La Fabrica
The Factory is a project by Marisa Gonzalez for the Fundacion Telefonica. It was presented as part of PHOTOESPANA 2000. She produced this work with new media technologies.
The task of this web site is to insert (to open) an interactive strategy of participation and communication online.
Send images and texts of relevant factories or industrial architecture which are condemned, in the process of being destroyed, or abandoned; these materials can be related to your own experience, or related to your neighborhood, family or anything else.
All participants will be included in this project and their contributions will be accessible from this web page.
The artist, one of Spain's pioneers in the field of new media art, shows the dimension of a process which began in Chicago, when she was finishing her studies in the department of New Technologies directed by Sonia Sheridan in the Art Institute, during the 70's. Gonzalez has since continued her work in the exploration of new and experimental technology, having presented her work in both solo and group exhibitions.
She is now interested in the notion of architecture, and themes related to space.
The concept behind this project is based on an existing factory, a historic building characteristic of the regional industrial revolution in which it's inserted, and which, when ending its century-long existence, has ultimately been deprived of its function, because its installations and machinery are now out of date. These dilapidated buildings and the vision of the interiors and exteriors in ruins are the focus of this project. The pictoral frame of the photographic eye and the video camera captures the building's fractionated destruction, the slow disappearance of time which impels us to address its outlying territory and the landscape on which it resides. As a result, this serves as a kind of industrial archeology brought about by the factory's own dislocation in time and space.
With the use of new media technologies, the artist emphasizes the process-like character of the presented work. The recycling continues to be a preliminary procedure which comes before any new configuration or intervention, contributing to the overall artistic unity of Gonzalez's project.