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2008. DISCUSSION PANELS PROGRAMME

Place: La Casa Encendida (Ronda de Valencia No. 2, Madrid)Date: 7th and 8th FebruaryTime: From 17.00 to 21.00 h.

Continuing the practice established in the last editions, this year the debate tables are organised once again in collaboration with La Casa Encendida.  As in previous editions, on the one hand, the debate tables will present the projects produced for Madrid Abierto and, on the other, they will introduce different initiatives developed within the sphere of art in the public space.

The round tables will include the active participation of the commission set up last year to debate the model of Madrid Abierto.  The commission's co-ordinator, Rocío Gracia, and its members, Cecilia Anderson, Guillaume Désanges, Jorge Díez, Ramón Parramon, María Inés Rodríguez and Fito Rodríguez, together with this edition's organisers, the collective DEMOCRACIA.

For the artists’ presentations, the event's organisers have established three groups, although aware that the groups may be pervious and that one same project may meet several of the established premises. On the one hand, we will have the projects that make the contemporary class conflict visible, as well as a temporary suspension of the exclusions generated by this conflict, on another hand, those that employ elements or the propagandistic language of the urban scene, and lastly, those more closely associated with forms of urban culture.

The artistic experience developed in the public space faces the complex task of intervening in a saturated and hyper-aesthetized space with few fissures. The temporary and ephemeral nature of these artistic practices often places obstacles in the way of the dissemination and development possibilities of many interesting proposals that would require more time, with respect to the prior investigation and the subsequent production of the interventions as well as the desirable convergence with other projects and other social and cultural agents. In light of this, the opening of new spaces is needed to encourage other forms of production and dissemination, as well as the creation of networks of information and collaboration between this kind of artistic practices. For this reason, every year Madrid Abierto aims to give exposure to other similar experiences. In this edition, Nelson Brissac and Vit Havranek will be responsible for presenting invited projects, offering their experience in the debate on the strategies applied to the city and the territory from an artistic perspective, with more or less emphasis on experimentation, multi-discipline, the process and interaction with the public.

THURSDAY 7TH FEBRUARY

17:00-18:15 Presentation of Madrid Abierto projects

Hell is coming/World ends today. Andreas Templin

Not for sale/No se vende. Alicia Framis

Welcome On Board. Guillaume Ségur

Gran Sur. Fernando Prats

Chaired by: Cecilia Andersson; Democracia

18:15-19:30 Presentation of Madrid Abierto video projects

Arturo-Fito Rodríguez introduced by Rocío Gracia

20:00-21:00 Vít Havránek, introduced by Guillaume Désanges

 

FRIDAY 8TH FEBRUARY

17:00-18:15 Presentation Madrid Abierto projects

Speculator + Empty World. Todo por la praxis

Construye tu casa en una azotea. Santiago Cirugeda

Explorando Usera. La Hostia Fine Arts

Videointervenciones móviles en contextos urbanos específicos. Fernando Llanos

Moderan: María Inés Rodríguez y Democracia

18:30-19:30 Presentation Madrid Abierto projects

Estado de excepción. Noaz/Dier

Proposal Nr. 19 + Gift. Anno Dijkstra

No more no less + La hucha de los Incas. Jota Castro

La guerra es nuestra. Immi Lee/Annamarie Ho

Moderan: Ramon Parramon y Democracia

20:00-21:00 Nelsson Brissac, introduced by Jorge Díez

 

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Cecilia Andersson is curator and director of Werk Ltd., a curatorial agency established in Stockholm. Werk collaborates internationally in the organisation, production, promotion and publication of contemporary art.

Her recent projects include SuperSocial, social events set up in different cities; a series of conferences and seminars in collaboration with Francesco Jodice; On Cities, an exhibition organised in Stockholm’s Museum of Architecture and an itinerant programme of Chinese video.

Cecilia is an independent consultant for Disonancias, an interchange platform between artists and companies in San Sebastián and is part of the Madrid Abierto Commission.

 

Nelson Brissac is a philosopher whose works is related to art and urban-planning issues. Since 1994, he is organiser and curator of Arte/Cidade www.artecidade.org.br, an urban interventions project in São Paulo.

 

Guillaume Desange, is curator, art-critic and co-founder of Work Method, an agency based in Paris dedicated to the production of artistic projects. As member of the Trouble publishing committee, he regularly collaborates with the magazines Exit Express and Exit Book (Madrid). From 2001 to 2007 he co-ordinated the artistic projects of Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers. He organised the exhibitions Pick-Up en Public>, Paris 2004, Untouchable, The transparency Ideal in Villa Arson, Nice and the Patio Herreriano Museum, Valladolid, in 2006-2007, Jiri Kovanda Vs rest of the World in the agency gallery gb, Paris; De Appel, Asmterdam; Centre d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, and has worked with Thomas Hirschhorn in the projects The 24h Foucault project and Musée Précaire Albinet. In 2007-2008 he is an invited curator at Centre d'Art Contemporain La Tôlerie. He is a lecturer at Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Clermont-Ferrand and is part of the Madrid Abierto Commission.

 

Vit Havranek is a theorist and a producer established in Prague. Since 2002 he works as Project Manager for the contemporary art initiative tranzit /www.tranzit.org/ sponsored by the Erste Bank Group. He has worked as curator in Prague’s Municipal Gallery and National Gallery. He is a lecturer at the Prague College of Applied Arts. His most recent projects, some of which in collaboration with others, include A CDEFGHIJK MNOP  STUV   Z, part of Societe Anonyme, Le Plateau, Paris, 2007; tranzit – Auditorium, Stage Backstage, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt 2006; I, series of exhibitions in three acts: Secession Vienna; Futura Prague; tranzit workshops Bratislava, 2006. He has written articles for several magazines, such as, among others, Springerin, Artist and Flash Art.

 

Ramon Parramon, directs and manages projects within the area of contemporary art and creation. Since 1998, he directs the art project IDENSITAT. In addition, he has organised several projects, such as Territorios Ocupados, 2000; Barcelonas, 1999 and Visiones Periféricas, 1994-97. He has given conferences and seminars at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the Polytechnic of Milan, the University of Vigo, the University of Granada, the International University of Seville, the University of Barcelona and the Barcelona Higher College of Architecture. His work evolves with a marked interest towards interdisciplinary projects and the roles that art can play in specific socio-political contexts. He is part of the Madrid Abierto Commission.

