THIS TASK IS BROUGHT TO YOU WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF MY RIDICULOUS PROTEST AGAINST VOTE-POINTS, SO IT WOULD BE REALLY A WASTE IF YOU CLICK THE VOTE BUTTON HERE. DIY-VOTES, HOWEVER, WILL BE DULY APPRECIATED.

The goal is to install play structures in public places. Let´s start with the play structures I used and how arguable (and flaggable) is the fact that I didn´t actually made them from scratch. You see, I dream about getting myself an acetylene torch and a pile of scrap metal one day, and I foresee that structures would arise from that, but I am not there yet (Lowteck is God). I thought hard about the "make" technicality, believe me, and in the end I decided to risk the flag, mostly because the spirit of the task was something that really really resonated with me, and this was something I really really wanted to do and was going to do anyway, regardless of its posteability.

In case you want to read why did I want to do this.
You see, Mexico City sorely suffers from a scarcity of public spaces and playgrounds. A monster city, filled with people where most spaces are designed for cars, a place where pedestrians barely get walking room, let alone play-friendly spaces. So I figured that installing playthings in public spaces would constitute a good start towards urban oasis seeds. Now, in the monster city the children get the worst deal, I think. Take for example the kids I see where I take my last bus to get to work: that's the bus stop for the governmental (therefore free) high-level pediatric hospital, where lots of poor sick children go everyday to be seen and treated. Many have to go there every week or month, say, to physical therapy, hemodialysis, orthopedics/prosthetic adjustments, you name it. And their day must go like this: wake up very early, get dressed, hair and teeth brushed FAST to run and get in the first of a series of crowded buses, get something to eat while walking hurriedly to stand in line at the hospital, wait wait wait get bored, get prodded, pinched, scolded at, stand in line some more to get an appointment for next time, get yelled at to hurry up so you can start the bus series backwards to finally get home at sundown. Ah, if there could only be a two minute break somewhere along the way to play, stretch, giggle: a slide, a swing, a sandbox..

So, regular classic playstructures were the kind I wanted and the kind I got. I didn´t design them nor did the soldering of metal pieces or the molding of plastic, just got them from the rooftop of a house where the kids had outgrown them. They were rusty and sun battered. But that´s what aluminum paint is for. Lovely stuff that.



It was the rainy season so it took a ridiculous long time to get them ready. The place where they were going to go was just right by the bus stop mentioned above, in a triangle of grass left by one of the loops of a big highway intersection. Which you have to walk by in your way to the hospital and which so happens to be a kind of conical hole ("topological depression"?) that isolates nicely the noise from traffic. Not a bad spot for building an urban oasis, with hammocks and all. Some day, I hope.



But then, a slight change of plans. MANGUM, a group of urban guerrilla artists/architects that I had been technically in touch with but had never actually met, invited me to a project to collectively create a playground of sorts: an urban installation called the Open Source House. They were transforming an anonymous centerwalk into a virtual house, a space that didn´t exist last month and was going to stop existing next month. It was perfect. I immediately told them I had a silver slide, and they approved of its inclusion. Sweet.

So my little attempt to public, concrete tasking got the chance to become a part of a solid collective local effort to shake the tree about the relationship between the monster city and its inhabitants, the domestic views of inside vs outside spaces, and the ownership of those. Play structures got me to a local crowd of creative doers. Good things happen when in tasking mode.

The House arose from stenciled floors and curtains/walls that defined the different rooms in a 1:1 scale. It had bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, everything. There are blank canvasses too for projecting images and encouraging public art. The video shows it all.

Installation of the slide was done on a Saturday: there was an electronic music party at the House that night. The next weekend there was a collective cookout and a domestic audio installation. Those guys rock the house.

So, back to the playstructures. The slide had made it to a great place but the sandbox languished in my terrace for another two weeks, my drive weakening: "I can just take it to the used stuff bazaar, is a silly idea anyway..". That depressing "what' s the point, really" feeling. But then I decided that it might be a silly one but it was my idea, and the slide had been too easy, inside a legal public art installation and all. So I frantically figured out the logistics and did it on Friday. I successfully installed the sandbox in the location originally planned. Solo, public, more-or-less-anarchotasking, during working hours: my favorite kind. It was hard work. And it was great. The whole story is in the pictures below and this youtube.

The House will be taken down at the end of October, and if the slide is still in place by then (this is after all, Mexico City) it´ll be moved to their originally planned and hopefully permanent location in the orphan triangular piece of grass by the hospital. To be reunited with the sandbox. I´ll update this task accordingly.