Aparcats! — eleven cars, eleven live art interventions in Barcelona
Barcelona
19.10.2015
Aparcats! (“Parked!”) is part of Sustainable and Safe Mobility Week and will be one of the activities planned for 17 October, Car-Free Day, in Barcelona.
It consists of eleven simultaneous collaborative artistic interventions at eleven points across the city. In each of Barcelona’s districts, a car will be blocking one of the neighbourhood’s busiest streets. Each car will become an improvised stage where you can enjoy one or several proposals ranging from visual arts to performance, theatre, music, dance and illustration.
Aparcats! is about the extraordinary stories that can happen when a car is stopped… It starts like any Saturday: a car comes to a stop in the middle of the city and a Russian family climbs out, flustered; the singer of a folk band starts belting out the first notes of the single from their latest album while their co-pilot backs them up on maracas; two strangers have their first date inside a car; a dance company turns the road into a funk dancefloor…
Cars that stop being cars, that dress themselves in colours and words, that become experiences, that talk, that hide. Discover all the Aparcats! cars while wandering around Barcelona.
In the video, a report on Barcelona's Car-Free Day, with the Aparcats project: a car was placed across a street in each district, and those vehicles became the stage for artistic interventions. Residents, the city government and a taxi driver's complaint all feature.
The video in text (abridged) (translated from Catalan)1 min 54 s
The reportThis is one of the main arteries of the city centre, and today it has looked very different from usual: not a car in sight, only buses. Exhaust fumes have vanished from at least one street in every district.
In Poblenou the closure was extended to a whole block and residents were able to say what the neighbourhood's mobility problems are. In Gràcia, a street art showcase; while in Sants-Montjuïc the space went to sport and to young people, with a good turnout.
The organisersIt has gone quite well, honestly. People were quite surprised that something was happening in every district: in each neighbourhood there was a street with activities. And I think people appreciated it.
The reportOne of the projects that drew the most looks through the day is this one: it is called Aparcats (Parked). A car was placed across a street in each district, and those vehicles became the stage for artistic interventions.
The city governmentWe have to make a serious, credible commitment, beyond speeches, to start looking for concrete solutions. That means backing public transport, extending the cycle lane network, speeding up the rollout of the orthogonal bus network and connecting the tram, which is also under way.
Local residentsDoing it once a month, perhaps, or something like that. People enjoy the street.
A taxi driverWhat they have caused today is utter chaos, and the public service ending up harming the citizens of Barcelona —who are also the people who walk, or who use a public service, or me, who am here working as a taxi driver.
The reportThe key to getting around the city today without losing your temper has been public transport, although 23 bus routes had to be diverted. The metro ran normally.
Abridged version: direct quotes are kept; repetitions, overlapping speech and passages unrelated to the project are left out.
