadow.

The feeling that floods the outsiders is that of abandonment: closed shops, overflowing garbage containers and people walking aimlessly, without schedules, without a clock.. It is the routine of emptiness, of lost mornings and afternoons smoking in the shade. A daily deja vu for those who face each day as the previous one. Then phobias and anger are born in the face of what belongs to them but does not arrive.

‘This is how waiting is born’.




Technical Data  Original title: Aquellos Que Esperan. Vol.01 ‘Así nace la espera’
Project: Aquellos Que Esperan
Shooting Place: Orcasur, Madrid. Spain
Production Co.: The Kids Are Right
Original Language: Spanish


Approach


Aquellos Que Esperan (“Those Who Wait”) is a multi-format, collective and constantly growing project that, since October 2012, documents life in different suburbs that have suffered a great industrial impact during the 1950s and 1960s.

The project is characterized by not discarding any form of creation. Any kind of text, image (whether photographic, video or pictorial), self-produced or archival, as well as various forms of expression are treated as documents to add a new layer of reading and information. Likewise, the reception and reinterpretation of image culture and amateur photography as a common language is key to the development of this critical and collaborative project.

The main objective is to document what does not happen, the non-conflict inherited by measures massively applied in an international territory. In order to open the doors in a chaotic and non-linear way, we will map an urban space whose urban and architectural configuration affects the people who live in it. To do so, we seek to break with the concept of suburbia as a place where it is impossible to feel or identify oneself, as a space of dehumanization in social relations.

In contrast, a participatory communication is generated in order to portray the community from the perspective of those who live there, seeking the meeting point between the inhabitants and the cultural producers.

Finally, the randomness of the formal approach of this project is what allows us to generate a fieldwork composed of numerous micro-narratives in order to raise questions rather than draw conclusions. To do so, we try to become part of these spaces, in the face of the indifference produced by this new hopelessness, in the face of the passivity of waiting.


Awards & Grants


Fotopres
Magnum Photos’ Mentorship: Peter Marlow, Peter van Agtmael & Mark Power
Descubrimientos PhotoEspaña
PhotoEspaña - Book of the year. Shortlist
Les Rencontres d´Arles - Author Book Award. Shortlist
Artists in residence at the Circulation(s)
Carte blanche. Exhibition Le CentQuatre-Paris
Acción Cultural Española. Ministerio Español de Educación, Cultura y Deporte

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