Euskalduna Shipyards

'Euskalduna Shipyards' was a context specific intervention into the open public space in the banks of Bilbao's Nervion River, developed across a research residency awarded and supported by BilbaoEszena (Bilbao, Spain), and commissioned and produced by BAD (Biblao, Spain) for presentation as part of the BAD festival 2011. The work was created within Brookes' ongoing collaboration with Spanish artist and performer Rosa Casado, and resulted from the second phase of exploration within their long-term 'Just a little bit of history repeating' project.

On the riverbank adjacent to the Guggenheim Gallery in Bilbao, within the open public spaces that now occupy much of the former site of the vast Euskalduna shipyards – the industrial heart of the city until it closed in 1984 – the work revisited fragments of the now absent shipyard buildings, ‘rebuilt’ simply through the in situ personal descriptions of four ex-workers, detailing structures and movements within their architecture. The live first-hand descriptions were delivered to the gathered crowd and passersby by portable amplifiers worn by the artists – allowing the work to be establish and moved freely around the city centre site, without installed technical support, and leaving no physical traces.

The project was developed in collaboration with residents, historians, local radio and television stations, and realised in collaboration with ex-workers from the Euskalduna shipyards.