In the autumn of 2011, on the riverbank adjacent to the Guggenheim Gallery in Bilbao, within the open public spaces that now occupy much of the site of the vast Euskalduna shipyards – the industrial heart of the city until it closed in 1984 – we revisited fragments of the now absent shipyard buildings, ‘rebuilt’ simply through the in situ personal descriptions of four ex-workers.
On the evening of Saturday November 5th 2011, as part of Festival Bad Bilbao, four former Euskalduna employees, Mike Brookes and I met a crowd of spectators who had gathered outside the entrance of Bilbao’s Maritime Museum – at the site where one of the entrances to the former shipyards used to stand. For and with this informal crowd, we attempted to replace and revisit fragments of the now absent shipyard buildings that had been central to the working days of the four ex-workers with whom we collaborated – ‘rebuilding’ specific aspects of the shipyards’ architecture simply through their live in situ personal descriptions of the details and buildings they had moved through, in the course of a normal working day, during their training and employment within Euskalduna.
This project was developed in collaboration with residents, historians, local radio and television stations, and realised with the generous contribution of Emilio Urreta, Miguel Parra, Miguel Anta Anta and José Luis Longarte – former workers from the Euskalduna shipyards.
Photos by audience members Luis Fernández and Susana Landaburu