Search Keyword: Total 38 results found.
  Ordering

2009-2010. URBAN BUDDY SCHEME PROGRAMME 2009

INTERNATIONAL SEMINARPlace: La Casa EncendidaRonda de Valencia 2Dates: 5-8 February 2009

Madrid is growing in an unprecedented pace. Multi disciplinary initiatives are engaged in processes that formulate new possible relationships with the city and its inhabitants, this while revealing complex layers of information. Activities that aim to envision possible futures, beyond the current construction crisis, continue with impressive strength.

Madrid Abierto 2009-10 (previously an annual event of interventions in the city, now biennial) will host a seminar at La Casa Encendida 5-8 February 2009. This edition of Madrid Abierto sets out to investigate the potentials of collaborative socio-cultural and politically engaged work and how such work may perform as catalysts for change in the city. We will also try to activate processes that integrate new bodies of knowledge into the already existing.

The aims for these days are basically two. One is to connect the group of selected Madrid Abierto participants with people in Madrid, but also to keep connecting people in Madrid with each other. The resulting networks we aim to establish will hopefully serve as information base, forum for discussion and exchange in preparation for Madrid Abierto projects that are presented in February 2010.

In an effort to provide the artists visiting from abroad with tools that facilitate exchange with people in Madrid as well as an understanding and engagement with the city, locally based practitioners from various fields have been invited to present their views of Madrid. The seminar also includes a group of additional invited artists with an international profile who presents their context specific works carried out in other parts of the world as springboards for further discussion.

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

PROGRAMME

Thursday 5 February6.00-6.15 pm. Welcome speech by Cecilia Andersson, Curator of Madrid Abierto and Jorge Díez, Director of Madrid Abierto.

6.30-7.15 pm.Brief introductions for all invited participants. Open to the public for participation.

7.15-21.00 h.Presentations by Andrés Jaque, Basurama, Ludotek and Wunderkammer. Chaired by Javier Duero.

Friday 6 February 6.00-6.45 pm.Presentations by Studio Kawamura Ganjavian, Uriel Fogué, C.A.S.I.T.A. y Exprimentolimon. Chaired by Luis Úrculo.

7.00-7.45 pm. Presentation by Kyong Park.

8.00-9.00 pm. Presentations by Apolonija Šušteršič + Meike Schalk, Alexander Gerdel y Teddy Cruz. Chaired by Kyong Park.

Saturday 7 February 12.00-2.30 om. One-on-one meeting expert meetings with inivted participants and the attending public.

6.00-6.45 pm. Presentation by International Festival.

7.00-7.45 pm. Presentations by Laurence Bonvin, Susanne Bosch y Josep-Maria Martín. Chaired by STEALTH.

8.00-9.00 pm. Presentations by Jean François Prost, Adriana Salazar y Gustavo Romano. Chaired by International Festival.

Sunday 8 February 6.00-6.45 pm. Presentation by STEALTH.

7.00-7.45 pm. Presentations by Pablo Valbuena, Iñaki Larrimbe y Lisa Cheung. Chaired by STEALTH.

8.00-9.00 pm. Final discussion with all the participants. Chaired by Cecilia Andersson.

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

PARTICIPANTS

Lara Almárcegui (Spain). Her work often explores neglected or overlooked sites, carefully cataloguing and highlighting each location's tendency towards entropy. Her projects range from a guide to ruins in Holland to the display of materials used to construct the cities in which she shows. Her works are simple actions. Behind them are vast research processes.

Cecilia Andersson (Sweden) is curator and founder of Werk Ltd., a curator's studio in Stockholm. Her latest projects include Supersocial; a platform for events organised in different cities and On Cities; an exhibition at the Swedish Museum of Architecture, Stockholm. Curator of Madrid Abierto 2009-10.

Basurama (Spain) focuses its action area in productive processes, the waste such processes generate and the creative possibilities brought about by this contemporary circumstance. It aims to study phenomena that are part of the massive production of real and virtual rubbish in the consumer society, providing new views that act as generators of thoughts and attitudes.

Laurence Bonvin (Switzerland) appraoch her subjects in so-called "documentary style" that implies an exploratory approach, close to objectivity and away from the spectacular. Main fields of exploration are suburban periphery, urban sprawling, the landscape and architecture. Research include discussions with sociologists, urban thinkers, architects and others involved in the shaping of urban contexts.

Susanne Bosch (Germany/United Kingdom) carries out site-specific, gallery and context-based installations, films, drawings, objects, publications and collaborative event-based projects. Her work is usually based on long-term research questions such as the role and potential of art in contested societies and situations.

C.A.S.I.T.A. -on this occasion Diego del Pozo, Eduardo Galvagni and Loreto Alonso- (Spain) carries out projects produced in collaborations that generate time for dialogue simultaneously as they take place in autonomous art spaces. Their current project ( http://www.ganarselavida.net/) observes the conditions of subjectivity and methods of production.

Lisa Cheung (Great Britain/Canada) is interested in public spaces and in creating environments where social exchange can occur. She is also interested in the temporary structures that constitutes urban landscape.  In recent projects she utilised gardening and cultivating plants as a point of interaction and participation.

Teddy Cruz (United States). The task of contemporary art and architecture today should be to reveal territorial and institutional conflicts as an operational tool to redefine practices of intervention in the public domain. No advances in design can occur without re-organizing existing political structures and economic resources. This in order to promote alternative systems of sociability and activism.

Jorge Díez (Spain), cultural director and curator. Director of Madrid Abierto and co-director of the MBA in Companies and Cultural Institutions of the Santillana/Salamanca University, curator of the 2008-09 program Espai 13 of the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona.

Javier Duero (Spain) is an independent curator and cultural producer. He has developed projects and been the curator of exhibitions in different institutions and centres of national and international art. Currently he directs a research group on the cultural tissue of the region of Madrid for the CA2M in Móstoles. He is a member of the Pensart Cultura association.

EXPRIMENTOLIMON (Spain). A non-profit cultural association created with the aim to raise public awareness on the citizen's reading of and engagement with contemporary art. Through different workshops they attempt to make people contemplate and discuss cultural and social topics. Exprimentolimon is a multidisciplinary group involving psychologists, sociologists and art teachers.

Uriel Fogué (Spain) is an architect and teacher of the Architectonical, City and Territory Department at ESAYA (UEM). He is co-editor of the publication UHF. Most recent projects and works of his Agencia de Arquitectura (Agencia de Arquitectura (Architecture Agency) look at the "infra-structuring" of public space as an aesthetic policy practice concerning energy.

Alexander Gerdel (Venezuela). "Shanty" is a recurring topic in Gerdel's work, which resorts to this marginal and periphery architectonic figure - excluded from official history - to analyse the idiosyncrasy of a country and to confront it with its cultural identity.

International Festival (Sweden), initiated by architect Tor Lindstrand and choreographer Marten Spangberg, devises work in a range of cultural contexts and operate at the interface between architecture and performance, and between object and action. Their work facilitates a collective dialogue that aims to dissolve the line between spectator and viewer.

Andrés Jaque Architects (Spain) and the think tank linked to the Political Innovation Office explore the role architecture plays in building societies. They administer the political quality brand Arquitectura Parlamento (Parliament Architecture) and design political transparency plans; urban planning based on the word of mouth or social assemblies based on controversy, among others.    

Kawamura-Ganjavian (Spain). Architecture studio established by Key Portilla-Kawamura and Ali Ganjavian. They have worked in several countries in the fields of urbanism, architecture, stage design and product design. Their projects range from the scale of domestic objects to the territorial scale using a consistent language of concept-materialisation throughout these diverse endeavours. They are founding members of Studio Banana.

Iñaki Larrimbe (Spain) cultural activist. In the field of comic strips he co-founded and co-directs the magazine TMEO. He recently coordinated the device Inmersiones focused on artistic practices emerging from the Basque Country. As an artist his most recent works aim to belong to a "do it yourself" culture situated within the mechanisms of cultural industries.

Ludotek (Spain). Ludotek is a chronotopic, social and physical research lab.Ludotek proposes a critical exploration related to the leisure activities of the contemporary individual.Ludotek researches children's activities, produces tests with children based on video, ludograms, documents and play with children without providing any type of education.

Josep-Maria Martín (Spain). With a subjective and reflective will questions and criticises the reality upon which he decides to work. His pieces emphasise ideas about process, research, participation, involvement and negotiation so that the agents identified for each project become real generators of a common project.

Kyong Park (United States) is associate professor at University of California San Diego (from 2007), a co-curator for Shrinking Cities in Berlin (2002-2004), the founding director of International Center for Urban Ecology, Detroit (1999-2001), a curator of Kwangju Biennale, South Korea (1997), the founder/director of StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York (1982-1998).