 

María Inés Rodríguez is an exhibitions curator. She has organised exhibitions and research projects on the public space appropriation strategies in different contemporary art spaces which relate art, design, architecture and urban-planning. In 2004, she created Tropical paper editions to develop the editorial projects of artists. In 2007, she developed the projects Habitat/Variations, BAC Geneva, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Bermuda Triangle, Êcole de Beaux Arts de París, and was co-curator of MDE 07 Encuentro de Medellín. She is part of the Madrid Abierto Commission.

 

Arturo-Fito Rodríguez,member of Fundación Rodríguez, an artistic production collective that organises and co-ordinates projects associated with contemporary culture and new media, such as Tester and Intervenciones TV. He is part of the Madrid Abierto Commission.

 

Rocío Gracia is an art historian, member of RMS La Asociación, an agency established in 1998 in Madrid dedicated to organising, producing, promoting and disseminating contemporary art projects, and which has recently developed such projects as MadridProcesosRedes and ON SITE TOUR/TALK. The agency will shortly present a preview of Archivo VEO within the project Old News of CGAC and is preparing the exhibition Sur le dandysme for the Centro Huarte de Arte Contemporáneo.

 

Jorge Díez, director of Madrid Abierto and co-director of the MBA in Cultural Management, Santillana/Salamanca University. In 2007 he has co-curated with José Roca (Colombia) Cart[ajena] public art project promoted by SEACEX, developed within the IV Congress of Spanish at Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. He has lectured in the Spain-Japon Forum at Nagasaki, Actual experience in Public Art at the 16º Arts Symposium at Porto Alegre, Brasil and, Contexts and projects in Public Art. Ephemera models of intervention, at the MARCO. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08mdtb1765

2008. ARTISTS / INTERVENTIONS / LINKS

Alicia Framis + Michael Lin    Not for sale/No se vende    www.aliciaframis.com Andreas Templin    Hell is coming/World ends today    www.andreas-templin.blogspot.com    www.worldendstoday.wordpress.com

Dier + Noaz    Estado de excepción    www.vdier.com www.noazmadrid.blogspot.comwww,flirck.com/photos/noazmadrid/

Anno Dijkstra    Proposal Nr. 19 + Gift    www.annodijkstra.nl

Fernando Llanos    Videointervenciones móviles en contextos urbanos específicos    www.fllanos.com

Guillaume Ségur    Welcome On Board

Fernando Prats    Gran Sur    www.fernandoprats.cl

Jota Castro No more no less + La hucha de los Incashttp://www.jotacastro.eu/

LaHostiaFineArts (LHFA)    Explorando Usera    www.lahostiafinearts.es

Santiago Cirugeda    Construye tu casa en una azotea    www.recetasurbanas.net

Todo por la Praxis    Speculator + Empty World    www.todoporlapraxis.com

Santiago Sierra    Bandera negra de la república españolawww.santiago-sierra.com

Annamarie Ho + Inmi Lee    La guerra es nuestra    www.annamariecho.comwww.inmilee.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

08prta1766

2008. Todo por la praxis (Cv)

FUNDADO EN FOUNDED IN 1999 EN IN MADRID LIVES AND WORKS IN MADRIDWWW.TODOPORLAPRAXIS.COMWWW.SPECULATOR.ESWWW.EMPTYWORLD.ESWORK EXPOSED IN MADRID ABIERTO: SPECULATOR + EMPTY WORLD

PROJECTS2007·    Mausoleo. Stickers intervention. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.·    Geto Sur. Stickers design. Intervention in Madrid's metro.·    Atentado Semiótico. Road signs. Intervention in the public space with the introduction of new signage. Centro de Nuevos Creadores de la Comunidad de Madrid

2005·    Los 5 puntos. Intervention involving putting up posters. District of Chueca, Madrid·    Atentado Semiótico. Set design for the Cibeles fashion show for the designer Antonio Alvarado, Madrid

2004·    Moskea. Design of advertising posters and brochures. Intervention involving putting up posters. District of Lavapiés, Madrid·    El Mundo es Azul. Posters design. Intervention in telephone boxes. Plaza de España, Madrid.·    Calle Espíritu Santo. Intervention with templates in Calle Espíritu Santo, Madrid

2003···· Zona de Estacionamiento Privado y Controlado. Signage intervention. Madrid···· Propiedad Privada Prohibido el Paso. Intervention in the parking demarcation of a regulated parking area. District of Malasaña, Madrid···· Parking Privado en Espacio Público. Stickers. Intervention in parking meters of· a regulated parking area. District of Malasaña, Madrid···· Iconos Des-estructurados. Intervention involving placing balaclavas on existing sculptures. District of Malasaña, Madrid···· PornoStars. Advertising billboard. Madrid···· Restaurant. Stickers-Intervention in rubbish containers. District of Lavapiés, Madrid···· Matar puede Matar. Portable semiotics. T-shirt design.···· ¿Cuánto Cuestas? Rubber stamp. Stamping bank notes in circulation.···· Atentado Semiótico. Road signs. Intervention in the public space with introduction of a new signage. District of Malasaña, Plaza de Colón and Conde Duque, Madrid

COMPETITIONS AND PRIZES2004.······ Prize in the 15th Edition of Circuitos de artes plásticas y fotografía de la Comunidad de Madrid (Plastic Art and Photography Circuits of the Community of Madrid). Exhibition: Centro de Arte Joven de la Comunidad de Madrid, Centro Cultural la Asunción. Albacete, Centro Cultural Alcalá de Henares, Madrid

DESIGN AND CO-ORDINATION OF CULTURAL ACTIVITIES·    Jornadas sobre trabajo y Cultura 2 (Work and Culture Workshops 2), Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya. Participants: among others, Joseph Ferrer I Llop (Vice-chancellor), Miguel Riera (Editor and writer), Xavier Marce (Director of l´Institut d´inducstries Culturals de la Generalitat), José Maria Ripalda (Political Philosopher and writer), Iván de la Nuez (Planning Director of La Virreina and writer), November 2004·    Jornadas sobre trabajo y cultura 1 (Work and Culture Workshops 1), Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Participants: among others, Belén Gopegui (writer), Juan Ramón Capella (Political Philosopher and writer), Higinio Polo (writer), Juan Carlos Rodríguez (Philosopher and writer) Carlos Prieto del Campo (Director of Akal Antagonismos), Vicente Romano (writer), June 2004·    WorkShop. Espacio Público 1 (Public Space 1); Opposition artistic practices and political praxis. Gallery El ojo Atómico, Madrid. Participants: Diego Peris Sánchez (Architect), Francisco  Martínez (Philosopher), Teresa Arenillas (Town planner), La fiambrera obrera (Collective of artists)·    Jornadas Modelos de Ciudad (Workshops on city models): Urbanismo y práctica política transformadora (Town-planning and transformational political practice). Colegio de Arquitectos de Bilbao (Association of Architects of Bilbao). Participants: Javier Navascués, Iñaki Uriarte, Jordi Borja and Fernando Urrikoetxea

