cuddled scraps of dust
falling from carbonate rocks
from waters high and low
heated by the Earth’s core
scars, breaks, cracks
in white, tan, rusty skin
fleshy locked, breathing still
exhaling subterranean gasps
piling up in fitful lumps
let there be light
blown borosilicate glass rubble
silica plus boron oxide
shaped through Hephaestus’ breath
god of fire, volcanoes, god of crafts
filling you with silent voices
that separates air from turmoil
formless substance
cremates in a viscid way
glass bewitches
fading to a dancing mineral
molecules mistake their place
crystalizing in a frail aplomb
incisive edges calling danger
trauma echoes:
first steps of glass, creeping crash
crystal beats and falling ashes,
tools dinging, fire melting, silica and gas
silica is everywhere in sand
radiating from all Earth crust
crust, glass, sand, dust, travertine
calcium carbonate, silicon oxide,
fluxing agent, all at once,
singing, bouncing, breaking the floor
shouting, blowing, flaming, caressing all!
glass and travertine honoring a rite
between discovery and mourning
between care and what’s revealed (to u)
an archaeological mesh excavation
or an awkward treasure from the ancient times
a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth
life embracing death
celebrating their shadows
longing that nothing and everything last
Beautiful Failures is a site-specific intervention that investigates fragility and vulnerability through two of the most delicate materials used in the construction of the Barcelona Pavilion by Lilly Reich and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: glass and travertine. Seventeen travertine paving slabs lifted out of their spaces reveal seventeen voids. Around them are placed a series of discarded glass pieces salvaged from artisan glassblowing workshops in Barcelona and grouped by the students into seventeen families, based on their morphology. The new landscape resulting from the partial removal of the pavement, and its relationship with the rejected glass pieces, show similarities with an archaeological stratigraphic excavation. Understood simultaneously as a ritual of burial and revelation, the temporary intervention in the pavilion sets up a cycle of birth, death and rebirth in which all the elements play an important role: from the history of the pavilion—understood not just as a replica, but as a living entity, implicit in the actions involving the travertine—to the life force concentrated in each of the pieces of glass.