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Published as a part of Ruben Santiago´s exhibition "ID"
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ID > cut + paste editionruben santiago
passage souterraine_guerrilla galleryavenue de new york, 75016 paris
8/03/2007
"the space of the event should be of a passing by nature, a passage more than a place, and this requires a certain level of clandestinity"
Martí Perán
For the past years, Ruben Santiago has been collecting passports, identity documents and credit cards from robberies carried out by burglars in the streets of Barcelona. Between the years 2000 and 2003, robberies to tourists happened to a constant rhythm in the historic center of the city, where the author lived. The narrow, labyrinthine and badly lit streets of this zone created an ideal set for the fast flight of the assailants and offered innumerable points where to quickly empty the content of the stolen bags, get the cash and abandon the remainders. Ruben Santiago came to know well the location of this spots and he recovered a wide number of documents. For his project in the Passage Souterrain, 25 of these documents will travel to Paris camouflaged under the appearance of artistic objects. To accomplish this, they have been framed as art-works, signed and numbered by the author. They will be transported by a company specialized in shipments of works of art , being adjusted to all the usual bureaucratic requirements.By doing so, the artistic system becomes a screen to conceal the crime, for the possession of this material is a criminal activity by itself, and therefore, a punishable situation. It is a crime, on the other hand, held against "the State", since the documents do not belong to the individuals, but to the states of which they are citizens. Once in Paris, the documents will be despoiled of their "artistic camouflage", installed in the walls of the Passage Souterrain. Becoming available material for anyone who may wish to take them, they recover their criminal origin.
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