In the setting of a factory about to be demolished, we assembled an architectural arch through a simple didactic mechanism, replacing one of its voussoirs with a block of ice.

Then we listened to how in the distance we could hear the rehearsals for a Lenten procession, as if the participants were coming to accompany the sculptural action with their rite. At that precise moment the project emerged like a revelation, and we understood that everything that did not come to this Andalusian village by another means was there: music, theatricality, spirituality. The procession became the only known aesthetic language.

I then asked the wives of the workers, dressed as members of the religious brotherhood from the silent procession, to weave a spider’s web amidst the machinery. Afterwards, in the dark, I asked them to use scissors to cut the tensed woolen strands while the flashbulb and camera recorded the action. After that they left in silence.

We thus turned the factory that was disappearing into a monument by dignifying it and through the mechanisms of a familiar rite, building not only memory but also new meanings.

“The Social Spider”: A strange kind of spider, Texas native, that works in a community to build webs that actually engulf entire swaths of the forest.