Setting up

Day 1

8:00 am : We have arranged to meet at the front side of the Museum of Subaquatic Archaeology with the engineer from the Harbour Authority who will help with the sea containers - When I arrived at the site, Rosa was already there chatting with the guy who operates the crane - eventually the trucks appeared from behind the building...

It was very bright already and we started preparing everything for the setting up - Angel will directed the crane's staff to gently locate the first sea container - He asked me where the longest container would go and I said that the door should face West. The idea was to set two sea containers facing each other; one was of 12 meters long and the other 6 meters.

11:30 am : The technicians from the council came to start installing power inside the sea containers. We worked out the best way to install power without leaving the wires too visible. Eventually we decided to buried them under the sand.

Mucho + Mayo' 08 [ Young Talents Festival ]

In November 2007 I was approached by the coordinator of the festival, Patricio Hernandez, who wanted to invite me to be part of the festival in 2008. As the Festival is focused on young audiences and coordinated by young people, I told him that I would like to propose a project which would look at those "other" youth, who remain invisible to us; young men who left they country in search for a better life.

* * *

Here is the initial proposal:

Every day thousands of people gather on the north african beaches awaiting an opportunity to board a boat that can take them to Spain. "fléchés sans corps" is a multimedia installation that explores a subject so called “the illegal immigration”. it suggests a reflection over a tragic reality of all these people, mostly young ones who perish in their attempts to cross the sea and escape poverty, war and injustice. "fléchés sans corps" is inspired by a poem from the Persian writer, Jalal al-Din Rumi.

"The decision to leave tears me apart
it burns when i remember all my loved ones
although i have left, my heart is still back there,
shrunk
it’s hard to accept the emptiness caused by its absence
I want to find that heart shrunk by separation,
to speak of its pain and its longing everyone
who has left their homeland yearns for the moment of reunion".

In 1989, when I was living in Valencia, I met a young black guy who asked me in English for an address; I didn't know the place but we started talking about the city and so. Frank told me that he had left his country, Nigeria and come to Spain as was they called "illegal" immigrant. We became friends and Frank would explained later how he was forced to leave his family farm after his family was persecuted by police. And how this happened? Because his father had complained against Shell an oil and gas company which had destroyed his land. That year,
Frank's dad was murdered and he, his mother and brother had to leave for Senegal, where would remain until Frank decided to travel to Spain.

Like Frank, many other young men have been forced to leave their homeland and found themselves in a journey which for many of them will finish drowning in the sea. Since 1989, thousand of them have died or disappeared. We will never be able to recover their bodies...
perhaps their families will never know their husband, brother, son...is not longer alive.

Introduction

'Flêches Sans Corps (Arrows Without Bodies)' is an environmental sound/video installation incorporating the key issues pertaining to the subject of the so-called 'illegal' immigration, combining practices and techniques from artistic areas ranging from performance, video and sound, and installation. This project has brought together the Spanish London-based artist Juan delGado and a group of artists from Spain, Iran, Turkey and Morocco with a genuine personal interest in the subject.

Our aim was to establish new ways of collaboration by providing the opportunity to exchange ideas and art practices, which would serve to enhance the dialogue amongst the participant artists and would improve the quality and originality of their future work. To date, the work we have produced investigates that deepest part of self which contends with the trauma of displacement.

Since 1997, Juan delGado has produced a body of work combining video, photography and installation including the photographic series The Wounded Image(1997-2002) in which he explored the concept of traumatic experiences as an attempt to release a swirling vortex of his own fears and anxieties. Set mostly in domestic scenarios and borrowing language from films and photojournalism he created a narrative, a story drawn upon real experiences of violence, child abuse and racism. This work was selected by the John Kobal Photographic Awards and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.

In 2001, he directed and co-produced a digital video installation entitled don't look under the bed. Based on a real experience this work portrayed issues related to intolerance, and social exclusion. He also developed a video performance entitled Who are you entertaining to? as part of the Culture Lab programme 2002 and in collaboration with Vivid Media Centre, Birmingham. Here, Juan continues his inquiry about cruelty and trauma while also questioning his role - social/political - as an artist.