* FAD Award, category - Ephemeral Interventions (2020) 

* COAM Award, Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (2018)

Mad x Mad is a strategic “ghost urbanism” project designed to transform Veranos de la Villa into a distributed festival. Over the course of four editions (2016–2019), the VdV Festival traveled through Madrid’s twenty-one districts, bringing extraordinary programs to ordinary places. During the summer months, the festival spread across Madrid, bringing culture closer to its citizens. At the same time, it invited residents to explore different areas of the city. For their part, the artists experimented with new ways of sharing their work, adapting their pieces to different contexts and establishing a dialogue with the region. 

The project began with a mapping of the 21 districts in order to identify spaces of various kinds that could be adapted, through temporary interventions, to host different events. The process revealed a latent network of accessible meeting places and potential nomadic venues.

Thus, the festival mobilized the urban fabric, highlighting Madrid’s diverse historical, ordinary, social, artistic, material, and ecological heritage through five basic strategies:

• Un-blackboxing and re-blackboxing: On the one hand, de-blackboxing as a way to make the invisible visible, to reveal imperceptible spaces and infrastructures within the city. On the other hand, black-boxing as a way to move dramaturgical approaches and techniques from the performing arts from the stage (the theatrical black box) to the street.

• En-folding and Un-folding: Suspending the “instructions for use” of public spaces—that is, those assumptions that presuppose how shared environments work and that are inscribed or en-folded into the matter of the city. Questioning the generic condition of urban categories allows us to un-fold public spaces in unpredictable ways and explore other forms of encounter. In other words, to interrogate their norms, expand their cosmos, and nurture their potential—but from desire.

• Limiting and enabling: Interpreting regulations and habits as rules of the game within which to explore other forms of mediation. Interpreting limits not (only) as restrictive conditions but (also) as enabling, accessible, joyful, and celebratory frameworks.

•Caring for and intervening in: Understanding preservation as more than just a way to “freeze” heritage. Experience shows us that using the city is a good strategy for caring for the urban ecosystem and affirming its shared affections and imaginaries.

• Materializing and dematerializing: Exploring ways to radically transform urban landscapes through fleeting alterations that, in a short time, return to their usual state. Designing ephemeral tactics that dematerialize without the intention of remaining forever.

Mad x Mad invites us to consider other ways of engaging with the city. The transformative power of this project lays in its ability to appear and disappear, like a ghost. This allows us to explore the potential of spaces, speculate on what is possible, and rehearse—through experience—other ways of being together. That is its political valence. Mad x Mad is a set of strategies to activate the city’s public space through “ghost” interventions: fleeting situations that emerge in space, unfolding unexpected programs and then vanishing without leaving an apparent trace.

The power of a ghost lies in the possibility that it may reappear. The strategies of “ghost urbanism” invite citizens to experience familiar places in new ways… To visit new sites we didn’t know were there… To navigate the urban landscape with a fresh gaze… To suspend the routine within unrepeatable events… To enjoy the city’s heritage in unexpected situations… To rediscover a geography of public spaces through a unique map… To rethink what’s possible in familiar settings…

Mad x Mad is an “instruction manual” to exploring the power of shared space. The more withdrawn, the more present. The more fleeting, the more spectral. And, therefore, the greater the potential. VdV is a kind of collective urban choreography: an invitation to discover Madrid through action and its imaginaries. A strategy to multiply Madrid and transform public space into something floating, itinerant, phantom-like, and spectral.

* FAD Award, category - Ephemeral Interventions (2020) 

* COAM Award, Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (2018)

1. De/Re-blackboxing Madrid. Conceiving the artistic and scenic activities and proposals beyond the space of the theatrical back box.

Double movement: Unblackboxing the theatre to reblackbox the street.

2. Beyond downtown. A festival in motion that relies on the Madrid transport network to spread throughout Madrid.

A city of many cities.

3. Potential. Reimagining the present to envision the city in new ways.

Re-describing the city, caring for potential.

4. Unsuspected locations. Reaching unforeseen places, discovering the city in new ways, accessing different forms of experience.

A heritage to be discovered.

5. Dialogues and experiences. Among heritage, urban agents, cultural initiatives, guest artists, the multidisciplinary team, citizens, etc.

Possible content, unique locations.

6. Active citizenship. Avoiding routine to experiment the city in other ways.

Culture in motion, curious citizens.

7. Zoom in, zoom out. Engaging with the city’s polycentric nature.

Far and close.

8. Feedback. Each edition includes a critical evaluation to make enhancements to upcoming editions.

Learning from the processes.

9. Urban choreography. An invitation to explore Madrid and to know the 21 districts of the city, through culture.

A citizen body in motion.

* FAD Award, category - Ephemeral Interventions (2020) 

* COAM Award, Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (2018)

• Architects:
• elii - Uriel Fogué + Eva Gil + Carlos Palacios

• Architect coordinating the team:
• elii – Lucía Fernández

• Collaborators:
• elii - Ana López, Raquel García, Marta Vaquero 

• VdV Artistic Director:
• Maral Kekejian

• VdV Artistic Coordinator:
• María Ordás

• VdV Artistic Team: 
• Pedro Portellano, Maxi Gilbert, Susana Jiménez, Javier Benedicto and elii

• VDV Production Team: 
• Madrid Destino

• Promoter: 
• Ayuntamiento de Madrid

• Photography: 
• Estudio Perplejo (Lukasz Michalak)

• Video:
• David Palomino and José María Durán (production) + Miguel Ezequiel Tomás and Aider Eder Palacios (camera operators).

• Graphic campaign 2019: 
• Crisitina Daura

• Surface area:
• 69.202,73Ha.

• Date: 
• 28 de junio  – 1 de septiembre de 2019

• Venue:
• Madrid