 

 

 

 

 

08prtb1796

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR + EMPTY WORLD (ubicación)

Speculator. PPº de Recoletos, central boulevard, next to Plaza de ColónEmpty World. Liquidación Total, C/ San Vicente Ferrer Nº 23 From 7th February to 3th March

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08intd2066

2008. DISCUSSION PANELS / 07 y 08 feb (images)

2008. DISCUSSION PANELS / 07 y 08 feb (images)

 

       

Fito Rodríguez, Rocío Gracia     Rafael Tunes, Diego Peris   María inés Rodríguez, Pablo España, Rafael Burillo    Diez, Noaz

Fito Rodríguez, Rocío Gracia    Fernando Llanos    Annamarie Ho, Inmi Lee    Dier, Noaz

           

Fernando Baena    Jota Castro    Dier     Anno Dijkstra   

Annamarie Ho    Inmi Lee  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08mdic1736

2008. Todo por la praxis. ACTION ART

2008. Todo por la praxis. ACTION ART

TODO POR LA PRAXIS (TPP) was created as a “laboratory for Projects” which produces a variety of aesthetic and cultural projects. TPP is formalized in an area of design and testing of the most efficient cultural resistance techniques, focusing on testing non conventional tools, forms of organization and action, around specific action projects. Their two basic themes are activist artistic practices or opposition practices as a means to represent social conflict in an effective aesthetic manner and artistic practices in/on public space and its repercussions on the social context in which they inscribe themselves. Those basic themes are themselves divided in three research lines that are represented through their alter egos: establishing a symbolic game which defines each of their working areas.

 

 

ACTION ART: Alter ego of the “Todo por la Praxis” project is created as a form of agitation in the cultural realm. The use of a Mexican wrestler character as a superhero is conceived as an ironic use of the fetishes that appear in the formal iconography of the “world of art”. Both designers and artists have used these masks and, in some way, an everyday element has been institutionalized into the category of a fetish, becoming just another element in the incomprehensible universe which is present in the codes of contemporary art.

The de-fetishization of artistic processes and the globalization of discursive tools is the main task to which this antihero is committed. Against the art of representation, we find the practice of confrontational cultural and artistic activism projecting itself in works of propaganda and agitation. Interventions in the public realm, etc… all of them with a basic assumption: the anti-hegemonic construction of discourse.

** SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08aama3538, 08prmc3533

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR + EMPTY WORLD (schedule)

 

Empty World

www.emptyworld.es

Workshops on Urban resistances,

gentrification and property speculation.

FEBRUARY-2008

Thursday 21, Friday 22 and Saturday 23.

Liquidación Total.

C/San Vicente Ferrer 23 Local 2

Metro Tribunal. Madrid.

 

Thursday 21.18:00 h-21:00 h.

Presentation Empty World (Association of Neighbours of Malasaña-ACIBU. Presentation of project)emerge.es Collective. (Sustainable unity)Andrés Jaque. (Architect. Project Lecturer at ETS AM)Friday 22.18:00 h-21:00 h.Fernando Roch.  (Head of Urban Planning Dep. of ETSAM )Francisco Gil. (Praxis Co-operative)Democracia.

Saturday 23.18:00 h-21:00 h.

V de Vivienda. (Popular Assembly for the right to housing) Jordi Claramonte - Fiambrera Obrera. (Okupasa)Santiago Cirugeda. (Architect)

Saturday 30.18:00 h-21:00 h.

Workshop Empty World. (Patio Maravillas) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08intc2046

2008. Todo por la praxis. EMPTY WORLD (2007.10 / theoretical data)

 EMPTY WORLD. Empty housing real state agency.

Empty World is a project developed by Todo por la Praxis, linked to the Madrid Abierto programme. The project will be appear in MA’s programme and the funding will depend also on MA.

Empty housing, gentrification and speculation

The rise of the housing prices keeps increasing each year. This year it seems to have had a smooth deceleration, about the 15% cheaper than last year, other years it grew about a 20 or 25%. However, the difficulties to own or rent an apartment are greater everyday and the efforts that a normal salary must undertake are increasing significantly, reaching almost unbearable levels on the long term. To purchase a house is the main investment that most Spaniards have to deal with in their lifetime. The excessive increase in the prices has augmented the effort until most of a person’s lifetime earnings are invested in it. An interesting piece of information can sum up the housing problem in Spain: the average price of a home has multiplied by five in salary terms in the period 1986-2006, while salaries in that same period have only duplicated. Home prices have grown thirteen and a half times more than salaries.

Regarding the problem a phenomenon takes place that reflects the recklessness of the real estate market in Spain. The struggle to find a home is in contrast with the gigantism of a market that is growing without control, with an already existent patrimony that is abandoned or is a part of speculation strategy. By discussing a single point we can graphically understand this phenomenon. In Madrid, the number of empty houses equals the number of new apartments being built in the three most important Urban Development Plans in the city (Sanchinarro, Las Tablas and Carabanchel). This questions the market imposed urban model, for, the abandonment of the already existing patrimony is a matter of speculation processes that are unsustainable. On an environmental level it involves an unjustified consumption of the territory and on an economic level it’s a waste of public investment to cover the services and needs of the residents in new houses.

It is within these central areas where the phenomenon seems to be more intense, linked to gentrification processes. The word “gentrification” evolves from the English word “gentry” and literally relates to the adoption of a bourgeois lifestyle. This concept defines the process by which a working class neighbourhood, that has been previously abandoned and degraded, increases its value due to the expulsion of its traditional dwellers and their substitution by middle upper-class residents. The process involves changes in the type of houses and commercial and production activities. This is done for the profits obtained from speculation, due to the increase on the area’s value. Malasaña is a clear example of these practices, thus the analyses of these processes in the neighbourhood will be the goal of the project.

