Art & Exhibitions
Spanish Artists Craft Police Squad From Recycled Materials
The piece is called "The Are Present."
Sarah Cascone
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The Police Are Present, the latest project from Spanish art activist collective Luzinterruptus, ingeniously repurposes everyday materials to create a squad of vigilant police cars as a protest of the country’s Citizen Security Law, reports the Huffington Post.
The nighttime street art intervention appeared at first glance to be a normal congregation of cop cars. Upon closer inspection, however, the 30 vehicles lining a street in Madrid were ordinary vehicles temporarily topped with convincing replicas of flashing police lights made from recycled materials.
Like Spain’s National Police fleet, the parked cars that Luzinterruptus pressed into service for the piece were decked out with a row of seven blue and white lights. The illusion was created with roast chicken containers, filled with clear and blue cellphone paper and LED bulbs.
The Police Are Present is a response to the recently passed Citizen Security Law, or “Gag Law,” which was initially designed to clamp down on protest activities such as unauthorized street demonstrations, and the distribution of “images of members of state security forces that might infringe upon their ‘right to honor.'” The final bill was somewhat defanged, but is still widely criticized.
Luzinterruptus’s website explains the group’s belief that the act’s secret goal is “the illegalization of citizen’s protests against the government.” They see the law as a violation of the Spanish Constitution that is “dangerously eroding the rights of assembly and demonstration in public spaces.” It creates “greater possibilities of [citizens] being arrested and fined” and allows cops to “exercise violence against the citizens with impunity and according to their subjective criterion.”
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