Jean François Prost (Canada). Artist and architect whose work is based on initiating change in our perception and conception of the urban environment. Projects aim to activate uses in public spaces, contribute and begin to rebuild an urban imaginary, show, encourage visible acts of resistance, of sociability and signs of positive antagonism.

Gustavo Romano (Argentina) has carried out his work using different media: action art, installations, video, net art and photography. He favours the concept of "project" over work of art. He participated in the Havana Biennial and the Singapore Biennial, among others. Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship 2006.

Adriana Salazar (Colombia) has observed how our behaviours become a sign of our subjectivity, and despite this they are not normally the object of our reflections. She has then gone to the production of machines that subvert the sense of our actions: doing actions clumsily, repetitively and out of context, turning the ordinary into something absurd.

STEALTH.unlimited -Ana Dzokic and Marc Neelen- (Serbia/The Netherlands). Their practice spans urban research, spatial intervention and cultural activism. STEALTH considers space a tool and agency. Projects like Wild City (Belgrade) or Urban Catalyst (Amsterdam) involve diverse models of collaborative practicing and co-creation. Co-initiators of Lost Highway Expedition (Western Balkans) and co-curators of the Dutch pavilion, Venice (2008).

Apolonija Šušteršič + Meike Schalk (Germany/The Netherlands/Slovenia). Šušteršič's artistic research combines practice and theory to pursue methods for reflection in which the provocation of crisis leads to a scenario of alternatives and spaces for hope. Schalk is an architect and researcher, teaching the Critical Studies Studio at KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm, together with FATALE (Feminist Architecture Theory Analysis Laboratory Education).

Luis Úrculo (Spain), a graduate of the ETSAM and Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, carries out projects involving architecture, video, design and illustration, among others for Philippe Starck, Sybilla, Mansilla-Tuñón and BCG. He has exhibited his work recently in the 11th Biennial of Venice, FreshMadrid!, Gallery Dama Aflita (Porto) and JAE (Young Spanish Architects).

Pablo Valbuena (Spain),architect graduated at the ETSAM, he has been linked to the tangent spheres of art and architecture, developing spatial concepts applied to virtual environments, videogames, cinema and digital architecture. He currently develops art projects related to space, time and perception.

WUNDERKAMMER -bblab, G+W gálvez-wieczorek, MISC- (Spain).Team made up of three studios that together develop projects within the field of architecture, urban planning, landscaping, design and teaching. Their collaboration does not fit into a standard studio model, but rather as a laboratory that accommodates a constant exchange of ideas and experiences. 

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

Director: Jorge DíezCurator: Cecilia AnderssonCoordination: RMS La Asociación

Organize: Asociación Cultural Madrid Abierto y La Casa EncendidaSponsor: Fundación Altadis, Área de Gobierno de las Artes del Ayuntamiento de Madrid, Consejería de Cultura y Turismo de la Comunidad de MadridCollaborator: Casa de América, ARCO, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Fundación Telefónica, Ministerio de Cultura, Radio 3, Canal Metro, Fundación Rodríguez-Centro Cultural Montehermoso

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10mdtb2490

2009-2010. EVALUATION MEETING 2010 (report)

MADRID ABIERTO 2009-2010Evaluation meetingMatadero, 2nf and 3rd of July 2010

Attendees

Laurence Bonvin, Susanne Bosch, Lisa Cheung, Iñaki Larrimbe, Josep-Maria Martín, Jean-François Prost and Gustavo Romano (participant artists in Madrid Abierto 2009-2010); Pablo España (Democracia), Ramon Parramon and Fito Rodríguez (members of the advisory committee of Madrid Abierto 2007-2009); Jorge Díez and Marta de la Torriente (Asociación Cultural Madrid Abierto); Pilar Acón, María Molina, Mariano Serrano and Manuela Sevilla (collaborators of Madrid Abierto 2009-2010).

Issues

The treated issues according to the established programme created by the advisory committee of Madrid Abierto (March 2008):

Fito Rodríguez comments on the reasons for the absence of this edition’s curator, Cecilia Andersson, who should provide an essential perspective for the evaluation. He also stresses that the horizon seems to be predetermined in suggested guidelines.

Jorge Díez states that proper dates to allow the presence of everyone involved were discussed but that it had been impossible for her to come. He says that in a meeting with Cecilia after the presentation of projects in February, they analyzed the difficulties she had to carry out a proper tracking of the production of projects, due to her living in Sweden and the overlap that occurs when making decisions with the production team and headship of Madrid Abierto. Anyhow, the experience of this edition, which covered two years, with a previous preparatory encounter in February of 2009 was considered very positive. Regarding the proposed guidelines for 2011, they are the consequence, on one hand, of the convenience of developing tasks which are impossible to cover following the usual calendar of project development and, on the other hand, the impossibility of compromising the institutional funding for the next edition, bearing in mind the next local and autonomic elections in the first semester of 2011.

Bellow, different issues brought up in this evaluation session:

1. Keep the open call with a maximum of 50% more artists invited by the curators.To Jean-Françis Prost the edition was very interesting and we must keep it this way. Pablo España underlines the fact that the open call is one of the essential features of the project. No discussion on the subject of percentage of guests.

2. Create a biennial periodicity, keeping the debate sessions and presentations of selected artists for the first year. Focus, the first year as well, on working with selected artists and elaboration of projects.Diversity of opinions regarding this issue, which are determined by the type of project each artist is dealing with. Some artists, like Josep-María Martin, consider a two year span very little time and suggest it should be triennial (first year for reflection, second year to conceptualize the idea and third year to develop the project. “I have had very little time to reflect on the project, in 6 months I had to deliver a final project and for my type of work there is not enough time to conceptualize”.) When asked about such periodicity, Iñaki Larrimbe considers two years as too much time. Other participants came up with the option of giving each artist the time he needs and carry out the project at different points in time, respecting the cycles of each project and its process. Josep-María insists on the fact that it depends on the type of project, if it has already been thought about and is a development of some previous concept or if it is a project that needs to comprehend and develop within the city, with the community. Laurence Bonvin thinks that she would have needed a whole year to discover the city and another year to take the pictures, she agrees with the fact that it depends on if the project already exists. Pablo España thinks that the model of this last edition is much more realistic regarding artistic practices, thus it has clearly improved. The model might use one practice or the other, depending on the global project. The 2008 edition was of direct propaganda. He agrees in expanding the time span but questions its viability.We should keep the first year’s encounter, considered by Susanne Bosch, among others, as very important to create contacts, relationships and know the inner workings of Madrid. In such encounter, the Urban Buddy Schemme should prevail by bringing people together and meeting the city’s residents and other agents that might help in the subsequent development, infrastructure and dialogue that the project will need. Josep-María also thinks that the first encounter in February 2009 went very well. He thinks we should keep that first event and create an intermediate work meeting for the artist to get involved in the management of Madrid Abierto and foster collaborations between projects.

Josep-María thinks it is essential to increase the time period in order to find external funding which is necessary for each project. He also believes that Madrid Abierto should become an agency which prolongs the project in time while other projects and things take place during the year and not only during February. He thinks there at two possible models:A- Select projects in open call and start work.B- Offer contexts and relations to the artists and start working on the project at that moment.He thinks the best model would be a synthesis of both. Ramón Parramón thinks that the concentration of projects in time is positive in relation to communication, visibility… and negative for the artist, but it is necessary to keep a common moment in time for all projects. Pablo thinks that we are tending more and more towards the invisibility of the projects therefore he considers it essential to have a date in which they coincide, although there are projects that need more time and continuity. That common moment could be an exhibition.

Josep-María thinks that it’s very important to do something to make the subjective element of each project visible (Are we capable of transforming something subjective? Reveal the work that has been carried out?). Fito believes we should create an accessible device for the public, to explain the projects. He thinks it makes no sense going back to exhibition halls, this would undermine what has already been achieved in public space. There has to be another way to show it, that is the problem. Pablo thinks it is possible to use both platforms; the hall and public space. He doesn’t believe in going back to the institutions or to work in the enclosed space of exhibition halls. Fito and Susanne think the artist himself should take his project from the subjective realm to decide and find the way of showing it; he has to find a solution in order for the external to return to an enclosed space. Laurence thinks there are projects in which we have to discuss not only how they should be shown but also, in projects that have dealt with an external community, to see how such community or communities have been represented and information returns to that community.

