CCX221270-7.5, Caterina Miralles

25/06 - 05/09/2026

“Ciudades diferentes se suceden sobre el mismo suelo y bajo
el mismo nombre, nacen y mueren sin haberse conocido,
incomunicables entre sí. [...] Las viejas postales no representan a
Maurilia como era, sino a otra ciudad que por casualidad se llamaba
Maurilia como ésta”
— Italo Calvino, Las ciudades invisibles

It takes exactly 7.5 minutes to harden. In that moment a certain state of permanence is
inscribed, one that will never again let us remember ourselves the same way. And that
memory, already clouded, will have to be guessed from the residue that resists in the bucket.
I think I can perceive there the fragility wrapped around so much hardness, how that which
covers with precious flexible fabrics perfectly fitted, bursts cruelly into everything that you
and I had imagined. Perhaps we had never spoken the same language, or we used the same
words to mean very different things. I was frightened when I heard you shouting: Get Picasso
tickets, Picasso tickets! you kept insisting, I never thought you would be so foreign to what was
happening to us. I think the greatest fear came when your stories, your memories, began to take
shape through hard disguises, disguises of reinforced concrete, of plaster. Trompe l’oeil became
your most common operation without noticing the violence you were exerting.
Stories reach me of how you scorched skin without discretion. I was still blinded by that sense
of belonging you promised me; with each new disguise you put on, more skin reddened, your
caresses grew harder, hotter. I fantasized, thinking that the sweat you drew from me as you
touched me lubricated the movements, which seemed more and more interrupted by your new
attire. Through all of it, I find my way following a new star, watchful, glimpsed from every one
of your corners.
It took a little under 2 hours to collapse: Montserrat A. died at home after finishing her shift; all
your mechanisms of control and sanitization ended up revealing their true nature, filling with
exhausted bodies that together held up those fictions you had made us believe. I know that was
the point of no return, the point where the concrete’s setting was such that it no longer allowed
us to think of ourselves any other way, our gazes, already worn out, met fleetingly once more,
and I, with all my strength, kept insisting on piercing that hardness, and sheltering myself
beneath your skin.

“Home is a whole society, fulminating with voices from the Dead,
the familiar voices blending into birdsongs on your windowsill at
dawn. Comforted by the tracks of those who have gone ahead of
you, your limits extend after them. You are alive but part of you is
underground already. When whom you love or have loved dies, part
of you goes too, and you are picked apart, gradually, piece by piece,
until oblivion is as natural as sleep”
—Fanny Howe, Holy Smoke

So I wait here, seated, in the only corners you left me, on those steps full of marks, traces of all
of us who have stopped here. On that hard concrete without any shade where, as I sit, I displace
the path of the other passersby moving with some other plan, while I try to reconstruct from
memory all the possibilities that stayed behind in the bucket, and as I fall into it, I realize that
there and only there... it took exactly 7.5 minutes to harden.

-Ignasi Ayats Soler

CCX221270-7.5, Caterina Miralles

25/06 - 05/09/2026

“Ciudades diferentes se suceden sobre el mismo suelo y bajo
el mismo nombre, nacen y mueren sin haberse conocido,
incomunicables entre sí. [...] Las viejas postales no representan a
Maurilia como era, sino a otra ciudad que por casualidad se llamaba
Maurilia como ésta”
— Italo Calvino, Las ciudades invisibles

It takes exactly 7.5 minutes to harden. In that moment a certain state of permanence is
inscribed, one that will never again let us remember ourselves the same way. And that
memory, already clouded, will have to be guessed from the residue that resists in the bucket.
I think I can perceive there the fragility wrapped around so much hardness, how that which
covers with precious flexible fabrics perfectly fitted, bursts cruelly into everything that you
and I had imagined. Perhaps we had never spoken the same language, or we used the same
words to mean very different things. I was frightened when I heard you shouting: Get Picasso
tickets, Picasso tickets! you kept insisting, I never thought you would be so foreign to what was
happening to us. I think the greatest fear came when your stories, your memories, began to take
shape through hard disguises, disguises of reinforced concrete, of plaster. Trompe l’oeil became
your most common operation without noticing the violence you were exerting.
Stories reach me of how you scorched skin without discretion. I was still blinded by that sense
of belonging you promised me; with each new disguise you put on, more skin reddened, your
caresses grew harder, hotter. I fantasized, thinking that the sweat you drew from me as you
touched me lubricated the movements, which seemed more and more interrupted by your new
attire. Through all of it, I find my way following a new star, watchful, glimpsed from every one
of your corners.
It took a little under 2 hours to collapse: Montserrat A. died at home after finishing her shift; all
your mechanisms of control and sanitization ended up revealing their true nature, filling with
exhausted bodies that together held up those fictions you had made us believe. I know that was
the point of no return, the point where the concrete’s setting was such that it no longer allowed
us to think of ourselves any other way, our gazes, already worn out, met fleetingly once more,
and I, with all my strength, kept insisting on piercing that hardness, and sheltering myself
beneath your skin.

“Home is a whole society, fulminating with voices from the Dead,
the familiar voices blending into birdsongs on your windowsill at
dawn. Comforted by the tracks of those who have gone ahead of
you, your limits extend after them. You are alive but part of you is
underground already. When whom you love or have loved dies, part
of you goes too, and you are picked apart, gradually, piece by piece,
until oblivion is as natural as sleep”
—Fanny Howe, Holy Smoke

So I wait here, seated, in the only corners you left me, on those steps full of marks, traces of all
of us who have stopped here. On that hard concrete without any shade where, as I sit, I displace
the path of the other passersby moving with some other plan, while I try to reconstruct from
memory all the possibilities that stayed behind in the bucket, and as I fall into it, I realize that
there and only there... it took exactly 7.5 minutes to harden.

-Ignasi Ayats Soler