Empty World

The proposed project is made up of several elements. Firstly, a real estate agency’s Online office: EW in Clearance Sale. In the shop window/showcase we will recreate the aesthetic and image of real estate agencies with a photographic catalogue of empty apartments in the neighbourhood. Therefore, as one of the agency’s tasks a record of empty apartments will be created. In order to do so, the neighbourhood’s cadastral data will be obtained and updated, inviting neighbours to participate in the elaboration of this record on a larger scale. They will be invited to carry out a signalling campaign with stickers on empty houses of the neighbourhood. Finally, there will be debate sessions on gentrification and real estate speculation. For the sessions we will invite:

- Santiago Cirugeda (Architect)- V de Vivienda- Neighbour Association of Malasaña- Mesa de la Vivienda de Lavapies.- Praxis cooperative.- Fernando Roch (Urbanism Profesor in ETSAM)

(October 2007)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08intb3549

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR + EMPTY WORLD (published texts)

TODO POR LA PRAXIS.(TxP) is presented as a Laboratory where to test artistic-activist practice projects aimed at the aesthetic-effective amplification of social struggle cycles. TxP is generated from the inevitable convergence between artistic-activist practices, architectural praxis as an interconnection process between public space and multitude, and the ethnography of social communication aimed at creating opposition spaces of immaterial interchange. It is an epistemological materialisation of the socio-cultural capital which the different opposition social networks to hegemony have woven in the last quarter of the 20th century in post-industrial metropolises; a theoretical-methodological laboratory whose ultimate function is to investigate the ontological resistance processes of antagonistic subjectivities.

In TxP we present 2 axes of investigation to Madrid Abierto 08: Speculator- EmptyWorld.

 

Speculator.www.speculator.es

Using the imagery of comics, we have generated a type-Marvell superhero (or supervillain) who personifies the semi-conscious idea of the mass worker, of the existence of an artefact-subject, the positive/negative hero who embodies the ideology of the today’s speculator. Through a series of vignettes spread across the exhibition space and a visual projection in different points, we attempt to publish our social capitalism superhero. The caption of the Speculator; “Welcome to the desert of reality!” becomes the reading key that enables us to drift through Madrid, as a symbolic recreation of the immaterial power of property speculation.

 

 

Empty World.Empty Property State Agency. www.emptyworld.es

The housing problem experienced by large sectors of society is aggravated by an oversized property market that ignores the current wealth of property in a state of abandonment or part of the speculation process. The reason behind this phenomenon is the speculative profit generated by changes in the value of the floor from the time the property is abandoned to the subsequent appreciation of the neighbourhood. The aim of Empty World is to analyse these processes.

The residents of the neighbourhood are invited to participate in a signposting campaign by placing stickers with the Empty World (EW) logotype on the empty property found in their buildings/blocks.

An Empty World Empty Property State Agency is set up in the Liquidación Total (Full Clearance Sale) space. In the Liquidación Total shop window, the iconography of traditional state agencies is reproduced and empty apartments are offered to potential tenants through a visual Catalogue (a register of unoccupied apartments) of the empty apartments available in the neighbourhood.

 Organisation of workshops based on the gentrification and property speculation phenomena (see Empty World Workshops on www.emptyworld.es). 

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WORKSHOPS ON URBAN RESISTANCES, GENTRIFICATION AND PROPERTY SPECULATION

Liquidación Total.C/San Vicente Ferrer Nº 23. Local 2.Metro Tribunal. Madrid.

Thursday 21· Presentation Empty World (Association of Neighbours of Malasaña-ACIBU).· Basurama (Urban action).· emerge.es Collective (Sustainable unity).· Andrés Jaque (Architect. Project Lecturer at ETSAM).

Friday 22· Fernando Roch (Head of Urban Planning Department of ETSAM).· Francisco Gil (Praxis Co-operative).· Democracia (Welfare State).

Saturday 23· V de Vivienda (Popular Assembly for the right to housing).· Jordi Claramonte - Fiambrera Obrera (Okupasa).· Santiago Cirugeda (Architect).

Saturday 30· Empty World. Todo por la Praxis or how to bring capitalism down from your home in 5 easy steps:

1.We are not what you think we should be or what we really are. We are a liquid resistance that permanently constitutes itself in relation to fluid, referential and self-managing contexts. We are a laboratory of projects that practices structural ethnography on opposition artistic activist practices as formalisations potentially capable of symbolising the social conflict in an aesthetically effective execution in the public space. We are the echo of the poverty of Philosophy, of its derivations on the social context marked by the withdrawal of the paradigm-models and post-post-modern tales. You don’t know it, but we are all a methodological axis, an epistemological variant among various others. First step to bringing capitalism down from your home: Break the silence, become visible as antagonistic subjectivity; become an anti-capitalism virus and spread. 

2.We are always the otherness. You will never recognise us. We are agit-pop elements, a political-pop reformulation stemming from the death rattles of the marginal, post-industrial public space of agitprop, a link, an extra-historical link, designed as a total and multi-polar resistance against the hegemony of post-material capitalism. We are an axis around which three investigation axes are articulated (the post-urban, the infra-urban and the supra-urban) which represent proletarian subjectivity in its axiomatic pre-power state, a potential transformation of a seemingly immutable reality. Second step to bringing capitalism down from your home: Make an effort, a small effort, and remember what you were, what you thought you were, and what you wanted to be before assuming what you are; insurrection begins with desire.

3. We are a consequence, the dark side imposed by the blind forces of capital, functioning in automatic pilot, operating impersonally without passion or emotion, with their seductive logic of sensitive social control over uncoordinated subjects in their multiple manageable desires. As such, we act as a projection of the de-concealment desire of a mute mass. Based on the class interest logic, the post-urban conceals more sensitive than reasonable issues, the infra-urban conceals more romantic than effective ideas and the supra-urban disguises a calmness so simulated, a well-being so weak and questionable that, because it is so convincing, it has engendered a suburban revolt which, as well as questioning the institutional methods, it delegitimises its spectacular idea. From there stems the social need for a de-concealment of the discourses and practices that address the structuring of the urban, focusing on the symbolic production systems, circulation of meaning and social meaning processes. All the practices aimed at inventing resistance spaces against the control mechanisms-devices are potential artistic projects. Third step to bringing capitalism down from your home: You are an activist artist; act like one and generate your own activist-artistic self-defence collective.

4. We are secular alchemists opposed to capitalism, that fictitious psycho-technical management space, the minimalist exhibitionism of those of us who can only trans-socialise outside the public-political space through the aesthetized potlach of the interchange of intense disappointment. It is a question of broadening artistic practices as means of social expression, as collective authors of our own experience, experiencing the construction of position spaces, as decisive authors rather than passive spectators. Fourth step to bringing capitalism down from your home:Become a non-negotiable antagonism; defend yourself against capitalism.