Josep-María thinks that technical problems should be shown, why a project has ended up being a certain way and not another, how a project has started, its plan and how it has ended up. Madrid Abierto is a laboratory, with a development in which the artist’s final analysis and delivery of information is essential. It is also essential to arrive to final conclusions, which must be transmitted. Fito dwells on how people can start out from this lab to transcend it and surpass its frontiers into other realms.

3. Continue with February’s interventions In general, people have suggested carrying out projects outside the month of February, for it is not a proper month weather wise, as well as the amount of ARCO related activities, which interfere. Susanne thinks that by changing the intervention month, a different use of space would be activated on the public’s mind. Manuela Sevilla also thinks it is necessary to change the interventions’ month. Josep-María thinks that the interesting side of keeping it in February is that it coincides with ARCO providing affluence of specialized public that is in Madrid in those dates. The possibility of keeping it during ARCO is discussed, but extending the period of exhibition from one month to three. Jorge Díez underlines the fact that, both the common moment in time and its coinciding with ARCO are product of the restructuring of the Open Spaces project carried out by the Altadis Foundation within the Fair itself and on the other hand, the needed visibility both for the public and sponsorship. It is also indisputable that much of the professionals that go to ARCO can discover Madrid Abierto knowing that it would be very difficult to make them come expressly to see it. Also, due to the lack of money that Madrid Abierto invests on promotion, a special time gap has been created in the busy calendar of the city, just before ARCO, which the media has already incorporated. An example is the lack of attention that the media showed for Susanne’s project which started in November.

4. Include a paragraph in the call to contextualize the edition and another more specific paragraph written by the curator/s.Susanne thinks it is essential because, in her case, she decided to participate only after having read that paragraph.

5. Continue to physically and conceptually exceed the Prado-Recoletos-Castellana axis.Lisa Cheung doesn’t feel the need to keep intervening within those limits.Pablo España thinks that it is necessary to surpass those limits to continue with the more realistic model developed in Madrid Abierto.Jorge considers the transgression of these limits has taken place increasingly and effectively in successive editions. On the other hand, right now institutions would be thrilled by the idea of Madrid Abierto leaving the axis completely. There have been projects (critically oriented) in last editions which have involved very complicated negotiations due to the visibility they had within the axis, and for which other locations entailed no resistance at all.

6. Continue with audiovisual and sound sections and amplify specific means for their broadcast.The issue wasn’t discussed.

7. Maintain the current advisory committee and choose the curators among its members.Jorge explains how in 2009, after some personal resignations, they decided to dissolve the committee created in 2007, after the interesting review of the Madrid Abierto model, as consequence of conflicting interests on the role of the curator and also the bad administration of its participation in the model applied by Cecilia in the preparatory encounter of February of 2009.Once again the role of the curator is discussed, issue on which there is a diversity of opinions. Fito thinks it is important to maintain two values:a. The flexibility proven by Madrid Abierto to constantly review the model.b. He supports the idea of eliminating the curator as individual figure and suggests a collective curatorial position (it’s risky but this wide open policy is a beautiful idea).

On the other hand, like Josep-María, Susanne and Lisa, they support the figure of the individual curator when carrying out their role correctly. It is essential for the curator to be in contact with the artists and never to be “absent”. Josep-María thinks that in this edition the contact with the curator has been very intermittent and might have affected some projects.

Pablo thinks that if the curator is eliminated, Madrid Abierto is under the risk of becoming standard. Josep-María thinks that if we intend to continue with the idea of plurality, and thesis, there must be a curator or curatorial group (for example, maybe the artists of one edition might select the artists of the next), someone to direct the process as an interlocutor in a concrete place, an accessible person who knows the context of Madrid. Susanne thinks it is essential to give each edition a subject or theme; the curator can be international but we also need someone who knows the realities of the city. She suggests the idea of a young person able to create a connection with a foreign curator.

8. Generate documents and publications which expand the experience and the accumulated knowledge of the five editions,Total agreement.

New issues suggested outside the programmed plan:

1. Communication. Essential subject in which there is total agreement. Jean-François, due to his type of project, can’t plan everything beforehand and needs to carry out an action to activate sensibility and participation in the workshop. His intervention in Atocha has been complicated due to the station’s own rhythm and type of people that walk through the area. He would have needed more communication in order to get to people. He suggests the creation of a better and more specific map or plan where each intervention is clearly distinguishable. We have to find and develop new communication channels so the interventions get to the general public.

2. Manuela considers the project has globally gotten to the public after six editions and has been better conceptualized. By taking place in a two year period it becomes more “intriguing” to the public that follows it with more interest.

3. Ramón Parramón thinks Madrid Abierto has found a balance and has grown to relevant dimensions. He finds it complex because it combines a festival with production and residency (distributed in time). To him it also needs contacts and interaction with neighbourhoods and communities. It is important not to have a space or location of reference.

4. Josep-María believes in the importance of evaluation sessions, which must continue to maintain a transparency which he finds essential.

5. Ramón Parramón thinks the team of Madrid Abierto is too small, he also believes dynamic projects need a tracking, both in preproduction and the rest of the process until they develop completely. Fito says the model each time tends more towards a production agency. Therefore he thinks it is fundamental to create a larger team to produce less projects of larger potential. In his mind a team must be created and dedicated to the production, search of interlocutors for dynamic processes and development, as well as another group exclusively dedicated to communicate with the people, communities, media, blogs,… Josep-Maria disagrees with the idea of reducing the number of projects.

6. Madrid Abierto’s independence is crucial.

7. Josep-María and Susanne Bosch think it’s necessary to create residencies for artists.

8. To Josep-María communication and interaction between selected artists is necessary (an initial one and another during the process in order to share the complexity of its development). He claims not to have known the final development of each project, this has frustrated him. Although Laurence thinks it’s very important to bring the artists together during the year, she finds it very difficult, having the timing of each project in mind, to find a date and moment which fits everyone’s agenda. Lisa agrees with the organization of an annual event to specify the needs of each project and to put them in common with the rest of the artists. Jean-François thinks that the lack of communication between artists has been their own responsibility, they are the ones who must create relationships, but they haven’t. He thinks that, for this purpose, certain platforms or already existing tools could be used for this communication. For example, he names places to meet for five days to work on one project, then on another, and then with the rest. Laurence thinks Madrid Abierto is the one who should decide if it wants more interaction among artists.

9. Laurence considers there must be more communication with the Madrid Abierto team which should explain each person’s role in the organization not to get confused when working. Josep- María agrees on this, there must be a curator, a global producer and local producer; this last position would be currently missing. Due to this communication he claims not to have been able to study or see the different possibilities to develop his project, but to have been given very limited options. Jorge says that in the meeting of February 2009 each person’s function was explained, inside the tiny team of Madrid Abierto. He also explains all the options that were gradually given, for example, to Josep-María regarding his project, which, at some point and, in spite of having a local mediator chosen by himself was in a dead end, solutions that turned out to be pretty effective, for example, to locate and access an apartment where immigrants lived.

10. Both Laurence and Jean-François think it is important to make a first payment of fees at the beginning of the edition. Laurence also thinks that part of the fees should be external to the rest of the money used in production, being important to speed up the payment of those fees. Jorge explains that the fees are included in the totality of each project, but clearly separated and quantified; he apologizes once again because the payment still hasn’t been made due to the fact that Madrid Abierto has not received the City Hall’s subsidy yet, something that has never happened before.

11. Laurence thinks it is important for foreign artists to have a person who mediates with the project and knows the city well. For Lisa’s type of projects, she says she needs an infrastructure-platform to develop them and a different dialogue to that which other projects may need. To her it is basic to have a person in the city where she’s intervening through which she can access the people of different neighbourhoods and to create connections with them. Josep-María thinks that each project needs a support team or an ambassador (it could be done through University students or a teacher or hired person). With time to find funding, such support could be possible. Susanne thinks that the role of an ambassador who works and becomes each project’s spokesman is very important, be it a student or a hired person. Jorge stresses that in different ways all type of possibilities have been experimented, in some cases promoted by the artists and in others by Madrid Abierto. When someone is hired this must be included in the total budget and so it has been done when certain artists have decided to, but volunteers or grant holders have certain degree of uncertainty and lack of professionalism that some artists assume as part of the project and others don’t. The same thing happens with the basic team of Madrid Abierto, which changes with each edition. The reason to this is probably the scale of the whole project and the available budget, which, on the other hand, is dedicated mostly to the projects. It is very possible that the level of voluntarism has exceeded for long any reasonable limit.

12. The search of parallel ways to find funding. Jorge says that this has always been done in different ways for specific projects, but that the global funding has decreased once Altadis Foundation abandoned the project while other alternatives haven’t been found in the private sector, in spite of Telefonica Foundation’s momentarily interest. Also, both the City Hall and Community of Madrid have been reducing the budgets during the last two years, as a consequence of the economic crisis.

