On 12 September, the exhibition “Barcelona-Valencia-Palma. A Story of Confluences” closed, and we won’t be able to visit it again until next year in Palma de Mallorca. Until then, one element of the exhibition we can carry on visiting on the Internet is the participatory project “The City of Horrors”.
“The City of Horrors” occupied two spaces: one physical (the exhibition) and one virtual (a website). Via the virtual space, internauts could submit and vote for photographs of ugly places in Barcelona, Valencia and Palma. The most voted images on the website then went on to the physical space, where they were projected in a mural that changed every day according to the voting. This mural represented “The City of Horrors”, a mixed metropolis produced by combining the least attractive places in the three Mediterranean cities.
I think “The City of Horrors” is one of the most complete participatory initiatives conducted to date at the CCCB, partly because the contents contributed by users became part of the exhibition project, partly because it was the internauts rather than the exhibition curator or coordinator who decided, with their votes, which images should be projected in the mural.
The response of participants was quite good, in view of the results. From the day “BVP” opened in late May until the end of September, 477 photographs were published, all together receiving 84,704 votes. More than 3,600 users visited the website during the four months the show ran.
Some other interesting figures produced by “The City of Horrors”: according to the users, Barcelona is the city with most ugly places, followed by Valencia and Palma, with most of the photos submitted (406) being of public space in Barcelona.
Many participants sent in images of specific objects (puddles, rubble, piles of rubbish, abandoned bicycles, etc.) as though what really bothers us about the city is not so much the urban space itself as the way people treat it.
Below are the top five images of the ugliest places in terms of votes received. Many thanks to everyone who took part in this initiative (some of whom we have since followed on twitter or Facebook).
1. Dirty water in Maremàgnum (Barcelona) by Sonia Hita
Total votes: 195 | votes in favour: 190 | 97%
2. Rubbish in Poblenou (Barcelona) by Isaac Gràcia
Total votes: 231 | votes in favour: 220 | 95%
3. Saturday market (Palma de Mallorca) by Martín
Total votes: 232 | votes in favour: 219 | 94%
4. Carrer Banys Nous (Barcelona) by Albert Salamé
Total votes: 284 | votes in favour: 265 | 93%
5. Carrer Gramàtic Carles Ros, El Cabanyal (Valencia) by Eduardo Martín García
Total votes: 273 | votes in favour: 255 | 93%