Prismarium

Ignacio Hornillos and Javier F. Contreras

Pavilion in Plaza Escuelas Trevijano

Prismarium is a crystallography of prisms that organize the space of the square and establish an iconic relationship with the changing images of its perimeter, activated at every moment by the residents and visitors of the Concéntrico Festival.

When in 1929 René Magritte presented the work Ceci n’est pas une pipe, he was essentially expressing, in addition to the fascination for the seduction of the images, the intermediary role of art between the world and the observer. Aware that between reality and representation there can be interference, he declares this manifesto as obvious as it is provocative: images of things are not things, but images of them, so they do not need to respect all its rules.

In many ways, contemporary information is an image of Magritte. Based on the fact that it is constructed as a mixture of statism and change, of objectivity and subjectivity, Prismarium combines periscope and camera obscura projection mechanisms that mix Logroño images in real time with static information about the activities, tours and programmes of the Concéntrico Festival. A landscape of illusions is thus generated, a pavilion whose information is inhabited in its perimeter, from different articulated circles and points of view that transform the whole of the square. Each of the pavilion’s arms is oriented towards the enclaves proposed by the festival, while inside the pavilion what happens when it continues in its respective directions is explained. Exhibitions, routes and collective geographies of Logroño are mixed with games of mirrors, reflections and views of the square, thus creating an interactive element that is inserted into the city while allowing its collective appropriation.