Result analysis of the finished projects and new guidelines:

1. Madrid Abierto’s open archive in Matadero.Jorge explains that, after many tries, and thanks to the collaboration of Pablo Berastegui, coordinator of Matadero, Madrid Abierto will share a space with three other projects (architecture, performing arts and visual artists from Madrid) to organize and centralize both the digital and physical contents that have been generated along the six editions. María Díaz and Manuela Sevilla are already structuring the contents and adding them to the archive.Susanne and Lisa think that each artist should provide material from the draft, the project and conclusions. It is also felt that it should be open, for communication (blog type) and for a future international forum. Jorge stresses the fact that, initially, everything will be incorporated, except certain contents due to their characteristics or to lack of permission from the artist to be uploaded. At first, like other archives in Matadero, they will be available for public enquire by having previously arranged a date. Susanne underlines the fact that there are other projects in Europe that are working on this subject. Jorge asks for available information to try and collaborate with them.

2. Educational project.María Molina considers it is possible to keep developing the educational project, in 2011 this year’s pilot experience could be extended.

3. Production of a document based exhibition about the whole of Madrid Abierto in its six editions.Jorge claims that this exhibition would help us review the work that has been done and reinforce the project’s presence both in exhibition halls and different activities to which Madrid Abierto is invited.

Due to lack of time we won’t analyze each project in the current edition, therefore we find both evaluation sessions to have ended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10cota3612

2009-2010. DISCUSSION PANELS PROGRAMME

Location: La Casa Encendida (Ronda de Valencia n 2)Moderated by: Cecilia Andersson and Jorge Díez.

MEETING AND PRESENTATION OF THE INTERVENTIONS

4th of Februaryfrom 18.00 to 21.00h

Participating artists:18.00 to 18.30 Lara Almarcegui18.30 to 19.00 Laurence Bonvin19.00 to 19.30 Teddy Cruz19.30 to 20.00 Josep-Maria Martín20.00 to 20.30 Pablo Valbuena20.30 to 21.00 Debate and questions

5th of Februaryfrom 18.00 to 21.00h

Participating artists:18.00 to 18.30 Susanne Bosch18.30 to 19.00 Lisa Cheung19.00 to 19.30 Inaki Larrimbe19.30 to 20.00 Adaptive Actions20.00 a 20.30 Gustavo Romano20.30 a 21.00 Debate and questions

 

PRESENTATION AND SCREENING OF THE AUDIOVISUAL PIECES

6th of February 18.00h

Introduction of the audiovisual pieces selected in the 9th and 10th edition of Intervenciones.tv conducted by Fito Rodríguez.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10mdtb2421

2009-10. ARTISTS / INTERVENTIONS / LINKS

Laurence BonvinGhostownwww.laurencebonvin.com

Lisa CheungHuert-o-Buswww.lisacheung.com Iñaki LarrimbeUnofficial Tourismwww.web.jet.es

Josep-María MartínUna casa digestiva para Lavapiés / A digestive house for Lavapiéswww.josep-mariamartin.org

Adaptive ActionsCampo AA, Madrid / AA Camp, Madrid    www.adaptiveactions.net

Gustavo RomanoTime Notes: Oficina móvil / Time Notes: Mobile Officewww.gustavoromano.org

Pablo ValbuenaTorre / Tower Blockwww.pablovalbuena.com

Teddy CruzVallecas Abierto: ¿Cómo nos van a ayudar con su arte? / Vallecas Abierto: How is your art going to help us?estudioteddycruz.com/

Susanne BoschHucha de desesos: ¡Todos somos un barrio, movilízate!www.susannebosch.de    Lara AlmarceguiBajar al subterráneo recién excavado / Going down to the recently excavated underground passage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10prta2502

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (technical data)

 PROCESS

December 2009- Begin collaboration with the architect. February 2009.- Choose the family from Lavapies to develop the project.- Identify the main interlocutor of the neighborhood.- Open up a participation process carrying out interviews with specialists, professionals, interested social agents, involved in deep thought on digestive processes, memory and habitat: psychologists, anthropologists, architects, historians, politicians, neighborhood associations, citizens, cultural associations, gastroenterologists, dietician, social workers, educators, etc.

May 2009- Research and reflect on the importance of the habitat to help “digest memory”.- Order the obtained information on the subject.

June 2009- Present the proposals to the family and interlocutors, creating a debate.

June/September 2009- Create the executive modified project, integrating and enriching, the initial proposal of prototype Digestive House.

October 2009- Carry out the necessary administrative actions to develop the project.

December 2009- January 2010- Build the prototype.

February 2010- Spread the project.- Exhibit the Digestive House project.- Presentation of a documentary video and the website about the prototype.- Press release.- Publication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10prtc3616

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (theoretical data)

 PRESENTATION

For years the artistic projects of Josep-Maria Martín have focused on creating new artistic intervention strategies to affect certain well established structures in our society, which, however, don’t lack weak spots. With a subjective and reflexive will, he questions and criticizes the reality upon which he acts. His pieces stress the idea of process, research, participation, implication and negotiation, transforming each identified agent of each project in true generators of a common plan.

He is interested in art which is committed to surpass the aesthetic realm: there is no denying the troubles we confront in the political, social, anthropological environment, of territorial structuring and urban planning.

He is interested in life which is transformed by art and the art of living transformed. To transform the space of life, and social life transformed by the experience of art.

The artistic and political process implies a subjectivity which enables us to critically deal with the complexity of the world. In order to do so it is essential to realize a change of paradigm that will be the source of new images in a process of constant analyses and ethical gestures. To achieve this it creates collective research and analytical processes in specific contexts, searching for fissures in social and personal systems. From that point on, it negotiates with a transverse and horizontal criterion and suggests prototypes that are inserted in reality, creating a revealing experience out of its use. In any case, to use aesthetics in gaining change and put connecting tools in the hands of people to deal with the future.

Josep-Maria Martin’s artistic projects, being multidisciplinary, may be interpreted from each and every area to which the identified agents or participants belong to. For example: to the artist it is a work of modern art, to the architect it represents an architectural project, to a social worker, it is a collective work, for a politician, a project regarding social policies, negotiation, housing, immigration, etc.

Josep-Maria Martin states: “I am curious and that makes these types of projects very interesting to me. I’m interested in:- Opening up learning processes.- Researching in specific contexts and finding new ways.- Encountering people and realities.- To question and to find new ways of seeing things.- Seek and find images that have not thought of before.- To identify ethical gestures.- To develop collective processes to enter “unknown territories”.- To develop new proposals, going from that which is specific and personal to something general.- To go for innovation and suggest alternatives to achieve goals.- To explore contemporary aesthetic forms.- To create a possible participation in programs that may represent interesting challenges to me and may become sources of professional enjoyment, for being in my specific line of work.- To meditate on the contemporary world and its artistic translation. The Digestive House/ Josep-Maria Martin/Presentation

 

DRAFT:A DIGESTIVE HOUSE. For the neighborhood of Lavapies.

PRECEDENTS

Josep-Maria Martin was invited to participate in the collective exhibition “Habitat/Variations”, in 2007, in order to rethink the concept of habitat and different ways of life. To develop the project, the Genevan architect Raphaél Nussbaumer suggested a collaboration to reflect together on the spaces in which we live.

That first experience in Switzerland makes it very interesting to continue thinking on Madrid’s new project. Madrid Abierto’s open call 2009-2010 is a good opportunity to keep reflecting on how space helps us confront memory.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE PROPOSAL

To question the space we live in and establish an analogy between the digestive system and the home, as an organism that digests personal and collective memory. It is a way to focus on the relationship between spaces that people live in and how it can help individuals manage and confront history, personal and collective memory with the cognitive realm of life and the well being of people. We intend to find answers to the relationship between habitat-memory:

- How can our own history, the one we contribute, coexist with the history we find in reality?- Do we experience the legacy of a place’s memory?- What do we contribute to the memory of a certain place?- How do we face our personal and collective memory?- What influence does the habitat have on the individual, the family, community…?- How does space help us digest the events of our lives?- What is a family’s quality of life?- How do family members contribute to it?- How does it affect personal and professional relationships?- How do we face cultural displacement?- How do we live with people belonging to other cultures and backgrounds?

