They are pieces of colors on the sidewalk.
A heart, a rabbit, a hat, a playing card, a girl's feet.
It is impossible that if she caught her gaze, the passer-by would not stop to observe in detail.
That little work of art, and the place where it is inserted: a ramp
.
And, then, that piece will have already fulfilled its mission: making visible a vital urban element for thousands of Buenos Aires residents, which is often damaged, obstructed, unusable.
The first
Rolling Reaction
tile appeared a year and a half ago in Almagro.
Since then, they began to dot the ramps and some Buenos Aires sidewalks also in Barracas, Villa Crespo, Belgrano, Palermo and one even reached Mar del Plata.
There are already about 30.
Behind this project is
Sofía Bernasconi
, a 45-year-old bank employee who at 19 had a spinal cord injury, which is why she travels in a wheelchair.
In that chair, she began to encounter
the obstacles that all those with reduced mobility face in the City
.
It is a historical problem.
Sofía has been a volunteer for the NGO Acceso Ya
for many years
, and as such “I am in charge of carrying out surveys, I go down the street and observe architectural barriers and report them to report them and make them visible.”
NGOs make these complaints to the City Government.
But Sofía felt that that was not enough for her.
Until one day, she was going to her boyfriend's house when they came across a broken ramp and, instantly,
she took a photo of it for her survey
.
Sofía, on the first ramp that intervened in Almagro.
Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
--Why don't you repair it?
--he proposed.
"You're crazy," she replied.
--No.
“You have everything to do it,” she retorted.
The whole thing is
Sofía's creativity and the techniques
with which she has been exploring for 13 years at Andrés Jacob's
Escuela del Sur Workshop
, where as a hobby she learned vitrofusion and mosaicism.
Sebastián, her boyfriend, a senior construction teacher who is missing a few Architecture subjects, offered to give her a hand.
You just had to think how to do it.
The first tile he made.
Continue on the Rivadavia and Pringles ramp.
Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
In the workshop they also made themselves available to Bernasconi to help her.
Sofía found inspiration in a French artist who makes interventions on broken streets in which repair becomes a way of showing her art.
And that's what she wanted to do.
“The first tile was complex because I didn't know how to communicate what I wanted.
It remained somewhat abstract.
But it was the satisfaction that we were able to place it and that after a year and a half it is still intact,” he describes the black and white patch that is on
the ramp at Rivadavia and Pringles
, very close to his house.
From the second one he added colors.
And also references to Alice in Wonderland and the world created by Lewis Carroll.
There is a reason.
One of the tiles, with references to Alice in Wonderland.
Photo IG Rolling Reaction
“The story is very nice, I like it.
But Alice fell into a well, and she suffered everything for falling into it.
“I am repairing a well so as not to fall
,” she points out.
For a person with a disability, the fact that a ramp is not correct is not a detail:
it is a problem
that prevents them from moving freely and that can also cause them to fall.
Before the tile.
This is how one of the ramps repaired by Sofía looked like.
Photo IG Rolling Reaction
“Some are healthy, but they don't design them correctly because they end up in a sewer or a ditch.
Either they are elevated, or they have the wrong inclination.
I did a lot of chair handling work and I can do a
willy
and jump a rope, but not everyone can.
And electric chairs must always be flush with the floor.
Many ramps are made to comply, but not from a functional point of view:
no one climbs up to see if it works
,” she points out.
The name of the project,
Rolling Reaction
, says a lot about what it is looking for.
“Although the complaint and the action when there is a blocked ramp or a non-accessible location go through Acceso Now, I wanted to put something else, a reaction from me beyond my volunteering.
And rolling is because I am in a wheelchair and I want whoever comes across it, when reading the name, to associate it with accessibility,” he explains.
Thus, he also made visible
the failures of the Rio de Janeiro subway A station
with a tile on the broken sidewalk : “It is not accessible.
It does not have an elevator or signs for blind people.”
Sofia at the Rio de Janeiro subway A station. She made a tile to denounce that it is not accessible.
Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
The number of messages that it has been receiving non-stop on the networks confirms that the message is being decoded.
On his Instagram @reaccionrodante there is a list of all the intervened ramps and he is thinking about making a map to geolocate them, but he says that there are people who tell him that they do not want to know where they are but rather
be surprised to find their tiles on the street
.
“There are those who tell me that they began to pay attention to all the ramps to see if they found any intervened.
I didn't think that was going to happen, but
something important is being given importance
.
When you don't use it you are not aware that it is there, but at some point in our lives we may all need a ramp: an older adult, if you carry a baby stroller, even a shopping bag,” he explains.
The tile made in collaboration with the muralist Oski Di Viase.
Photo IG Rolling Reaction
Sofía had some collaborations, such as that of the muralist Oski Di Viase who intervened on a ramp or that of a group of students from a school in Las Flores (her town), but
she carries out Reaction Rodante alone with Sebastián
.
They intervene on the ramps at night so that the cement sets better and she also goes down the street looking for demolition materials or in dump trucks because she also likes to add
the aspect of recycling
to the project .
Some of the tiles he made during this time deteriorated (“Cement contracts and expands,” he explains) but his idea is not to repair them, but to continue moving forward with another broken ramp.
“I'm showing the fantasy world that Alice found.
And in my fantasy world, all the ramps and sidewalks are healthy and people can walk
,” she says.
Sofía Bernasconi, on one of the ramps that intervened.
Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
Sofía carries out the project alone with her boyfriend.
Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
The tile he made to denounce the lack of accessibility in a subway station.
Photo Guillermo Rodríguez Adami
Playing cards in Rivadavia at 3700. Photo IG Rolling Reaction
Alice in Wonderland, on a tile in Almagro.
Photo IG Rolling Reaction
A tile that he installed in Mar del Plata.
Photo IG Rolling Reaction
Eastern inspiration.
The symbolic cat, on a tile to place in Chinatown.
Photo IG Rolling Reaction
Alice's rabbit.
In Bartolomé Miter at 4200. Photo IG Rolling Reaction
The universe of Lewis Carroll, on one of the tiles.
Photo IG Rolling Reaction