YOU NAME IT, 2018
Post Ford Palace, Porto (Portugal)
4 white acrylic letters fixed on pre-existing signboard
During the 19th century, Porto became the industrial epicentre of Portugal.
To this day the city still is a thriving production pole, but infrastructures have moved away from the city center to other points of the metropolitan area, due to the change of paradigm in the relation between manufacturing and urban space.
Because of this, many architectural structures created during that initial period, now battered by decades of decay and disuse, have come to define the urban landscape of a city which, in recent years, has undergone an accelerated process of recapitalization focused on appealing to global tourism circuits.
One of these industrial buildings, surprisingly central and characteristic, is the Ford Palace, a former dealership and workshop of the north American company Ford Motors.
In 2018 this space was clandestinely rehabilitated for the presentation of a collective exhibition under the name of “Para Inglês ver”, a Portuguese expression that refers to those things that are done for appearances' sake.
The site-specific work that I presented for the occasion renamed the space as Post Ford Palace, by means of a simple physical intervention in the old synalectic boards still present in the abandoned factory.
I added a suffix. Only four letters.
That new name remains in use and has extended its meaning through actions on that site and other spaces and initiatives.
YOU NAME IT, 2018
Post Ford Palace, Porto (Portugal)
4 white acrylic letters fixed on pre-existing signboard
During the 19th century, Porto became the industrial epicentre of Portugal.
To this day the city still is a thriving production pole, but infrastructures have moved away from the city center to other points of the metropolitan area, due to the change of paradigm in the relation between manufacturing and urban space.
Because of this, many architectural structures created during that initial period, now battered by decades of decay and disuse, have come to define the urban landscape of a city which, in recent years, has undergone an accelerated process of recapitalization focused on appealing to global tourism circuits.
One of these industrial buildings, surprisingly central and characteristic, is the Ford Palace, a former dealership and workshop of the north American company Ford Motors.
In 2018 this space was clandestinely rehabilitated for the presentation of a collective exhibition under the name of “Para Inglês ver”, a Portuguese expression that refers to those things that are done for appearances' sake.
The site-specific work that I presented for the occasion renamed the space as Post Ford Palace, by means of a simple physical intervention in the old synalectic boards still present in the abandoned factory.
I added a suffix. Only four letters.
That new name remains in use and has extended its meaning through actions on that site and other spaces and initiatives.