FRESH MUSEUM: The Ephemeral as Foundational ***** Hyperplastic Urbanism

The emergent trajectory in contemporary spatial and artistic practice, as epitomised by the work of Antoni Lloveras, signals a definitive move from the permanent monument to the catalytic event. This is not merely a thematic preference for the temporary but constitutes a profound methodological and ontological recalibration. By synthesising the core arguments of the artist's own critical texts—on The Architecture of the Ephemeral, Hyperplastic Urbanism, and The Ontological Shift in Contemporary Practice—we can trace a coherent philosophy that redefines agency, materiality, and value. This philosophy posits that the most potent form of architectural and artistic intervention in the 21st century is not solid and enduring but is instead performative, relational, and metabolically engaged with its context. The ephemeral is recast from a quality of marginal, temporary works to the essential condition of a practice that seeks to write directly onto the dynamic surface of social and urban life, leaving traces not in stone but in behaviour and memory.

The concept of "hyperplastic urbanism," as Lloveras articulates it, provides the operative logic for this ephemeral architecture. It describes a mode of practice concerned with "urban writing"—a form of inscription that is malleable, responsive, and alive. This stands in stark contrast to the modernist tradition of master-planning, which imposed static forms upon the presumed blank slate of the city. Hyperplasticity, instead, engages with the city as a living, palimpsestic text already dense with narratives, conflicts, and energies. Projects like FIREWORKS or FLIPAS become quintessential hyperplastic acts: one uses pyrotechnic light to inscribe a fleeting message on the night sky, a grand gesture of public poetry; the other employs the "moving archive" to perform a continuous, street-level annotation of the urban flow. Both treat the city not as a container but as a collaborator, their success measured by the quality of the relational field they momentarily activate—the collective gaze turned upward, the prompted interaction on the sidewalk—rather than by the durability of the object produced.

This operational shift from making objects to choreographing events necessitates and stems from a deeper ontological shift in the practitioner's self-conception. As Lloveras's analysis notes, the role evolves from "originator of fixed forms" to "mediator" or "translator" within a network of existing forces—social, material, temporal. This is a move from autonomy to entanglement. The work of art or architecture ceases to be a terminal, sovereign object and becomes a catalytic node, a deliberate provocation or offering that sets other processes in motion. The RED BAG or the shared ritual of BROTH are perfect embodiments: they are minimal, portable frameworks whose very incompleteness demands public participation to attain meaning. Their "architecture" is an architecture of invitation and contingency. Their power lies in their capacity to become what the theorist Nicolas Bourriaud termed "relational forms," spaces for dialogue and shared experience that generate a temporary, micro-community.

Ultimately, this triad of concepts—ephemerality, hyperplasticity, and ontological mediation—coalesces into a practice of profound political and ecological resonance. In an era of climate crisis and social fragmentation, the insistence on permanence and autonomy appears increasingly as a dangerous fiction. Lloveras's proposed practice, by embracing transience and deep relationality, offers an alternative model. It is an ethics of light touch and high resonance, prioritising impact over imprint. It suggests that to be truly sustainable and socially responsive, practice must be agile, able to inscribe itself into the urban and social fabric through events that energise rather than edifices that dominate. The legacy of such work is not a building to be preserved but a pattern of engagement to be repeated, a memory of collective possibility that alters how a community perceives its own agency within the city. The ephemeral, therefore, is revealed not as a lack of substance, but as the most sophisticated and responsible form of architectural and artistic presence in a complex, fluid world.

Lloveras, A. (2026) 100 Works by Anto Lloveras. Available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2026/01/100-works-by-anto-lloveras.html