Explosive intersection of visionary artist and eccentric scientist, architect, musician and seasoned activist for the protection of the environment, Tomás Saraceno (Tucumán, 1973) was defined by The New York Times as "the incredible spider-man of the art world", a creator of poetic aerial landscapes with which he tries to reformulate our way of inhabiting the world. The last one is called Cloud Cities and is suspended in the air from the Torre Glòries viewpoint, 125 meters high and offering 360-degree views of Barcelona. A city made of "clouds" or "condensed drops of water" that levitate on a metal structure inspired by spider webs that you can climb playing Spider-Man (as long as you don't have vertigo at heights and has enough agility), take refuge in one of its 113 cells to talk, isolate or read some of the books that hang from the taut cables or simply contemplate the city.
Saraceno has conceived his Cloud Cities Barcelona as a meeting place, a playful agora ten meters above the ground that should help us imagine new forms of relationship with the atmosphere and other species. Prior to its inauguration –on Friday– in the presentation to the press of the gigantic aerial sculpture, the artist himself, perhaps prey to one of the beautiful cobwebs he collects, was in charge of denouncing the project's contradictions. He was annoyed with the air conditioning (clean CO2 air is one of his battlefields) and also with the rigidity of the press conference. He left the table and mingled with the journalists, inviting the managers of Merlín Properties, owners of the building designed by Jean Nouvel and Fermín Vázquez, and those of Mediapro Exhibitions, responsible for the musealization and management of the Mirador Torre Glòries, to imitate him .
“I am playing it, they are not going to invite me to anything else in my life,” he admitted after a monologue in which he questioned that children under 16 cannot access the facility. "How can it be? Imagine if there were 50 kids here, this would be crazy!” "You have to try to find possible solutions to things that seem impossible," he said at another time in relation to accessibility to the work due to the price of tickets (between 28 the general price and 24 euros with the Carnet Jove discount; the visit to the viewpoint without access to his work is reduced to between 14 and 18 euros). And he didn't hide his anger at the fact that the neighbors hadn't been invited. To compensate, he printed an invitation that he has been handing out to cafes and restaurants in the area. And here the press conference. The senior adviser of Merlin Properties, Javier Zarrabeitia, was in charge of responding: “We are not a public entity, but a private company listed on the stock exchange and our obligation is to make a profit. We are looking for ways to make prices more democratic, but from there to free admission...”.
The investment made amounts to 34 million euros. To adapt the new space, it has been necessary to eliminate the last floor, the 31st, reinforce the structure to place the 260 anchor points that hold the installation, convert a forklift into a high-speed elevator that reaches the top in 34 seconds or transform the floor -1 in an open space where the Barcelona Hyperviewpoint has been located.
There are no views here, but through the generative installations that are part of the exhibition conceived by José Luis de Vicente, the invisible Barcelona can be seen. A living organism in continuous evolution that changes in real time through data such as air quality, wind speed, the presence of satellites or the tweets sent by its inhabitants. And as a background, Sirena , live music created by Maria Arnal and John Talabot that constantly changes depending on the phases of the moon, the waves of the sea or the levels of particles in the air.
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