1. What made you choose art as a profession?
I don’t see architecture as an artistic profession, but a way of accessing society. A chance to make a physical and intellectual contribution to the environment we live in.
I don’t think trying to define ourselves with labels has ever been one of our strengths. We always approach projects with a critical spirit, making the work process more important than studying. It’s usually external agents who categorise our work.
Because of the satisfaction that comes from the action.
2. How would you define your work?
Stimulating – it shakes things up.
Our work is made up of links between very different projects.
We simply work; we leave definitions to those who use the pieces, which creates very interesting feedback. We only use definitions as provisional tools to try and understand things we don’t yet know and make progress towards new things.
3. What subjects are you interested in?
Ways of relating in modern-day society.
Having different kinds of commissions and projects on different scales helps fulfil the personal expectations of each member of the collective, so there’s constant learning.
The most interesting thing about working in a collective is that you inherit interests you’d never imagined and the team identity is constantly reshaped.
4. What resources – formal or otherwise – do you use in your work?
I don’t’ see us as having a defined catalogue of resources. I think every piece is created from external factors and the different contributions from the agents taking part.
Let’s call it a tool. You have to invent models of tools that enable the active, critical participation of each member of the collective in each project.
The only constant resource is trying to get to know and communicate ideas related to contemporary reality and that’s what we try to project.
5. What relationship does your work have with reality? What are your raw materials?
Our work is closely linked to reality. Based on the personal conviction that there are multiple realities, the idea is to be able to understand each of these multiple possibilities as best as possible. We start out by working to understand the real needs of the commission and bearing in mind that the solution to any request must always have an added value.
We spend 100% of our time building realities that are also connected to people and contexts outside the collective.
Our work material is exactly that, reality (and its multiple definitions).
6. What, according to you, is the point of art?
I believe in art that creates interaction; any other kind simply looks like another form of exhibitionism to me.
For me it’s a kind of leisure. We talk about the rest in person.
The point for the person doing it or the person using it? For exorcising, understanding, participating, destroying mental entropy, communicating, activating things and saying what’s “on the tip of your tongue”, although you didn’t realise before acting.
7. How do you hope the public will receive your work? What audience are you aiming at?
Any reaction except boredom.
At all audiences. Each project is specific and involves the whole collective.
There’s only one public and the aim is to spark people’s conscience, improve the quality of life and for users to think we’ve hit the nail on the head, that things are better like this. We’d like each user to get the same feeling as when they discover a particularly ingenious, well-designed product in a Decathlon store.
Showing that things only happen to be a certain way at that time; they’re not inherently like that.
8. What qualifications have you got? What do you value most from your time in education?
Architects.
What enabled us to work together at university from the start was saving time on subjects to spend time learning through our own projects. That situation hasn’t changed since.
A restless urge not to conform to established rules and to change our perspective on things are habits acquired at university that govern our work.
We’ve had a very informal, multidisciplinary education, essentially self-taught and at university, where you listen and work under supervision, like an apprenticeship for a trade on a large scale, which is a real gift in someone’s education.
9. How would you define your current professional situation? And in the future?
Slow expansion and personal growth.
Precarious and solid.
In the future we hope to continue building a solid space for collective work and export it through our projects, sharing it with the agents involved in each development.
10. Many artists say it’s difficult to make a living from their work; how do economic considerations affect you when it comes to work? Do you think this has a bearing on your work?
Economic considerations never affect our work or the effort put into our work, an approach which means that most of our work lacks the necessary finance.
We carry out our work professionally and comprehensively regardless of economic considerations. There is also an exciting, creative and stimulating economic project for managing a collective.
It has a bearing on our lives.
11. What do you look for or expect from your relationship with promoters and curators? What advantages and difficulties have you found with these relationships?
Freedom.
I think each relationship is new and exciting. We shouldn’t have to mould ourselves to the customer, but rather find common points for dialogue and understanding.
Curating is a project we like to get involved with like any other and a curator is an extra partner on the team to get interesting projects moving.
12. What do you think sets the arts scene in Madrid apart from elsewhere? What would you say are its pluses and minuses?
Collectiveness. The existence and increasing proliferation of different groups made up of many individuals making their contribution, which in most cases leads to exponential growth and quality of work.
For me, Madrid is one of the cutting-edge cities for creating new forms of collective work, as well as one of the most prolific. I miss the Madrid night culture; I think it helps create opportunities and we’re losing that.
On any arts scene, I think you need to assess, protect and strengthen art outside museums and galleries. Making the street a stage for integrating and interesting nonprofessionals is a challenge that has to be tackled here and now.