In situ. Elisabeth McLendon

Advertising posters and protest paintings line the wall that separates San Sebastian from the Cantabrian Sea at the intersection of Solar del Kursaal and Avenida de la Zurriola. The existing posters and graffiti are a suitable context to place the information already published about the projects planned by the city for this location. This information is compiled to be placed in situ (...) This project has been conceived to inform residents, tourists and urban planners about the different levels of knowledge of the site and the different responses to the projects presented for this site that overlooks the sea and which has been empty for 22 years. (...)

The Porte-Parole. Krysztof Wodiczko

The Porte-Parole is an instrument for immigrants. A small video monitor is installed in the central part of the instrument that covers the entire mouth like a gag, with a small speaker on each side. The monitor "replaces" the actual speech of the immigrant with the image of his own lips and the sound of his voice, previously recorded. The high resolution of the liquid crystal screen attracts the viewer's attention, and its small size forces the viewer to come closer. Thus the distance between the immigrant and his interlocutors-immigrants or others like them decreases physically and, hopefully, psychologically as well. (...)

San Sebastian City Hall. Hieke Pars

At the beginning of the century, San Sebastian was world famous as a summer resort for the aristocracy. Its fame was due, in part, to its casino. In 1947, the casino became the City Hall and the city councilors settled in this monumental complex. (...) The architecture of the City Hall instills respect, authority and prestige. Its location in the city and its architecture emphasize the distance between the political and administrative center and the daily problems of the citizens. (...)

Pilar, the receptionist, works in the most representative area of the town hall. This area is also less accessible to the public. On this border between public and private place, she is visibly present at her post. (...)

For two nights, when the building is silent and oblivious to its daily functions, Pilar, the receptionist, becomes visible through one of the windows. From the inside to the outside, I project a common face, which becomes public.

Another scale in Urban Interventions. Alain Charre

The French situation on the subject was obviously conditioned for a decade, from 1983 to 1993, by a policy of efforts in the area of Institutional Assignments La Commande Publique. In the age of democracies, these commissions fulfill an educational function, aimed at promoting the dissemination of culture to the greatest possible number of people. (...) What the French State had decided to undertake during the 1980s - in a far-reaching attempt - was to familiarize the general public with the restricted art of galleries and museums. (...) This is not a fashion, but a real movement of substance, cultural, which attracts the young generations for whom politics is not a matter of ideological discrepancies, but a civic practice of urban matter in its own metabolism. (...) With this perspective of the city works the Institute for Art and the City which has forcibly become a necessary pole of reflection within the world's megalopolis.

(Excerpts from the catalog, ed. Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa, Donostia-San Sebastián, 1995).