The Robot Roundabout

Leiria for Dummies is the information that was missing, but you’ll probably never need it. The cheat sheet for those who think Rodrigues Lobo was the villain in the story of the Three Little Pigs. In this section, Preguiça remembers the name forgotten on the plaque, the building in ruins, the statue covered in lingerie during academic week. It’s possible that these texts will come in handy if there is ever a Leiria edition of Trivial Pursuit. Other than that, we don’t see it.

There’s a roundabout in Leiria that takes you to another dimension, perhaps on a trip to the age of industrialisation, with a pit stop on Mars for a kryptonite chiripiti. Okay, maybe not so much, it’ll depend a lot on the drug you’re using. But there’s something intergalactic about it, and even the cheekiest bloke can get away with it.

Have you got there yet? Here’s a hint: it’s the Adelino Amaro da Costa roundabout. You’re not going there like that either, are you? OK, shall we use the help from home? Here goes. “The roundabout of the machines… the robots… the Beastie Boys roundabout”. Now you know, don’t you?

The machines and robots roundabout is relatively intuitive, but the Beastie Boys roundabout requires a little more mental gymnastics. Still, it’s nothing you can’t figure out, especially if you’re familiar with the American hip-hop band and its another dimension wave. If you don’t, I invite you to watch the music video for the song ‘Intergalactic’ and you’ll quickly get there. By the way, congratulations to whoever came up with the analogy. It’s a bit far-fetched, but not entirely off the mark. Oh, and I hope you keep on giving that inspiring drug.

Well, we’ve joked a bit, maybe we should change to a more serious tone (we warn you that we’ve tried several times and usually don’t succeed).

The truth is that it’s impossible to remain indifferent to the imposing work that has inhabited that roundabout since 2001, but what do we know about that sculptural ensemble? Believing that many of you know little or nothing, we went digging and discovered half a dozen things.

The work is by Abílio Febra – who was kind enough to give us a guided tour of the site – to whom the Leiria City Council set the challenge in 2000 of creating a sculpture that would pay homage to the plastics industry to be placed in the centre of the roundabout.

At the time, Leiria had just grown beyond the river and there was a wide roundabout, empty and neglected, in the opinion of the councillors, just begging for a sculpture – explained Abílio Febra.

As far as the council is concerned, let’s save it, because as far as the sculptor is concerned, not so much.

At the time, sculptures on roundabouts were still very fashionable and I tried an alternative location outside the traffic zone, but there was no consensus. I never saw roundabouts as an ideal place for sculptures, but it was the first opportunity I had to make an intervention in my city and I ended up agreeing to the request – remember.

The commission implied that the project would include two machines linked to the plastics industry: an extruder and an injector. After learning about the size of the machines, which turned out to be larger than he had imagined, the sculptor’s concern was to fit them into the surrounding space. There was therefore a problem of scale that had to be solved in order to fit the work in with the very tall buildings that surround the roundabout.

The end result was a tribute to the plastics workers who embody the two large pieces that make up the set.

Any work that isn’t visually evident risks being labelled. These warriors are not those of destruction, of war itself. Rather, they are those who fight on a daily basis, those who work. The result of this struggle is not destruction, but production – dismantles Abílio Febra.
This sculpture tells us about a miracle. From the tip of the spear comes life.

I’ve never made a sculpture of this size before. How did you overcome the challenge?

In technical terms, the work started from a simple drawing or sketch. I then built a cardboard model, with the shapes already defined and to scale. A work of this size couldn’t be built in my studio; a large crane was needed. So I decided to hire a metalworking company large enough for the job. The figures were built from sheet steel, structured and with engineering calculations that would allow them to withstand the load of the machines or any storms. The sculpture weighs 25 tonnes and is 10 metres high and 8 metres in diameter. The figures were treated to prevent rust with pickling and hot metallisation. They were then polychromed.

And the assembly? Was it a risky operation?

Building pieces that were 10 metres high was a somewhat unforeseen task, because it wasn’t until they were finished that they were put up. It was only then that I could see them in their true breadth, and it would be too late to change them. The sensation I got was exactly that of giant, somewhat menacing robots, although, as I had anticipated, the scale was blurred by the size of the buildings around them and the distance from which they could be seen. Assembly was quite spectacular, as traffic had to be cut off and after the parts arrived on special transport, a large crane was used to place them in place on chassis that had been previously anchored to the concrete platform.

It became popular to call it the robot roundabout. Some even call it the Beastie Boys roundabout. What do you think of these analogies?

I think that any work, no matter what kind it is, literary, musical or otherwise, from the moment it is made public, it ceases to belong to the author and becomes the property of those who enjoy it. But I really like the analogy and the Beastie Boys fit in perfectly, given their irreverence and the metaphorical way they reveal themselves in relation to society. Suddenly, I even wanted to invite them to a live show on that unique stage. Who knows if they’d accept?

Do you believe in aliens? Could that roundabout be an intergalactic communication portal?

Of course I believe it, and I also believe that if one day our city is visited by an extraterrestrial flying saucer, the crew, after a comforting swim in the River Lis, will choose the robot roundabout to take some good selfies as a souvenir of planet Earth.

And until the alien invasion takes place, you can continue naming the roundabout, because you’re good at it. Machines, robots and the intergalactic scene have the artist’s approval.

Text
Paula Lagoa

Photography
Ricardo Graça

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