The Lobby of El Castillo de Chapultepec
The lobby of El Castillo de Chapultepec, of multiple, shifting, and undefined authorship, is the first artwork of administrative integration.1
This work is an exercise in institutional imagination, resulting from the practical investigations of several collectives and artists connected to the local community. It consists of an invitation, ashtrays, Ballet Parking, a bar, a baseboard, beers, benches, bottle openers, a bulletin board, burro, a calendar, a clock, coasters, coat racks, coffee, a coffee maker, a complaints and suggestions notebook, a cooler, cornices, a counter, cups, cushions, a door, a doorbell, drains, a drawing, Electromezcal, emergency signage, a faucet, a fire extinguisher, flowers, a ghost, glasses, haire, internet, a jukebox, a ladder, light switches, lights, a map, a mirror, a mixer, mosaics, murals, murals, a neon sign, a niche, outlets, a painting, a plaque, a pole dance pole, a portrait, a postcard, receptionists, records, a retable, screens, shelves, shot glasses, a souvenir, Su Servilleta, the floor, tiles, a tip jar, a translation, trash cans, uniforms, water, windows, etcetera—all changing and in
The lobby of El Castillo de Chapultepec exists because, after 70 years, the Museo Experimental El Eco still doesn’t function as a bar.
Footnotes
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Muralism sought a plastic integration of the work of art through the collaboration between architecture, sculpture, and painting, following a modernist logic that considered only those elements traditionally deemed “architectural” (such as walls, floors, and ceilings). In contrast, administrative integration aims to expand this universe of elements to conceive everything that happens in a given space as a single work of art. In this way, the person drinking coffee and the receptionist, the beer, the coaster, the mural, the lighting, the cellphone, the bill, the fly, the outlet, the clock, and the sound, etc.—what the authors can control and what they cannot—are all part of the artowrk in that moment. ↩