casa jazmin

jasmine house \ casa jazmin

Blanca, Spain \ Blanca, Espana

2023

Associated with: AADK Espana

Location: Blanca, Murcia, Spain
Type: installation, design, light, sound, labyrinth, multi-sensory, place-making, haptics, landscape, site specific, re-animation

Tags: body, territory, spatiality, forensic reconstruction,

hyper-contextual investigation and response

This project transforms the typology of a dilapidating, rural house, situated in the rugged hillscape of Southern Spain, by altering their perception and inviting viewers to consider the architecture as actively shaping the artwork. By layering in light and anachronistic sound installations, the centuries old house was recontextualized into a space that itself becomes the object of exhibition. This approach challenges traditional notions of display, where the space is merely a neutral backdrop for the artwork. Instead, the interventions highlight the relationship of the architectural elements with the landscape and the viewer’s experience.

What makes a house a home?

The type of places which are deeply connected to their environment, grounded and inward looking, sometimes lack authorship. But they never fail to invoke a relentless imagery/memory of how life would have unfolded in them - of how construction was layered in by the people who built and lived in it, gradually over decades, perhaps even over generations.
On one hand, we have the subjective memory of a place, maybe a pleasant time in our childhood, perhaps a thick cloud of nostalgia - when a sense of safety was synonymous with leisure and play. Contrastingly, there is the objective experience of a nowness, being present in this very moment, often by circumstance, other times by choice.

Imagine a time when this quaint settlement was still a sanctuary for those fleeing the Reconquista wars in the Iberian Peninsula. Circling back to the age-old story of Casa Jazmin, built by faceless, rugged hands who, quite possibly, worked as farmers in the orange and lemon orchards, somewhere in the vast Ricote

Valley. How does one decode this humble relationship with the ancient landscape, both for Casa Jazmín and its occupant/s?

We start with a LiDAR scan of the Casa. It floats above in digital space, as an interactive memory embedded on-screen. This digital ghost imbues all the distortions, glitches and biases inherent to human recall. Melting in some places, fusing in others, it never quiet achieves full objectivity of representation.
However, from these exact gaps and flaws, emerge some potent questions. One can’t help but ponder upon how Casa Jazmin began to materialise here. Dating back to the Roman and Moorish traces of el Ricote, which network of ancient roads saw its building materials mobilised through? Despite the passage of time, which modes of awareness does the place still spark?
Inspired thus, the Casa’s silence is punctuated only by sounds specific to its erstwhile spatial program - a carefree laughter of children, the cackle of poultry, and the crackling intimacy of its fireplace on cold winter nights. By illuminating a pathway through the house with a riot of lights, moments of magical suspense and repose are laid out. Here and there, the imagination runs wild, populating its kaleidoscopic atmosphere with all kinds of scenarios, anachronistic but immersive.

Stepping in, we inhabit an odd world, familiar yet enchanted. Meandering through its small doors, stairs, coops and terraces, their tightness nudges us into shrinking ever so slightly, evoking a keen awareness of our own physicality. As we realise our place within the house, it realises its nested relation within the towering hills, their ruggedness awash with sanguine light. What makes a house a home is always in said backdrop, relegated below our threshold of consciousness - subliminal.