5. We are a process; our state is a derivative procedural text, a bad experience of identities disconnected from a virtually possible reality, a reality imagined as potential subjectivity, frozen in the project phase. We are explicit, evident, pre-political.   We all need controlled authenticity rituals and we will provide authenticity according to our existential demotivation. We are a post-situationist social laboratory generator of immaterial situations capable of altering the nausea, the systemic repetition. We are the subjects of intermittent precariousness, the objectors from the slums who gained access to their academies, the first to lead the urban withdrawal and the last to abandon the epistemological trench. We were the ones who shouted against the inevitable before sinking into a positional and declining silence. We refuse the means and the end and we now claim the streets as the operation centre of the new uprisings. We are a provocation. We burnt Paris in 2005 and we will do so again. We will be the first to join a revolution, a guerrilla in favour of self-managing the symbolic economy of the post-industrial proletariat. We were the ones who nobody ever saw in the right place at the right time. We are invisible! We have the fifth assumption in our hands. Fifth step to bringing capitalism down from your home: A new battle is about to begin; get ready for the global uprising.

www.todoporlapraxis.com

www.emptyworld.es

www.speculator.es

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08intc2044, 08intc2042

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR + EMPTY WORLD (2008.01 / project review / theoretical data)

Todo por la Praxis: PROJECT LAB

When in 1999 “Todo por la Praxis” (www.todoporlapraxis.com) was created, its motivation was located in the disillusionment of a heterogeneous group of anti-system subjectivities with the existing practices in the realm of the public space critic. With individuals coming from heterogeneous theoretical and disciplinary backgrounds, the group was formed as a “collective intellect” and an active political individual: Like a Project Lab which’s main goal was to instruct a wide territory to practice – as a transforming agent- in the symbolic field of artistic practices.

A Lab that produces and amplifies aesthetic projects for cultural resistance, a Lab to design efficient visual communication tactics, to test tools, organizational models and unconventional artistic actions. A place to develop projects that intervene in/on urban public space; activist aesthetic practices or confrontational activities – as a means to represent the social conflict in an aesthetically effective way – and artistic actions in/on public space (and their repercussions on the social context in which they inscribe themselves).

One of our most recent themes is personified by Speculator, manifested thanks to the creation of an archetype-character. Speculator is a multiple identity that assumes different roles in the diverse contexts to which he belongs. It is focused on an urban question, the public sphere and the real estate market. In this sense, any action oriented against ruling structures will be absorbed by Speculator’s potential projects. Speculator’s specific goals are: a) Unveil the net of existing relations between real estate speculation and gentrification, b) Analyze which segregation mechanisms and social control devices used in today’s trans-symbolic gentrification processes.

EMPTY WORLD

In Madrid there are approximately 300.000 empty homes that create a posturban reality. The abandonment of real estate patrimony that is reflected by these empty houses indicates the role of the house-product as a speculative practice that increases its value. That is, in our current real estate market houses are mainly empty because more profits are obtained from the house-product without doing anything, than by putting the product in the market as rented house. Therefore, there is an unused patrimony because by its simple accumulation and speculative revaluation more profits are obtained than by using them socially. EW intends to show these activities, so abundant in our cities and, specially, in the neighbourhood of Malasaña.

The neighbourhood of Malasaña is in the centre of the city and has been subject to real estate pressures throughout history. First – in days of Franco – they tried to devastate the neighbourhood with a haussmanian strategy. This initiative wanted to create a great avenue to connect Bilbao with Gran Vía. The existence of an important real estate patrimony in the imaginary line to be constructed stopped the project. The disappearance of the neighbourhood’s University created some expectations but the hippies came along, and were later substituted by the movida’s extravagance, and slowed it down. The rehabilitation plan of 95 was a great challenge for the neighbourhood for it ended up with the expulsion of great part of its residents with the excuse of eliminating substandard housing. And the process has ended by introducing new tenants in “luxurious substandard housing”. Right now there is a model created by the administration and private companies that intends to turn the city into a theme park (Disneyfication), creating consumer oriented places. As it already happened to Chueca in the nineties, Malasaña is subject to a similar strategy in which fashion and leisure are the parameters that define its future scenery. A scenario of gentrification in the Madrid fashion that we have labelled post-urban.  The logic of this pos-turban plan consists of emptying in order to fill. To empty urban spaces of their symbolic landmarks and unproductive inhabitants, transforming them into post-urban spaces, initiate a trans-symbolic gentrification; to redefine new urban space that fits the productive/reproductive subjectivities of the global city-factory. These “ethnic-class cleaning” operations are camouflaged beneath the “rehabilitation” rhetoric, a concept that is functioning as nucleus of the new fiction capitalism. This social control model implies a complex alliance between different interests. On the one hand, public Institutions, pressured by the private sector and their own economic interests tend to favour private investment on areas that must be “recoverable”, while they have to deal with the social conflict that these agents of gentrification create. On the other hand, the residents of some specific area become divided and oppose each other, those who feel favoured by the gentrification process and those who become “victims”. The post-urban scenario manifests itself on all social levels; the neighbourhood networks of mutual support become fragmented, the symbolic elements of belonging are delocalized (work ties, family, etc), social communication channels are reduced due to the fragmentation of common interest among residents, and, last, the relationships between owners and tenants become polarized.

In this context the Empty World project, included in the Todo por la Praxis Project Lab, is created.

Empty world in four movements. (Programme)

 1. EW is a multi-centred and multidisciplinary artefact that works upon the symbolic and social field as a tactic to connect different dimensions in which gentrification agents operate.

2. We have defined EW as a re-appropriation strategy of inactive space that represents the three million empty homes that exist in the Spanish State. Our general objective is – from the artistic field – to provide theoretic-methodological tools for the antagonist group.

 3. EW as an effective social and aesthetic project emerges from the need to develop a series of social and visual communication mechanisms that served to achieve a double goal: to chart the new posturban scenarios – analyzing weak spots; empty houses in the area -, and also, evaluate the level of gentrification risk to which these zones are exposed – how the social fabric was structured in that specific area, which elements of self-defence could they count on and which was their weakest flank or potential for urban conflict. To answer these questions with certain methodological efficiency we carried out an ethnographic investigation of one of the areas that seemed to be at high risk of falling under gentrification; the neighbourhood of Malasaña.

 4. EW intends to provide resistance tools – tactics and strategies – to the people’s movement in the neighbourhood, and Physical Signs are a way to make oneself present in terms of gentrification. EW is an action programme. 

