The “Welfare State” project has its origin in El Salobral, one of Europe’s largest shanty towns located on the southern outskirts of Madrid. In March 2007, the Madrid City Council and the Regional Government decided that the slum should be demolished and its inhabitants rehoused. “Smashing the ghetto” is a single channel video installation displaying the demolition of these slum properties as if it were a sports event. The public watches the process from its seats on the stands and cheers on the bulldozers in a hooliganish style. The project turns the destruction of the neighbourhood into a show for the members of civil society. Unconcerned by considerations like the disappearance of a specific way of life, civil society celebrates the end of the ghetto as if it were a media spectacle.
Cuatro News footage.
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