2014. Oier Gil and Urtzi Sáez.
Site specific project for Getxoarte 2014 (Getxo, Bizkaia).
“It is better bricked up than habited” is a work that part of the desire to create a project from the state of economic crisis in which we are immersed. In this dire financial situation the citizenship is being subjected to inability to pay a home to live in. Faced with such painful picture, some people opt to occupy buildings and abandoned houses that in a short period of time are evicted by the city councils. After the evictions they brick up all possible access with cement for that they cannot be re-occupied. Before this, the streets, portals, low bridges and ATMs are converted into makeshift dormitories for the poor and homeless. Well, we understand that the government and the municipalities prefer that the houses are empty and the people sleeping on the streets to have a roof to sleep following the philosophy of “Better that inhabited walled”. Getxoarte, entity of the municipal government of Getxo, lets us a stand of its property to carry out an intervention during the period of the exhibition. We decided to brick up the entry of our space with cement blocks preventing the possibility of diagnostic tests were or visit him in the same manner as the government bricks up any access to the houses that housed families before being evicted. At the same time, a TV monitor shows images of various buildings with doors and windows cemented to which the intervention refers.
The project culminated with the action of the demolition of the wall the day of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9.