 (January 2008)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08intb3550

2008 / 2008.02.22. EL MUNDO SXXI. Protestas a pie de Calle (Todo por la Praxis)

2008 / 2008.02.22. EL MUNDO SXXI. Protestas a pie de Calle (Todo por la Praxis)

**  OPEN THE ATTACHED PDF TO SEE THE COMPLETE DOCUMENT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08dima2223

2008. Todo por la praxis. CHEMA: EL MUNDO ES AZUL, 2004

2008. Todo por la praxis. CHEMA: EL MUNDO ES AZUL, 2004

 

    

EL MUNDO ES AZUL, 2004 (the word is blue)Plaza de España, Madrid Chema

In 2003, Telefónica launched a promotional campaign using motorbike racers which were sponsored by the company. That same year, some of them were world champions, so the company took advantage of the media hype to promote their company. The main slogan, the campaign’s message (“The world is blue”) uses the accidental media effect in an ambiguous manner, transferring it to a company’s reality whose only connection to such event is its sponsor condition. That is, once more, publicity and marketing use classic tools, such as de-contextualization, appropriation, opportunism, to launch their campaigns. And it’s here where as a reaction and counter-campaign arises using the same codes, the same tools, but subverting them. “The world is blue” campaign reminded me of the true blue world, that is, to bricklayers. To substitute some media icons, whose clothing consists of blue overalls, which are also worn by unknown bricklayers, maintaining the rest, thus creating a perfect scenery.

Promotional posters used for Telefónica’s “the world is blue” campaign.T The world is blueD The new design of telephone booths provides a space that the company itself uses to promote their services. The posters’ design has been conditioned by the size and the format of promotional space available in telephone booths. As it was impossible to introduce the posters in that space in a conventional way, the posters are made of vinyl that is stuck on the available space, the action took place by sticking two pieces of vinyl (100x80) in two booths, the interventions posters intertwine with the real Teléfonica posters. The posters remained unnoticed for about a month, once the company renewed their promotional posters. A 2004P Plaza de España Madrid

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

TODO POR LA PRAXIS (TPP) was created as a “laboratory for Projects” which produces a variety of aesthetic and cultural projects. TPP is formalized in an area of design and testing of the most efficient cultural resistance techniques, focusing on testing non conventional tools, forms of organization and action, around specific action projects. Their two basic themes are activist artistic practices or opposition practices as a means to represent social conflict in an effective aesthetic manner and artistic practices in/on public space and its repercussions on the social context in which they inscribe themselves. Those basic themes are themselves divided in three research lines that are represented through their alter egos: establishing a symbolic game which defines each of their working areas.

 

 

CHEMA: Alter ego of “Todo por la Praxis” Project. Chema is built through the symbiosis of two main icons of revolutionary movements: Che Guevara, paradigm of the revolutionary movement, precursor of guerrilla war tactics and Mao Tse-Tung, forerunner of the social mobilization campaign defined as cultural revolution. Chema is created as a new revolutionary icon, by mixing characteristics of the two and developing a new line of direct action through the new concept of “cultural guerrilla”.

One of the most urgent functions of confrontational cultural practices is to redirect propaganda campaigns, through interferences in the communicative channel, specific social issues, refocusing campaigns from a position that shows the internal contradictions of the symbolic system of ideological transmission.

Therefore, an anti-hegemonic social praxis that works by decoding, dismantling codes, mechanisms, artefacts and ideological and coercive constructions with which the ruling class maintain their discursive hegemony.

** SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08aama1926, 08aama3537, 08aama3535, 08prmc3533

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (2007.05 / visual data)

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (2007.05 / visual data)

 

    

    

      

(May 2007)  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08inib1960

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (technical data)

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (technical data)

** SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

SPECULATOR

Dedolight spotlight 150wDedolight spotlight 150w with dimmer incorporated. Stand.Manfrotto included

Standard Billboard Chroming Aluminium Trush 3x5

Digitally printed canvas 3x5 micro-perforated finishes

T Speculator

D The intervention takes places by making a promotional poster with images of the character that as if part of a graphic novel, enables a presentation of him. It will also include a spotlight that will project the word Speculator into the sky of Madrid. Emulating the Batman comics in which the citizens of Gotham City used this resource to contact the superhero. We use this same element so the new Speculator comes to the city Madrid.

A 2008

P Madrid Abierto 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08prmc1923, 08prmc3533

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (theoretical + visual data)

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (theoretical + visual data)

** SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

Todo por la Praxis (TPP) was created as a “laboratory for Projects” which produces a variety of aesthetic and cultural projects. TPP is formalized in an area of design and testing of the most efficient cultural resistance techniques, focusing on testing non conventional tools, forms of organization and action, around specific action projects. Their two basic themes are activist artistic practices or opposition practices as a means to represent social conflict in an effective aesthetic manner and artistic practices in/on public space and its repercussions on the social context in which they inscribe themselves. Those basic themes are themselves divided in three research lines that are represented through their alter egos: establishing a symbolic game which defines each of their working areas.

 

Speculator: Heteronymous of “Todo por la praxis” project. This line of work focuses on the urban concept – public field and the real estate business – the urban theme contains matters that are more felt than comprehended thus the need to unveil the discourses and practices that deal with the structure of the urban environment, focussing on systems of symbolic production, circulation of meaning, social meaning processes. In this sense, every practice that is centred on creating confrontational spaces against ruling structures and to investigate space expropriation strategies will be received as potential projects of SPECULATOR.

The idea is to amplify artistic practices as a means to articulate oneself socially as collective authors of our own experience, witnessing therefore, the construction of confrontational spaces as actors and not mere spectators.

To carry out the job we develop a character (Speculator) with obvious references to comic. This character comes to being as an antihero that incarnates values of the real estate speculator: extortion, blackmail, manipulation, and, of course, speculation. This ironic and symbolic game unveils both urban discourses and practices that prevail in the ruling ideology.

Speculator: Alter ego of Todo por la Praxis, the proposed intervention for Madrid Abierto’s 2008 edition intends to be the presentation of the Speculator character in the city of Madrid.

The project has clear references to the realm of comics. The use of language of comics translates itself in the construction of a character: Speculator, the urban issue, the growing problem of savage urbanism, is the context in which the activity of such unique character inscribes itself. The ironic symbolic game of heroes and antiheroes, present both the draft of the project and in the creation of the character, enables us to perceive contemporary urban practices from a critical standpoint.

