Abstract
Heritage Auction is a site-specific performatic intervention held at Galería de Intervención Específica Proyecto Pendiente formerly located where popular galleries from the former Teatro Italia, in Providencia, Santiago used to be based. This place is characterized by a 29 degree gradient and its imminent demolition in 2017. This article suggests that this gradient is a modern ruin, which deterioration aesthetics, opposed to the romantic ruin, makes it invisible, dematerialize it and transform it in abstract space available for real-estate speculation. Heritage Auction aimed at recovering the corporeal condition and gradient material to vest it with value, memory and identity and; therefore, constitute what could be regarded, in Riegl terms, as a involuntary monument with heritage value. This Heritage Auction was performed in two phases: first, two space materialities were exhumed/generated (dust extraction, plaster molds, cataloging and land itemization, etc.), to later perform an auction where participants/spectators bided by offering money for the exhumed materialities. The Heritage Auction, a unique project in our country is relevant since it shows how artistic mediation, in this case performatic-like strategies, may be useful to build heritage value for the modern ruin.
