Don’t be fooled by the perfect circular shape of this glowing installation in Bilbao. A closer look reveals that the seemingly solid plane is actually made from thousands of illuminated notebooks. Created by anonymous artist collective Luzinterruptus, this curious installation, called Denboran Zehar, uses community interaction to rethink recycled materials.

Commissioned by Azkuna Zentroa, Luzinterruptus crafted Denboran Zehar for the 10th anniversary of Gutun Zuria (Bilbao Internacional Literature Festival) in April 2017. In light of the anniversary, the designers wanted to pay homage to the themes of creation and time.

“To this end, we looked for a way to make the traces left by time visible over a material associated with creation,” wrote the designers. We thought of those basic white paper notebooks so feared by artists when they are blank, and so beloved when they have been satisfactorily used, even becoming true objects of devotion despite their modest appearance. Within the alarming “anti-aging” context where we are currently immersed, we thought it would be interesting to give life to this idea.”

As with most of Luzinterruptus’ projects, recycled materials were primarily used. The artists collected 5,000 recycled paper notebooks and asked the Bilbao community to leave anonymous writings and drawings on the pages. The thousands of notebooks were then individually equipped with lights and arranged in a large perfect circle on Azkuna Zentroa’s outdoor terrace.

Luzinterruptus exposed the ephemeral installation to the elements for 25 days, allowing time and weather to deteriorate the notebooks. “These interventions surely suffered severe mutations and both, the colors and the materials, eventually blended, blurring the messages so, to our surprise, everything ended up acquiring a strange homogeneity within the purest eclecticism.” On the last day of the installation, Luzinterruptus moved the artwork indoors and gifted the illuminated notebooks to visitors.

Article from inhabitat.com

by Lucy Wang