  

    

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08prmc1922, 08pric1921, 08prmc1924, 08prmc3532, 08prmc3533

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR + EMPTY WORLD (2008.01 / project review / technical data)

 

 THIS PROGRAMME IS DIVIDED IN DIFFERENT SPECIFIC ACTIONS

2.1. Empty World Housing Real Estate Agency

The real estate market is in “crisis” after almost a decade of obscene profits. The majority of “small amateur agencies”, created for fast money are closing. In this “recession” we find that it’s appropriate to create our own Antagonist Agency. With that end in mind we have created a real estate agency to put empty housing in-the-market; this agency is called: Empty World-Housing Real Estate Agency. The first office will “open” in the Total Liquidation in Madrid Abierto 08. Functioning as a common agency, in the Total Liquidation showcase will have the archetypical image of traditional agencies and empty houses will be offered to potential tenants through the Catalogue of available houses in the neighbourhood. In the agency the future tenant will find the necessary counselling to obtain the rent of their apartment: Location and conditions of the apartment, Access Handbook and Assignment of Contact and housing use, etc.

 

2.2. Virtual-Catalogue Registration

The first requirement to start the agency is to have a “list of properties” to offer our clients. To obtain houses for rent we have decided to create a section in the web (www.emptyworld.es) to collect information with an active participation tool that enables the creation of a Virtual Registration to obtain information on empty real estate (uninhabited) detailing their characteristics (location, state of the apartment, square meters, number of rooms, information about the owner, etc.), on the other hand, offering the possibility of showing this information in a way that the user can find the empty houses with a personal tracker. Our agency uses the method that many other real estate companies use. The main idea is that detournement is still a highly effective tool in the context of fictional democracies. Our Virtual-Catalogue Registration is a tool that intends to show the essential contradiction of the capitalist market; to prove the role that as product-good the house assumes in the real estate market, drifting away from social use that supposedly is one of its features. In the fictional welfare state, where there are more than THREE million empty houses, the great majority of Spanish workers have to pay a mortgage for the rest of their lives.

 

2.3. Physical Signalling

To signpost is a way to “mark”, to limit access. Just as the other agencies, our agency needs to be visible, needs to signal those houses that “belong to all of us”. For that purpose we will invite neighbours to carry out a campaign to mark – using stickers with the Empty World logo – the empty houses in the neighbourhoods. The goal is to limit space, a way to “enter” the inner circle in which agents of gentrification defining ourselves as an opposing force able to potentially abolish them, move them form their ruling position inside the territory of urban space administration. As we have already shown.

 

2.4. Transfer of Operating Contract

In a codified society everything has to be regulated with a “basic” capitalist formula: the Contract. In our case, the proposal of a Contract intends to prove that the Public Administration and different private entities are responsible for introducing empty housing in the market, in those neighbourhoods/cities that suffer serious needs in living conditions. This is nothing but a mere work hypothesis that, although it would involve different judicial and political agents, is not, to us, probable in the current correlations of forces. In fact, the present project suggests the need for legislative reforms that (as it already happens in Catalonia, with the Housing Act) prove its viability in a new and necessary social scenario. We need to pressure the different Administrations to adopt, with minimum social and legal guarantees, the regulations that have been adopted in Catalonia on the issue of empty houses. It obviously isn’t a solution, but it’s a start, a legal precedent that must be widened. We need speculators, the gentrifying agents, to be limited in their “privileges” and submit to the logic of the Social State. Our idea of contract is not to “transform” a document (lacking any legal validity) into a “propaganda” device, but to represent, and symbolically demand, the need to “regulate” a market that is in the hands of speculative capitalist agents: A simulated Contract that involves the legal mechanisms for a possible real Contract.

 

2.5. Locksmith Handbook for beginners

The majority of real estate agencies used the “key in hand” slogan as an advertising ploy. Obviously, we, keep, “renting” off plan. The precariousness of the project forces us to leave the offered house’s access in hands of the tenant. But we can’t afford to give them only the “kick on the door” resource. We sought the help of other groups that have dealt with similar situations and found Okupasa. They will give “new/future tenants” two tools; The Handbook and the participation in a Workshop where they will explain, as “experts”, the 12 possible forms of accessing a home (which appear in the Handbook)

The wire method. 2. Drill a cylinder. 3. Opening card. 4. Sliding sheets TGF. 5. Multipick Hood. 6. Extracting the rotor. 7. Cylinder method. 8. Extract a ring. 9. Picking and Racking. 10. Knock key. 11. Cut padlock. 12. Trap measurer.

 

2.6. Franchise

The Franchise method we use is new version of the virus-cell idea that was developed by the self-managed workers movement of the Twentieth Century: each context is different and needs different tactics. For a further development of EW on a larger scale we have defined an “Action Protocol” based on the general principles of Copyleft. You can’t acquire EW franchises, we can only reproduce EW, everyone can access EW’s methodological contents in the website (www.emptyworld.es) and establish an Empty World Housing Real Estate Agency“office”. But first he must accept the “Action Protocol” and subscribe in the website. The idea is for EW to swiftly expand as a mutating virus that adapts to the organism’s circumstances. By creating franchises in this way that, apart from obtaining material in the website, generate new tools to be passed on freely through the Web, reinforcing the project. It is a way to let the social intellect work by itself around the EW concept. Social creativity doesn’t have formal limits and can redefine any project in real life. The franchises, real “autonomous commandos”, are EW’s social foundation, its strength is the expression of the project’s social potential.

 

2.7. Audiovisual Document. (Interviews)

Interviews as opinion polls are a social construction method of reality. In general when someone is interviewed the process is conducted with the intention of obtaining answers that the interviewer wants or needs. Our intention was to avoid that trend of indirect manipulation using the “open interview” model. The main goal was to analyze the territory to find “friction areas” in the social network of urban areas in which we intended to work. Therefore, we had to let the neighbours speak. The questionnaire was structured on three levels; Neighbours, shopkeepers, and social agents (neighbour associations, social movements, experts, etc). All had to interact with the questionnaire in a friendly way, and therefore, the interview couldn’t be taken to uncomfortable territories. The questionnaire was extended or reduced depending on discard questions, making people feel as comfortable as possible. The postproduction and editing work has followed that same track, trying to contextualize questions and making each discursive detail visible on every interview. The final result is a piece of audiovisual material that is “exhibited” in the Empty Housing Real Estate Agency as part of EW’s visual and social communication campaign. In it you can observe the contradictions that any gentrification process creates on a specific social structure. While owners/shopkeepers find it a positive transformation, neighbours keep demanding for traditional needs as infrastructures, services, etc., the social agents continue asking for social and political-institutional changes. The Audiovisual Document basically wants to show, with certain undeniable influences from British free cinema, how a community is structured in a constant and daily working progress in which each life world finds a legitimating discourse to protect its needs and interests.

