El cielo era más claro en aquellos días
Rosa Casado and Mike Brookes

For ten days the artists Rosa Casado and Mike Brookes will dismantle each and every part of a second-hand car, a meticulous action of separation and classification of the materials that make up the vehicle in order to think about the residual and the material connectivity of distant places. During the course of these ten days, five different performances will propose diverse perspectives and a different scale of relation with the world through this object.


Frequently found in the most avant-garde international circuits for more than a decade now, Rosa Casado and Mike Brookes are two multidisciplinary artists who, through action, generate a proposal that involves reflection, creation and critique regarding the spaces and places we travel through, occupy and inhabit. They have been working together since 2000 and have produced more than a dozen projects that have been presented in Europe, America, Australia and Asia. Their work addresses conceptualism from a pragmatic point of view and they are interested in literality and the obvious as a resource for doing.

During their residency in Naves Matadero they have created El cielo era más claro en aquellos días, a project that begins with a small gesture: looking upwards. A slight inclination of the neck to lift up our gaze, to contemplate the sky and consider what lies beyond our horizon.

For ten days, in five different performance art pieces, they will dismantle each and every part of a second-hand car, a meticulous action of separation and classification of the materials that make up the vehicle.

“These materials, which come from many different geographical locations, some of them very far away, and which are concentrated in this object through processes that exceed the time and space of natural geological processes, make the car a geophysically improbable place.
Through the gradual dismantling of the car, and considering human activity as a 'force of nature', an extraordinary and explosive force, every night we will reflect on different aspects of the planetary and cosmic dynamics of which we are all a part: from how our activity generates a constant cloud of small particles that rises densely towards the sky and moves through the air around the Earth, to how we are experiencing the sixth mass extinction of the planet. If the dinosaurs disappeared during the fifth mass extinction due to the impact of an asteroid, then we want to start considering that now, in this new era of the accelerated disappearance of life forms, we are the asteroid”, the artists explain.

Episode 1 [Sept 13] begins with the final journey of one of the 1 billion cars estimated to be currently driving around the streets of the world.

Episode 2 [Sept 14] looks up at the thin layer of atmosphere that surrounds the planet, and at how the things it picks up and blows around us define what we see.

Episode 3 [Sept 20] imagines the human population as a force of nature, and the scale of geological forces and events that might begin to mirror our own.

Episode 4 [Sept 21] follows the dust that rises and settles from everything we do, and the remnants we all just pass on to our neighbours, and never escape.

Episode 5 [Sept 22] collects everything that we might find a new use or purpose for, tries to give it away, and takes a look at what is left.

Rosa Casado holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Glasgow and participates in various research and educational programmes and projects. Mike Brookes holds a PhD and is Artist-Researcher at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales, United Kingdom. His background lies in the plastic arts and his work crosses different media, such as painting, drawing, performance art, and text, among others. He has won several awards as a designer and stage director and his work is a benchmark in the field of performance art and contemporary performing arts in the UK.


Team: Rosa Casado, Mike Brookes, Óscar G. Villegas, Roberto Castro Flores, Ainhoa Hernández Escudero, María Solanes, Luminita Moisii, Mirela Ivan, Luciana Pereyra, David Benito and other artists
Production Terreno Común, an initiative of the Siemens Stiftung Foundation in a co-production with Naves Matadero - International Living Arts Centre and NAVE (Chile)
With the support of: Wales Arts International, The British Council in Chile and the Spanish Cultural Center in Chile
With the generous collaboration of: SE VENDE Mobile Platform of Contemporary Art Group (Chile), ESPAI COLONA (Chile) and Comarca Contuy (Chile)


13, 14, 20, 21 y 22 September


Five 1-hour episodes (one each day)
Nave 11. Sala Fernando Arrabal