contac_to
CONTACT_TO
Project: El Derrumbe
Members: María Cecilia Rossini, Estanislao Niklison, Federico Cairoli, Felicita Cersofio, Guido Hernández, Guillermo Pressiani, José Castellitti, Leonardo Batie, Mariano Tellechea, Martín Veizaga, Matías Dalla Costa, Nicolás Rodolfo Mantaras, Nicolás Mantaras, Victoria Borgarello
Year of Creation: 2016
Location: Santa Fe City, Argentina
Contact: [email protected]
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kolapsis?locale=es_LA
Description, concept, objectives
We named El Derrumbe (The Collapse) the first tactical urbanism experiment promoted by our collective. As a strategy, we proposed a responsible occupation of an unused private space. We secured a house on an urban lot slated for demolition, obtained the necessary permits, and over several months, prepared and adapted it to function as a public space. We hosted an open-access event in a privately owned location, blurring the boundary between the public and private spheres in which human life supposedly unfolds.
By demolishing the facade of the house, we envisioned creating a seamless continuation of the sidewalk and street—transforming it into an extension of public space. We broke down the limit so the house would subtly provoke passersby to come closer and participate, as they would on a sidewalk, street, or plaza. This first physical—and simultaneously symbolic—intervention was above all an operation of insertion: introducing into the urban fabric an object of otherness, a strange new territory, a space of indeterminate nature, somewhere between the public and the private.
Once transformed, the space assumed a public identity through social media: El Derrumbe acquired a profile, an image, and a call to action. We assumed the role of caretakers for this new territory, coordinating and supporting spontaneous interventions and activities from guests and self-organized participants.
Activities
The interventions on the building acknowledged its inevitable demise—its sentenced physical disappearance. It became necessary to imagine urbanism in reverse, as a countdown. El Derrumbe was an act of tactical occupation, inhabiting time before space.
We gave a gift to the community: a new territory. Through this public invitation, we promoted events via social media, inviting neighbors and citizens at large to come, participate, and contribute to a collective experience. It became a massive civic and artistic happening. For five intense weeks, we gave—and received—countless gifts.
El Derrumbe strengthened social ties and expanded existing networks, especially those organically related to alternative modes of space occupation. A logic of gifting emerged, where the act of intensely occupying a space became a distinctively generous way of establishing “contact_to” with neighbors—creating a large window on a street full of houses. A window toward the future. Toward a city where spatial management focuses on programmatic content, participatory traction, and collective processes in urban construction.
Difficulties
Despite our aspirations, we encountered difficulties scaling up the project due to the extensive time and resources required to jointly manage an artistic and cultural space. We envisioned a system to connect collectives willing to manage such spaces with property owners open to temporarily donating them in exchange for improvements.
The idea was to develop registries for both groups and facilitate negotiated occupations between interested parties. However, this required institutional support for access to data and permits, and broader cultural conviction about the potential of activating such spaces—rather than fear of a new and challenging kind of urban contract.
