Olga Olivera-Tabeni
 

18 m2. Old schools and the communal well of Llorenç del Penedès. Laurel Land, by Ramon Sicart, 2024.

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When Ramon showed me the old schools, it was a space in transformation, in a process of simultaneous destruction and construction, as artist Robert Smithson would say. Behind the fences, you could see —used to block the entrances— remnants of cabinet doors and classrooms, filled with the last traces of students' work.

Next to it, there were two containers full of rubble, with fragments of vinyl flooring or faux parquet, witnesses of a not-so-distant time when we were thrilled by such things, and how later they fell into obsolescence. There were also cork boards, black marble skirting with white veins from the 1950s, and a dark grey floor that seemed even older, a sandwich of overlapping layers.

At first, I didn’t want anything to do with the schools; I pushed them aside because they were related to that other job that earned me a living —the supposedly productive one— and which is not highly regarded in the art world. It didn’t seem like a suitable topic. I preferred the story of the monument to the fallen that was never built or the priest who was also a painter, whose work Ramon wanted to buy: a hunting scene —very much about power, incidentally, the same power that was displayed in the showcases of stuffed animals in the castle of Llorenç del Penedès. That painting with a supposed mountain backdrop that might have been Montmell or another place, or nothing at all, like a vague image generated by AI.

In any case, the school was there, and after giving it some thought —not much, honestly— it became clear: the artwork was the dusty rubble from the containers. Said and done, the next day we were already loading it into Ramon’s storage space.

Ramon told me he had attended that school and walked on those floors; his must have been the grey one.

On the other hand, there was the communal well, that shared, communal space —the word resonates beautifully— which, in fact, is how things should be. There seemed to be something hidden underground. Ramon said that, long ago, some stone troughs and benches had been buried there. This was something that had long interested me: all those layers we cannot see, hidden ones. And how these two stories suddenly intertwined: what we decide to bury or unearth and how deep we want to dig into history. By the way, behind the Torrent de Llorenç, half-hidden among weeds, are also the remains of an old washhouse.

From all this, I proposed two actions. First, to request that the council open up that communal space —together, as it should be— to discover what’s really (or not) underneath. But always keeping in mind that I might have to create a fictional representation or a historical reconstruction responding to our times and interests, as often happens. And as for the school, it’s about giving value to what we discard by turning it into a piece of art that ultimately returns to its original place in a journey of departure and return.

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*18 m2 are 3x3 m from the school and 3x3 m from the communal well.