Torre Emisora (Broadcast tower), LUCE (Fuente la Reina, Alto Mijares)

CONFLUENCES. Art interventions in the towns of Route 99

Following the N-223 road to the top of Barracas, we turn of on the CV-207 passing through various villages. We continue along another road that winds its way to the cemetery of Fuente la Reina. Finally, a few bends later, we arrive at our destination.

The landscape is mountainous with highly abundant and diverse vegetation. During the whole year, there are hardly fifty inhabitants here and its streets are quiet. From the viewpoint that greets us, we can see the extent of the village and note how some of the houses hang over the Barranco de la Graja.

Scarcely some fifty meters away, we come across a tall electricity tower made of concrete. This tower transforms energy and provides it to the village and neighboring inhabitants. One of the questions that came to me on seeing the tower was, when did electricity come to Fuente la Reina? Would the older people of the village remember the date?

These questions gave me the idea to transform the façade of the tower using words and sentences that related to the surroundings, with allusions to direct experiences or with a greater poetic power. A support, a tower that, apart from producing and transforming electricity, emits another type of energy, that of a message.

You can download more information on my intervention in Fuente de la Reina here.

LUCE (Valencia, 1989) investigates the associations created between art and surroundings, which is very present in their work on the duality between graffiti and writing. The work is based on experience, translated into subtle interventions on urban furniture and on pieces created from objects that are found during their wanderings.