SCENARIO IN CONSTRUCTION,
Permanent public sound sculpture, Bogotá, Colombia
“Scenario in Construction”
2017
Permanent public sound sculpture
Roundabout at the intersection of
Calle 19 and Carrera 3, Bogotá, Colombia
“Scenario in Construction” is a sound-sculpture in the centre of city of Bogotá that keeps time, and that calls for a pause to stop and think.
Five cones and five open cubes are situated in the centre of a bustling roundabout in the university area of the city. In the last minute of every hour between 7am and 7pm for one minute a composition of bird calls can be heard. The sounds are arranged from the calls of 1,900 individual birds who transit and inhabit Colombian territory.
As the critic Adrian Searle describes in his accompanying text: “The birds will come. They are as regular as the clock. If you hang around long enough they will find you. No need to look for them or scatter bread on the pavement or spill a bag of seeds onto that patch of grass. Just listen for them. Even with all that traffic, the helicopters, the low flying aircraft and the sirens, the constant building work and the destruction.”
Completed in 2017, “Scenario in Construction” is the first public sound sculpture in the southern hemisphere. Maciá was awarded this commission to create a public sculpture for the inaugural Open-Air Museum international contest for public sculpture in the city of Bogotá in 2015.
Commissioned text on the work:
Adrian Searle, A Brief Interruption, 2015