 

2.8. Sessions

There is no action without theory. This obvious remark is the motor of the “Posturban scenarios: empty housing and gentrification”. The sessions will be organized around the gentrification phenomenon and real estate speculation (check Empty World Sessions) and its objective is to discuss the different topics surrounding speculation, gentrification and urban segregation. In order to do this, the participation programme has tried to cover different fields in connection with the subject inviting researchers and activists from different fields and disciplines. The programme is structured in three conference-debate sessions with three representatives of each of those points of view. The need to discuss the phenomenon from the architectonic, sociological, artistic point of view, etc., is why we adopt this plan. With the intention of using the results of these three work sessions in the antagonist movement and rest of open fronts created by EW, we will try to edit a publication with all the information.

 

CALENDAR SPECULATOR – EMPTY WORLDMadrid 2008

- The Speculator image is projected as “overture” of Empty World-Madrid. (7/2/08).

- Opening-Presentation Act of Empty Housing Real State Agency -EW. (Total Clearance Sale. 7th of February  2008)

- Project presentation Madrid abierto. 17:00-18:15 Friday 8th of February. Casa Encendida. Ronda de Valencia Nº2

- Activation of the Virtual Registration in www.emptyworld.es (8/2/08)

- Start off  Physical Signalling of Empty Houses.(CCSS. 9/2/08)

- Posturban scenarios: Empty housing y Gentrification. (Conferences: 20, 21 y 22nd of February 2008, Total Clearance Sale.)

- Speculator party. 22.00h. 22nd of February 2008 (Conde de vista Hermosa Nº 3 Local G  Metro Marques de Vadillo)

- Workshop: “Locksmith Handbook for beginners”. (Date and time yet to be defined)

 

EMPTY WORLDwww.emptyworld.esPosturban scenarios: Empty housing and gentrification.

FEBRUARY-2008

Thursday 21st, Friday 22nd y Saturday 23rd.Liquidación Total.C/San Vicente Ferrer 23 Local 2Metro Tribunal. Madrid.

T-21.18:00 h-21:00 h.

Presentation Empty World (Neighbourhood Assoc. Malasaña – Acibu)Basurama. (Urban Action)Group emerge.es (Sustainable unity)Andrés Jaque. (Architect. ETSAM Project teacher)F-22.18:00 h-21:00 h.Fernando Roch.  (Professor of Urbanism ETSAM )Francisco Gil. (Praxis Cooperative)Democracia. ( Welfare State)           

S-23.18:00 h-21:00 h.

V de Vivienda. (Popular assembly for housing rights)Patio Maravillas. Jordi Claramonte - Fiambrera Obrera. ( Okupasa)Santiago Cirugeda. (Architect)

S-30.18:00 h-21:00 h.

 Empty World Workshop. 

(January 2008) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08intb3823

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (technical data)

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (technical data)

 

 

SPECULATOR

Dedolight spotlight 150wDedolight spotlight 150w with dimmer incorporated. StandManfrotto included.

Standard Billboard Chroming Aluminium Trush 3x5.

Digitally printed canvas 3x5 micro-perforated finishes

T Speculator

D The intervention takes places by making a promotional poster with images of the character that as if part of a graphic novel, enables a presentation of him. It will also include a spotlight that will project the word Speculator into the sky of Madrid. Emulating the Batman comics in which the citizens of Gotham City used this resource to contact the superhero. We use this same element so the new Speculator comes to the city Madrid.

A 2008

P Madrid Abierto 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08prmc3534

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (theoretical data + visual)

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (theoretical data + visual)

 

 

Todo por la Praxis (TPP) was created as a “laboratory for Projects” which produces a variety of aesthetic and cultural projects. TPP is formalized in an area of design and testing of the most efficient cultural resistance techniques, focusing on testing non conventional tools, forms of organization and action, around specific action projects. Their two basic themes are activist artistic practices or opposition practices as a means to represent social conflict in an effective aesthetic manner and artistic practices in/on public space and its repercussions on the social context in which they inscribe themselves. Those basic themes are themselves divided in three research lines that are represented through their alter egos: establishing a symbolic game which defines each of their working areas.

 

 

 Speculator: Heteronymous of “Todo por la praxis” project. This line of work focuses on the urban concept – public field and the real estate business – the urban theme contains matters that are more felt than comprehended thus the need to unveil the discourses and practices that deal with the structure of the urban environment, focussing on systems of symbolic production, circulation of meaning, social meaning processes. In this sense, every practice that is centred on creating confrontational spaces against ruling structures and to investigate space expropriation strategies will be received as potential projects of SPECULATOR.

The idea is to amplify artistic practices as a means to articulate oneself socially as collective authors of our own experience, witnessing therefore, the construction of confrontational spaces as actors and not mere spectators.

To carry out the job we develop a character (Speculator) with obvious references to comic. This character comes to being as an antihero that incarnates values of the real estate speculator: extortion, blackmail, manipulation, and, of course, speculation. This ironic and symbolic game unveils both urban discourses and practices that prevail in the ruling ideology.

Speculator: Alter ego of Todo por la Praxis, the proposed intervention for Madrid Abierto’s 2008 edition intends to be the presentation of the Speculator character in the city of Madrid.

The project has clear references to the realm of comics. The use of language of comics translates itself in the construction of a character: Speculator, the urban issue, the growing problem of savage urbanism, is the context in which the activity of such unique character inscribes itself. The ironic symbolic game of heroes and antiheroes, present both the draft of the project and in the creation of the character, enables us to perceive contemporary urban practices from a critical standpoint.

 

    

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08prmc3532, 08pric1921, 08prmc3533

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (images)

2008. Todo por la praxis. SPECULATOR (images)

 

       

           

             

           

            

Photos: Alfonso Herranz

 

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EMPTY WORLD

Empty Property State Agency -Empty World-      Workshops (gentrification and property speculation)

Empty Property State Agency -Empty World- 

      

        

Workshops on urban resistances, gentrification and property speculation 

            

SPECULATOR

       

          

             

Photos: Todo por la Praxis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08inic2039, 08inic2040

2008. Todo por la praxis. EMPTY WORLD (postcard)

2008. Todo por la praxis. EMPTY WORLD (postcard)

 

* PHYSICAL DOCUMENTS AVAILABLE FOR CONSULTATION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08inic2049