PROPOSAL

- Propose the intervention of an architect to develop the project collectively.- Identify a family form the neighborhood of Lavapies to carry out the idea.- Open up a participation process.- Identify and invite different interlocutors linked to the project.- Research on how the habitat helps us face memory.- Carry out interviews with each of the people identified as significant.- Reflect on family life in Lavapies.- Order the obtained information.- Elaborate and conceptualize the proposal.- Design the architectural project.- Debate about the proposal with the family and other previously interviewed interlocutors.- Design the executive project.- Build and open the designed space.- Evaluate the experience.- Create a web site and a documentary about the project.- Spread the project.- Experiment for a period of 3 months with the prototype.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10prtc3614

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (location)

Days 6, 7, 20 and 21. Roof terrace at La Casa Encendida (Ronda de Valencia nº 2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10intd2879

2009-2010. URBAN BUDDY SCHEME / 07 feb 2009 (video)

Saturday 7th of February, 2009

1 Cecilia Andersson (presentation of International Festival)00:00 - 00:55

International Festival00:55 - 19:35

              

2International Festival00:00 - 19.39

                

3International Festival00:00 - 06:49

 

PRESENTATIONS, GROUP 1Moderator: STEALTH

4Josep-Maria Martín 00.00 - 16.56

Susanne Bosch18.37 - 19:39

5Susanne Bosch00.00 - 19.51

6Susanne Bosch00.00 - 01:22

Laurence Bonvin 01:40 - 18.35

STEALTH (questions)18:35 - 19:46

7STEALTH (questions)00.00 - 00:45

8STEALTH (discussion with the audience)02:20 - 15:14

PRESENTATIONS, GROUP 2ºModerator: International Festival

International Festival15:14 - 18:50

Jean François Prost18:50 - 26:29

9Jean François Prost00.00 - 05:27

Adriana Salazar 05:27 - 20.41

Gustavo Romano20:41 - 26:13

10Gustavo Romano00:00 - 09:50

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10mdvc2429-7

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (published text)

 A project by Josep-Maria Martín with Mouhamadou Bamba DiopProduction MADRID ABIERTO Cultural mediation Pensart

Josep-Maria Martín’s artistic projects are focused on creating new intervention strategies that affect established structures of our current society, some of which have fissures. The artist questions and critiques the reality he decides to work on. His work explores concepts such as progress, investigation, participation, involvement, negotiation and proposition. In this process, agents that have been identified for each intervention become the true creators of a common project.

Josep-Maria is interested in forms of art that exceed the purely aesthetic, encouraging a movement from aesthetics towards ethics, life transformed by art and the art of living by transformation. His aim is to use aesthetics in order to visualize situations and try to change them.

These are multidisciplinary projects that are open for appropriation by the different participants involved. For example, that which is a piece of contemporary art for an artist, is, in the mind of a social worker, a community project, etc. As such, the artistic object transforms into a multifunctional object.

PISO PATERA: overcrowded apartment for immigrants

For this edition of MADRID ABIERTO the artist was interested in questioning a ‘piso patera’ as a space for people to live in and to establish an analogy between the human digestive system and the home as an organism that digests collective and personal memories.

After months of investigation and interviews Josep-Maria located Mouhamadou Bamba Diop, a Senegalese citizen who lives in an apartment in the neighborhood of Lavapiés, along with 16 fellow countrymen, all without legal documents. The artist asked them to reflect on their way of living in an overcrowded apartment (‘piso patera’) and, Bamba in particular, to tell the story of his life in Senegal, his journey to Spain on a small boat and the dream that all of them share of returning to their country in order to create a better future for the youth of Kayar (Bamba’s home town). The artist’s original intention of working on the apartment for immigrants materialized itself instead by offering a contract to Bamba in order for him to be part of the project and thus temporarily legalize his status in the country. MADRID ABIERTO 2010 will be the first phase of this proposal. In January Josep-Maria and Bamba traveled to Senegal to develop a socio-economic project in Kayar.

EUROPE. WHAT IS THAT?

To be born. Where? There. Why? I don’t know. To grow. To think. To look. To listen. To study. You can’t. I can’t anymore. To work. I want more. To hear. To see. Europe. So, what is that? I don’t know. It sounds good. Him, he left. He also. Did he arrive? I don’t know. To work. I want more. Love. I’m getting married. Me too. My son. I’m getting married, again. Another child. To work. Europe. So, what is that? I don’t know. He left. Now they have a better life. And he? I don’t know. To work. For what? Not much, I want more. Europe. So, what is that? It seems good. Is it? I don’t know. He left. Did he do well? Maybe. I love you. I also love you. My cousin left. Where? To Spain. What is that? Did he do well? Sure. What do you have to do? Work. For what? I want more. He called. Is he ok? Yes, he called. Now they have a better life. I’m leaving. Where are you going? To a better world. Better? Yes, better. Are you sure? He left. Did he do well? Now they have a better life. And him? I don’t know.

MANIFESTO FROM MOUHAMADOU BAMBA DIOP AND HIS PARTNERS FROM THE ‘PISO PATERA’ IN LAVAPIÉS From our ‘piso patera’

We are a group of Senegalese immigrants that arrived in Spain on a boat, hoping that in Europe we would be able to thrive as human beings, helping our families and Community. We arrived in Madrid after a suicidal journey. Today we are 17 persons living in a small apartment in Lavapiés. We demand to be, to have, to live, to subsist, to be supported, to feel, to belong… in freedom.

To feel loved and respected. To feel visible and heard. To feel other people’s feelings as our own and to feel taken into account. To feel our interests and words are being heard. Feeling the cold, warmth, love, anger, outrage, admiration…

Belonging and identifying ourselves as Senegalese inside and outside our homeland. This means being supportive by nature and due to religious conviction; to protect the weak one, who doesn’t have or doesn’t want; being hospitable and building a community, living in peace among everyone that surrounds us; being, thanks to the strength that we achieve due to our mutual support and the respect towards our hierarchic structures which facilitate our coexistence; having the Koran as our main guide and holding on to our beliefs until our last breath.

…the freedom to leave and stay, to thrive, to create… Freedom.

Ababacar Gningue, Aliou Badara Diouf, Assane Kebe, Bassirou Thioune, Daouda Kebe, Djibril Diop, Djibril Ndiaye, Ibrahima Gueye, Ibrahima Toure Niang, Madeguene Gueye, Modou Diouf, Modou Sall Ndiaye, Mouhamadou Bamba Diop, Mouhamadou Lamine Diatta, Moury Conde.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10intc2798

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín.¿WHO´S ON THE LINE? CALL FOR FREE!, 2007

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín.¿WHO´S ON THE LINE? CALL FOR FREE!, 2007

¿WHO´S ON THE LINE? CALL FOR FREE! In 18 Geschichten quer durch dies republik, 2007

Fankfurter Buch Messe Faire & Incult Iniciativas CulturalesColonia, Hamburgo, Berlín, Sttugart, Alemania

By Josep-Maria Martín con: Thomas Steinaecker, Pilar Baumeister, Navid kermani, Natasza Goerke, Stefan Beuse, Singrid Behrens, Tosten Schulz, Feriden Zaimoglu, Yade kara, Odile Néri-Kaiser, Tilmarau, Sudabeh Mohafez, Anna Catarina, Hahn, Beqe Cufaj, Sandra Hoffmann.

Curated byr: Stefanie Klinge y Carlos Bloss.

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3402

2009-2010. DISCUSSION PANELS / 4 feb 2010 (video)

4th of february 20106pm to 9pm. PRESENTATION OF THE INTERVENTIONS

1Presented and moderated by Cecilia Andersson and Jorge Díez (00:00 - 00:35)

Lara Almarcegui, Going down to the recently excavated underground passage (00:35 - 23:05)

              

 

2Lara Almarcegui, Going down to the recently excavated underground passage (00:00 - 08:30)

Laurence Bonvin, Ghostown(08.30 - 23:05)

          

 

3Laurence Bonvin, Ghostown(00:00 - 18:06)

Pablo Valbuena, Tower block(18:06 - 23:05)

        

 

4Pablo Valbuena, Tower block(00:00 - 14:57)

 Questions(14:57 - 23:05)

 

5Questions(00:00 - 01.23)

 

6Josep-Maria Martín, A digestive house to Lavapiés(00:00 - 23:05)

 

7Josep-Maria Martín, A digestive house fot Lavapiés (00:00 - 16.20)

Teddy Cruz, Vallecas Abierto: How is you art going to help us?(16.20 - 23:05)

 

8Teddy Cruz, Vallecas Abierto: How is you art going to help us?(00:00 - 23:05)

 

9Teddy Cruz, Vallecas Abierto: How is you art going to help us?(00:00 - 02:04)

Debate and questions(02:04 - 15:35)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10mdvc2427

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. RINCÓN DE SUEÑOS, 2000

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. RINCÓN DE SUEÑOS, 2000

RINCÓN DE SUEÑOS: Una ludoteca para los niños y jóvenes trabajadores de la “Central de Abastos”, DF, 2000Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Niigata, Japón, 2000

By Josep-Maria Martín con Jorge Vázquez, Sara Álvarez + Vanesa Bohórquez, Martha Patricia Ortiz, Ylenia Escogido, Olinda Larralde, Marichuy Torres, Manolo Arreola, Wilson Osorio, Silvia Gruner, Magdalena Carranza, Cuca Valero, Miguel Legaria, Olinda Ortiz, Juan Carlos Reyes, Tirzo Madariaga, Marcos Martínez, Eleazar Miranda, Francisco Javier Miranda, Marco Antonio Miranda, Antonio Merino, Jorge García, Alejandro Andrade, Humberto Macedo, Avelino Hernández, Guadalupe Martínez, Héctor Torres, Adrián Lima, Cristóbal Morales, Agustín Hernández, Carlos Flores, Federico San Agustín, Pedro Martínez, Pablo Esperón, Miguel Hernández, Cesahi Baldomero, Jaime García, Yonari Aguilar, Alonso Victoria.

