2016 - ongoing

‘The Spanish Sahara, the place that you'd wanna
Forget the horror here
Forget the horror here
Leave it all down here
It's future rust and it's future dust
I'm the fury in your head
I'm the fury in your bed
I'm the ghost in the back of your head’
Foals - Spanish Sahara (2010)

This project was born out of an observation that led to this question: why do we see so many concrete skeletons strewn along the roadsides of the main tourist destinations, often amidst idyllic landscapes?
The financial crisis of 2008 is the most recent climax of the modern world’s economic turmoil, and has spread from the United States to affect the entire world. It plunged many countries into an economic slump, with the booming –often beyond reason - construction sector as the first affected sector.
These concrete skeletons are the visible and frozen traces of this. But depending on the country, the financial crisis is not the only responsible factor: the collapse of the real estate bubble, speculation, local corruption which favors excessive construction - often illegally -, economic problems and bankruptcies are all factors still relevant today that explain the presence of these concrete skeletons in the landscape.

Spain and Greece are the symbols of this collapse and have been the subject of numerous studies by researchers and photographers. But what about other countries? To what extent have the crisis and aggravating economic factors a visibly impact on the landscape?

Through the archaeological study of modern ruins, the exploration of ghost cities, aborted tourism projects, unused infrastructures, or roads leading to nowhere, the repetition of forms and the accumulation of visited areas, this project is intended as a testimony to document the tragedies of our time.
These unfinished structures, frozen in time and space, becoming the future traces of a failing present, are witnesses to this big waste of - often public - money and ecological tragedies. As silent witnesses, they reflect the psychological and geographical aspects that shape our ambiguous relationships of alienation and disconnection from nature.