PRP_PIROPO PROJECT — Julio César Palacio

This project is inspired by the story of a friend. She was leaving her work one afternoon in which she had had a bad day. On her way home, passing by a construction site, some construction workers yelled obscene phrases at her. This affected her a lot, she felt harassed and insecure. This reality unfortunately happens to many women when they walk calmly down the street.

This story inspired me to create my work for the GREC Festival in 2005. The commission for this piece was very interesting because the space they offered me was PLAZA CATALUNYA and RAMBLAS (downtown Barcelona). This is the heart of Barcelona tourism and a place where people from all over the world walk every day.

So I decided to give my friend's story a twist in which they addressed her in an obscene way, and create a piece with the act of "PIROPEAR" (saying compliments) anonymously to people who walk down the street , with nice and warm words, that makes the road a little better for them, raises their self-esteem, makes them laugh...

For this, I invited several people from different parts of the world and different languages to record pleasant, affectionate, friendly and funny compliments to be placed in the city.

A large number of PIROPOS -compliments- were recorded in: Spanish, English, Catalan, Greek, Portuguese, French, Japanese, etc.

Thanks to the help and special permission of the town hall, we were able to place directional sound speakers (bells) with motion sensors at the traffic lights in the square. A total of 8 places (pedestrian crossing on top of the traffic lights). For this reason, every time there were people - and normally a lot of people gather at these downtown traffic lights - a random COMPLIMENT was thrown at the people who were there.

The result was very curious, since sometimes it was launched in a language (Portuguese for example) that only 1 person out of the 20 who were there understood it, and that person was only seen laughing and the others did not know that they had saying.

This was part of what I was looking for, an interaction that was not directed directly at anyone and at the same time directed at everyone. For me it was very important to delve into this concept of sonic irruption and sound harassment that many people can suffer in their day to day on the street.

While the concept of a PIROPO wants to be seen as a creative and verbal admiration interaction, it is actually a very old concept and quite problematic (in my opinion), especially since it mostly has sexual connotations and is rude and unsolicited interaction.