Curated by: Martí Perán

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3401

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (2009.05 / fieldwork / Bamba´s trip)

 Ever since I was a very young child I had always thought of Europe as offering the best chance of being able to have a nice life. I would still like to believe this to be true, but the reality that my flatmates and I face everyday has, at least for the time being, rendered it almost impossible.

I honestly thought that I would find work I would like when I got to Spain, a position that might allow me to support my family and, above all, to be successful in life. The truth however, despite anything we might say, is that the future for an immigrant and particularly anyone ´without documents´, is very gloomy and difficult in every sense. Harsher and harsher laws are being passed; there seems no end to the continual arrival of immigrants brought in by sea in “pateras” and on top of all that there is a deepening economic crisis… I have now come to believe that it is not worth anymore abandoning your country of origin to come to Europe or risking your life in a “cayuco” for a chance to live in Spain.

I am one of those people who risked their lives to come to Spain. After six fruitless years of trying to get a visa, I decided to achieve my dreams no matter what the cost. There were a multitude of pateras leaving Senegal in the summer of 2006, so many that it would be hard to put a number on it. Those were strange times and it seemed as though absolutely everyone was going crazy trying to get a place on a patera and make it across to Europe. According to the Senegal media, the pateras picked up their passengers in fishing villages. The one I boarded left from Kayar, my mother's village. On the day concerned I left my house at 11 o'clock in the morning after lunch. My mother and brothers were not at home. They had left for a religious ceremony and my wife, my son and I had stayed behind. I was with one of my friends when I took leave of my wife and she asked me where I was going. “Just for a walk to the beach”, I said. Then my friend and I caught the bus to Kayar. The police were carrying out checks when we arrived at Kayar bus station at four in the afternoon. The Senegalese government had decided to mobilise police troops and put an end to the pateras phenomenon, so they were arresting anyone arriving in the village with a travel bag. We were lucky that day because we had no cases or anything else with us that might have made us look suspicious. My uncle had prepared a room ready for us at my grandparents´ residence whilst we waited for the departure time. The same uncle personally knew the head of the criminal gang who organised the trip. He was a man highly sought after by the police…… I never thought we might travel on that particular day. There is so much corruption in Africa that you can pretty much get whatever you want if you have enough money and in all probability the police officials were paid for each patera that actually left. The criminal gangs had the police completely under their control. We finally managed to leave at midnight. I decided beforehand to ring my wife and tell her the truth. I quickly told her that I was getting a patera bound for Spain, and never even gave her any time to reply in case, as she surely would have, she said something that might make me change my mind. I told her to pray for me and to take care of my son, and that I loved her so much. A small cayuco took us from the beach to the patera which sat five kilometres offshore. We were the first to get in. When we boarded they were not many people. There were two engines at the back, a quantity of large containers that must have contained fuel and water. Some planks of wood had been set out across the middle as benches and all the food was out. Our provisions comprised milk, biscuits, rice and sugar. One hour later the patera was completely full of people and you could not even place another foot on the floor. The highly illegal nature of the trip itself meant that being orderly was out of the question and the criminal gangs were just shoving people in as though we were goods in transit. When it got to the point that you just could not even have squeezed another fly onto the patera the captain, who was just a fisherman, decided it was time to leave. That was when the departure speech was given: “this trip is either going to Barça or Barzaq”. This literally meant we were on our way either to Barcelona or further beyond”, and if anyone was not of a mind to achieve that dream or was not prepared to die for it, then they should get off there and then. There was no turning back.” The moments following that talk were very emotional. Some people decided to abandon the boat because a lot of them had already started throwing up. Most people who have actually made the trip have in fact been the victims of false information fed to them by the criminal gangs. They had never been on a patera. So we left for Spain over Saturday night to Sunday 27 August 2006. The first night of our journey was peaceful and there was a full moon. The night was so silent. All you could hear was the noise of the engine and the patera as it slapped against the water. None of us said a thing. You would have thought that our souls had left our bodies. We could see the last lights of the village fading in the distance behind us. We were leaving our lives, our roots, our identity and everything we truly stood for behind. Most people could not eat a thing that night and many threw up so much, to the point of becoming ill and no one wanted to eat. It was crazy. We had just started to realise what we had done. The whole thing had only just begun. The following day, after having slept in a sitting position all night, our bodies ached all over. Some people started to have a temperature, others seemed to be about to faint. The captain and his crew tried to help those who could not cope any more. When midday came, the cook, who had cooked up the rice, handed out food to anyone who could still eat. There was nothing but water all around us, the sky and the sun. There was no way of knowing whether we were travelling towards the North, the South, the East or the West. The trip had ceased to hold any meaning for me, a journey towards sure death. The first four days continued in exactly the same manner until the weather changed. That was when we reached winter. The sea became horribly unpleasant and our patera started to take in water. It was getting so bad that I decided with a friend to organise ourselves into a group and reduce the amount of water. But each time we managed to bail out one lot of water it hardly seemed to make any difference. That was the point when we thought we would drown and most people started to cry. It is difficult to see an adult crying but they were quite right, the situation was desperate. We did not seem to be going anywhere, we were just surrounded by sea and the horizon meant nothing to us. I thought we had been tricked. It was crazy to think that a patera might make it all the way to Spain. All this drove some of my companions crazy and they started having hallucinations. They wanted to throw themselves overboard and some of them, at night, jumped into the sea. They did not intend to commit suicide but just thought they were still on land. They said they could hear their children or their mothers calling to them, waiting for them on the seabed. Some people's skin was peeling off due to the salt and they had deep wounds on their mouths, legs or faces. A lot of my traveling companions did not want to move around at all, not even to attend to their bodily functions and just stayed put, slumped in their own excrement. Others repeated verses from the Koran over and over again. None of this had any effect on any of the fishermen handling the patera. They were used to the sea. The last three days went on like that up until Friday afternoon when we saw some lights on the horizon. It looked as though we were either reaching land or maybe it was another ship…….. it was our salvation. At last we had found what we were seeking, just some dry land, that was all.

Saturday 2 September 2006. I reached Isla del Hierro. I had never seen an island that size. It was nine o'clock in the morning local time when our patera docked with 74 persons on board. We were all male and 9 of us were children. I had never seen so many white men and the smell they gave off made me feel sick. Most of them were wearing a red and white uniform, others were dressed in green and there were also those who had a dark blue colour uniform. They got us out of the cayuco, and sorted us out so they could count how many of us there were. Some of us were hardly able to walk. They took our clothes and gave us new ones. You could make out people in the distance leaning out of their windows and watching what I thought must have been an unusual scene for them.

A man in uniform, who must have been a policeman, stood in front of us and asked us: Do any of you speak Spanish? No one replied. He asked again but this time in French and no one answered again so he asked for a third time in English. After a few moments I decided to speak with him because there was nothing else I could do and, even though I was frightened, I said: “I speak Spanish”. The official, acting surprised, asked me the same question again and I gave him the same answer.

That was how I started my first job in Spain and became an interpreter.

