Makina [Machine] (2002–2025)
Mixed media (photography, wood, and metal)
BA Collection
Inventory No.: 2002.602.1
Makina [Machine] is a large-scale sculptural installation resulting from the assembly and joining of found and recycled elements, following the Dadaist concept of the objet trouvé, which the artist subsequently combines with new elements of his own making. He treats and ages them, oxidizing them and creating a patina or layer that operates on a metaphysical level. Some of these objects are industrial, while others are of diverse origins, ultimately forming an artifact conceived as an activating element for the continuous flow of a liquid material (the result of a mixture of water from the Bilbao Estuary, the artist’s blood, and wine) through grooves and pipes devised by the artist, and set into endless motion by a system of tanks and a water pump. This work, linked to the history of Bilbao and the industrial past–present of the Estuary, was conceived with the intention of traveling through all the towns of the mining area and the Bilbao Estuary. Makina is an installation that the artist documented at the time through sound and video, as well as through other associated materials such as poems, posters, and additional documents.
It was not until 2025 that the artist himself finally produced a two-dimensional work stemming from the original idea, which for him became a finished piece. As a nod to the itinerant nature of the installation across different locations, the central motif is a photograph taken in one of the halls of Bilbao’s Mercado de la Ribera at the time (and before its renovation). The image is surrounded by a traditional gilded frame, which the artist arranges in a singular way, creating an opening at the top that connects with an image of a two-armed crane (historically located next to La Karola on the Olabeaga dock). This image relates to the material accompanying the installation during its exhibitions: a poster featuring the same graphic motif, accompanied by a poem by the artist himself, “what for us is a lifetime, for the estuary is a second.” In this way, the artist reflects on the concept of time, on the Bilbao Estuary as an axis or artery that articulates a system of life and ways of inhabiting the world, and as something that flows until it disappears into the Abra. The artist thus creates a portrait of a period—the 1990s—of an industrial city in decline and in the process of transforming into “something else,” marked by a shift from the analog to the digital, a change of currency, the imminence of a new century, and a social and economic crisis traversed by heroin, AIDS, and countless social movements that ultimately conditioned the moment and the people who lived through that era.
Joseba Langara’s artistic practice is rooted in the hybridization of a wide range of artistic languages, encompassing sculpture, installation, photography, and video as a documentary resource for generating actions and bearing witness to the itinerancy and life of his works as they inhabit different exhibition or production spaces for a given time. Collaboration and alliance with other artists are common in his praxis; they contribute from different fields to fully shape his pieces: musicians, sound technicians, photographers, and others. As a whole, he creates installations that only make sense when activated, and which are at the same time completed by a varied body of material that records and immortalizes them in the form of photography, video, or sound recordings.