After two days on the Isla de Hierro, we were moved to Tenerife to a reception centre called Las Raíces, which was in fact a military camp. The centre was divided into two parts: one part was for the military and the other for us. Our part was then further divided into two sections called Camp A and Camp B. I was in B, which was larger, nearly twice as big as A. There were 128 tents, two large shower areas, two enormous dining areas, over 20 toilets and the police tent. Each tent held 24 people and had 24 beds. It is easy to imagine the kind of people that were there. It was my job to organise distribution of breakfast, lunch and supper. I lined people up in queues according to which patera they had come in on. Each patera group had to march in two lines like soldiers towards the dining room. When it was your turn to eat the others had to wait standing up until the first people finished. So there was hardly enough time for the 3072 people to finish having breakfast when the lorry carrying lunch would appear, and the same happened again with supper. Whenever any problem arose I was expected to work and I worked without any breaks, without a timetable, and without any remuneration. I had to take about 40 people every morning out to get water from Camp A and take anyone who was sick over to the Red Cross, then clean the entire camp with a group of people hand-picked by the police and who were provided with food in exchange for the work that they did. Some of my work, therefore, also involved resolving fights that broke out between individuals, organising departures and arrivals, attending to people with material needs such as clothes, t-shirts, trousers, shoes, teeth cleaning and shaving materials, etc. That was my daily life in that centre for a period of almost three months.

The normal legally permitted length of time that a person should remain at such a reception centre is 40 days. When I had been there for the regulatory period I was asked to stay on by the Chief of Police in exchange for being provided with legal immigration status. I had not been expecting such a proposal. So I stayed on for another month and a half longer. By then I was not sleeping at the centre any more. An inspector would pick me up every afternoon and take me home, and that was where I lived during the time that I worked for free at the centre. We would get up at dawn to go to work and during the journey I was able, to some extent, to see how wonderful Tenerife was - it was a place of dreams. After they had managed to get me a preliminary contract, however, they said that they could not arrange for my legal status to be approved because this could not, by law, be done until three years had elapsed. That inspector told me I would be better off leaving because they would never fulfil their promises. I managed to get a plane ticket to Malaga through the Red Cross and left Tenerife. I arrived in Malaga at night and caught a bus to Almeria, where a cousin of mine lived.

Once I got to Almeria I found my cousin who had already been in Spain for two years. He picked me up at the Roquetas de Mar bus station. It was a Wednesday in the afternoon. My cousin lived in a suburb called the “suburb of 200 dwellings”. It is very well known because almost 95% of the people who live there are immigrants: Senegalese, Malian, Ghanaian, Nigerian, Moroccan and Romanian. My cousin was living in a two bedroom flat with a dining room occupied by six people, all of whom made their money by selling pirate CDs. After taking a day to get the lie of the land I went off to find work in the agricultural fields, but could not get anything because there were so many people that there was not enough work for everyone. So there was only one option open to me and that was to sell pirate CDs. You would sell these in the street markets that took place in various locations around Almeria. My cousin gave me a rucksack with more than 90 CDs and films and a blanket with strings attached which went on the ground. That kind of work is horrible and is nothing like a normal job because you are always on the lookout in case some police officer catches you and takes you off to the police station. To be honest, I was very ashamed of doing that work. I did not like the way I had to act and felt ridiculous grabbing the blanket and running between people, even though I managed to make a bit of money. A couple of weeks went by and then the day arrived when the police caught me with a car in which we were transporting films, pirate CDs and perfumes. My cousin decided to plead guilty and he was sentenced to eight months imprisonment and a three thousand euros fine. That left me all alone in Spain without any family or friends; I did not know anyone, had no-one to turn to, in a complete vacuum and having to pay for a bedroom every month that my cousin had rented opposite his, with a machine for recording CDs and DVDs, a load of fake copies and blank CDs. I shared that flat with two other people from Nigeria - one man that I did not know how he made his money and a woman with a young daughter who was most certainly a prostitute. After two days of chaos and confusion, trying to find a solicitor who would represent my cousin, I decided to push ahead and substitute my cousin in the CD business which had put him in prison. From then on I just spent my time recording and selling to the people who went out to the street market. I rented a car so I could go to Granada and buy the materials I needed – the blank cds, copies, plastic covers, etc.

Seven months went by and business became less and less profitable. I decided to move area. By now it was June 2007 and I shall never forget that month, just like October 2006 when I had received a phone call on the Tenerife beach ‘Playa de los Cristianos’ telling me that my wife had given birth to a son. She had been seven months pregnant when I left home. That day I was happy and sad at the same time but this time it was bad news: my father had just died. People die each day, all the time, without you realising, but it only has to be one of your close loved ones for you to understand how truly cruel death can be. I loved my father and I would very much have liked to have seen him again and to have spent the last days of his life with him. That man really meant everything to me, he was a reference point, he meant safety, all in all he was a father in every sense of the word. He suffered from an illness that affected his heart. After spending ten days in hospital he came home and then died after supper. It was a Tuesday. I have spoken to him that day on the phone, and when I think back I understand now why he said what he did… he gave a little talk on life, on how short it is. He told me I should always pray and do good deeds as if I might die the next day, but that I should also work and become accustomed to wherever I lived as though I was never going to die. That day I cried the whole night long. Whenever I pictured my two sons and my father in my head I would ask myself whether the life I lead is worth living, so far from home, from my people, from my loved ones. Those were truly the worst days of my life. I really thought about going home then but decided in the end to come to Madrid.

I arrived in Madrid one week after my father had died. There was a new opportunity waiting for me here as well. I arrived on a Friday at 6 o'clock in the morning at the Méndez Álvaro bus station and took a taxi to the suburb of Lavapiés where a childhood friend of mine was living, in Jesus and Mary street. What I found was something I could never have imagined, an apartment exactly like a patera boat. An apartment where loads of people lived. There were twelve people in this one and you were hard pushed to find a corner to sleep the night, a real hole of a place rented to my friend by a Bangladeshi for €1200 a month. This apartment had four bedrooms and a living room and, just like in Almeria, the people living there made their money by selling pirate CDs. The next day I grabbed my rucksack and went off to find some way I could get ahead. After spending some time on the Spanish national Renfe railway I got off at a town called Torrejón de Ardoz. I found people from Ecuador there carrying on the same illegal sales activities in a pedestrianised street near the main square. Truth be known, I did quite well there because I managed to make €50 in that place every afternoon. The higher the rise, however, the greater the fall. After I had been selling CDs for a month the local police arrested me together with a lad from Ecuador and I spent my first night ever in prison. I thought the world had come to halt that night because, after I had been put into the closed room and the iron doors banged shut, I lost all sense of time or what the weather was like, nothing about the world outside and this was a very painful experience for me. They took me to court the next day and the judge ruled on my case. My lawyer told me that I had to sign every month on the first and the 15th day of the month. I went back to my home quite crushed, so depressed that I did not want to hear any more about CDs. I lost the will to live. I could not face doing that work any more. Not a night went by without one of my companions at the apartment spending the night at the police station. I have never seen such high levels of security on the Madrid streets. It would appear now that just about everybody wearing sunglasses on the street is secret police. I just had to find something else to do, whatever it might be.

After doing nothing for a month, the people I was living with decided to change apartment and split up to different locations. We found a flat near Lavapiés Square, with three bedrooms and a living room. The owner was from Pakistan and he required someone with a residence permit to sign the contract and €3600 for the deposit. We gave him part of that money. The gentle man wrote down and acknowledged having received €1000 from us on a piece of paper and signed it with his National Identity Document. He kept one copy and he gave us the other one. However, when we asked him for our money back the following week because we had not been able to put together the remaining portion, that man refused to give it back to us because he said that the date of the preliminary contract had already expired. We argued with him and then the police arrived and the police officers told us that nothing could be done because the preliminary contract was actually not legal and that we did not have sufficient evidence to charge this man. The truth is that the first thing that you learn when you are here is that you cannot trust anybody, not even yourself. This man had stolen our money. We eventually put enough money together to get another apartment with two bedrooms in Lavapiés for €850 per month. There were six of us from the start. By now it was already August 2007.

One month later I managed to find a job at San Martín de la Vega in a scaffolding warehouse. I worked for seven months at that warehouse and received €50 a day for my efforts. I handed over €100 a Ghanaian gentleman for the use of his legal immigration status documents. You can work in this country using other people's legal documents because most white people think that all black people are the same and cannot tell us apart. I would get up every day at five o'clock in the morning to go to work but the truth is that in our apartment you cannot survive if you are working because there is always somebody new arriving and in the end there were 12 of us living in a two-bedroom apartment. My flatmates never slept at night and would argue about stupid things and speak in loud voices that could be heard from the street and in the end could not take it any more so I decided to move. I found a room for €300 in Torrejón de Ardoz which I shared with a fellow national, but seven months went by and then I ran out of work. That was April 2008 just when the economic crisis began. I went back to the same nightmare as before, exactly the same situation that I had been in at the beginning, seeking and not finding work. I hung on for three months but then I had to do something and went back to selling pirate CDs. This time I was selling them at the Legazpi Metro station but sure enough the day came when a security guard chased me to train carriage and wanted to get me out of there. He had not asked to see a ticket or any documents and told me to get out of the carriage. I refused because I had a ticket. After pushing me around for a few minutes he took out his safety baton and hit me twice until two people I did not know had to step in and help me defend myself from him. That night I went home very angry and I just did not know what to do. I went back to Legazpi station and asked that man's boss for an explanation, but when I got there the man did not even have his safety baton and he denied having hit me. I took my shirt off to show him the injuries he had caused me but those people did not want to know anything. They asked me to leave and stop bothering them. I decided to get back on the metro but those gentlemen escorted me out of the station. I decided to go to the police and report the matter, which still has not been ruled on.

I really miss my country, and especially my family, my mother, my two brothers, my two sons and my wife. She is a woman of natural beauty, an African lady. I am really fond of my wife, I love her, I adore her and I would give all the money in the world just to see her again. She is the only person that makes me feel human when I am at her side.

I feel like I have no family, I have nothing, because I never found what I came to Spain looking for and I doubt I ever will. I would really like the African political leaders to review their methods of government, because things just cannot go on like this. It is true that Africa has been the victim of three centuries of slavery, but that it is not a good enough excuse. We have to forge ahead, solutions must be found, we must work and stop deceiving people, stop robbing and put an end to the killing. Europe must also be made aware of what is happening in Africa and why it goes on. Perhaps the fault lies with all of us but we do not all suffer the consequences. The decisions are taken in Europe and the Earth in Africa cracks open.

Immigration is a good thing in one sense, but it must be said that not everybody who arrives from over there has the same opportunities and they certainly do not all have the same skills. It would be crazy to think that all Africa's young people might continue to come over to Europe.

Mouhamadou Bamba Diop

(December 2009 / this text was published in the Madird Abierto 2009-2012 book)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10intb2644

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. PROTOTYPE DÉSPACE POUR GÉNER LES ÉMOTIONS, 2003-2005

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. PROTOTYPE DÉSPACE POUR GÉNER LES ÉMOTIONS, 2003-2005

PROTOTYPE DÉSPACE POUR GÉNER LES ÉMOTIONSHôpital Saint-Jean Roussillon, Perpignan and Ecole Superieur de Beaux-Arts de Perpignan, Francia.

By Josep-Maria Martín con Alain Fidanza & Andrew Hal, Jörg Bosshard, Chantal Esseiva, Agnès Langevine.Curated by: Isabelle Narcy.

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3400

2009-2010. MESAS DEBATE / 04, 05 feb 2010 (imágenes)

2009-2010. MESAS DEBATE / 04, 05 feb 2010 (imágenes)

  

MEETING AND PRESENTATION OF THE INTERVENTIONS. LA CASA ENCENDIDA. 4th and 5th of FEBRUARY 2010

     

        

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10mdic2430

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. CERAMIC JUICE, 2002

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. CERAMIC JUICE, 2002

CERAMIC JUICE, 2002Espai d’Art de Castelló, España

By Josep-Maria Martín & Rirkrit TiravanijaCurated byr: Martí Peran

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3399

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (2009.05 / project review / technical data)

 PROCESS

September 2008- Presentation of draft of A Digestive House for the neighbourhood of Lavapiés, Madrid Abierto 2009-2010.

November 2008- Selection of draft of A Digestive House in a immigrant home of Lavapiés for Madrid Abierto 2009-2010

February 2009- Presentation sessions of Madrid Abierto 2009-2010, Casa Encendida, Madrid

March and April of 2009- Suggest Pensart.org as coordinator of the Project and main interlocutor in the neighbourhood.- Investigate and organize the immersion in the neighbourhood through social mediators.- Identify and suggest a video director to record and edit a documentary about the project.- Open a participation process by carrying out interviews with specialists, professionals and social agents interested and involved in reflecting on the process of digestion, memory and habitat.

Interviewed agentso Belinda Muñoz, Delicatessen store.o Esteban Ibarra, Association against intolerance.o Ramón Maria Masat “Momo”, Production Assistant.o Máximo Murat, Lutier Italian.o Chen Pen Shengli, Vice President of the Asociación de Chinos of Spain.o Jacobo Rivero Rodríguez, Neighbourhood Leader.o Rafael Ángel Palacios Soto, retired.o David N. Luhn, Architecture Critic.o Iris Rossi, Dominican, president of the AMOR Association and advisor of the Ambassador of Dominican Republic in Spain.o Carmelo Arcal, Professor in Social Anthropology, UCMo Manuel Maria de Bariluz, president of the neighbour association “la Corrala”,Lavapiés.o José Roncero Siles “Pepe”, squatter and cultural agitator.o Ignacio Angulo, architect/artist.o Abdel Khalak El Kamoun, Imam in the Lavapiés mosque.o Enrique Predero, urban developer.o Chema Palas, movie director.o Juan Carlos Sotinos, Ecuadorean, resident in immigrant apartment 1.o M. Antonia Fernández López, Spanish, resident in immigrant apartment 1.o Shahjamal Ahmed, Vice President Association Bangladesh.o Victor Defarges Pons, Doctor specialized in digestion, Hospital Ramón y Cajal.o D. Emilio, parish priest of the San Lorenzo church of Lavapiés.o Manuel Jiménez, doctor, from Lavapiés.o Silvia Robles, social worker.o Paloma García, lawyer for immigrant women.o Uriel Fogué, architect.o Bamba, senegalés, resident in immigrant apartment 2.o Juan Ramos Cejudo, psychologist.o Galo Endara, Ecuadorean artist and creative Minority.o José Santamaria, director of Minority.

May 2009Research and meditate on the importance of the habitat to help people “digest memory”.Order the collected information on the subject.Conceptualize the architectural project for the apartment.

June 2009Present, propose and discuss process with project’s interlocutors and immigrants in the apartment.

June/September 2009Carry out the modified executive project, incorporating and enriching the initial proposal of A Digestive House in an Apartment for Immigrants in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés. Edit the documentary video.

October 2009Formalize the necessary administrative issues to be able to carry out the project.Edit a 60’ documentary video in mono-channel format for its public exhibition.

December/January 2009-January 2010Build a prototype.Edit documentary video.

February 2010Spread the project.Exhibit the project.Present the documentary in a cinema within near proximity to the Paseo de Recoletos axis (Circulo de Bellas Artes, Casa Encendida, Casa de America).Website about the project.-Presentation in the neighbourhood.

(project review May 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10inmb3568

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. MILUTOWN: Inubuse Bus-stop, 2000

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. MILUTOWN: Inubuse Bus-stop, 2000

MILUTOWN: Inubuse Bus-stop, 2000Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Niigata, Japón

De Josep-Maria Martín con Kohebi, Akira Higuchi, hiroko Hosol, Hyuni, Takasuke Ikeda, Yumi Ikeda, Kazuya Inamitsu, Hiroashi Enomoto, SatoruChikaoka, Makiko Takanashi, Tatumi Terakami, Yuko Tosa, Miwako Tsuji, Naoyuki Tsuji, ShoheI Uno, Yayu, Marylin yamada, Hikaru Yamashita.

Comisariado por: Fran Kitagawa, Jean de loisy, Okwui Enwezor, Yusuke Nakahara, Apinan Poshhyananda, Ulrich Schneider, Nancy Spector.

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3398

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (2009.05 / project review / theoretical data)

 

PRECEDENTS

Josep-Maria Martin was invited to participate in the collective exhibition “Habitat/Variations”, in 2007, in order to rethink the concept of habitat and different ways of life. To develop the project, the Genevan architect Raphaél Nussbaumer suggested a collaboration to reflect together on the spaces in which we live.

That first experience in Switzerland makes it very interesting to continue thinking on Madrid’s new project. Madrid Abierto’s open call 2009-2010 is a good opportunity to keep reflecting on how space helps us confront memory.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE PROPOSAL

To question the space we live in and establish an analogy between the digestive system and the home, as an organism that digests personal and collective memory. It is a way to focus on the relationship between spaces that people live in and how it can help individuals manage and confront history, personal and collective memory with the cognitive realm of life and the well being of people. We intend to find answers to the relationship between habitat-memory:

- How can our own history, the one we contribute, coexist with the history we find in reality?- Do we experience the legacy of a place’s memory?- What do we contribute to the memory of a certain place?- How do we face our personal and collective memory?- What influence does the habitat have on the individual, the family, community…?- How does space help us digest the events of our lives?- What is a family’s quality of life?- How do family members contribute to it?- How does it affect personal and professional relationships?- How do we face cultural displacement?- How do we live with people belonging to other cultures and backgrounds?

Proposal- Propose the intervention of an architect to develop the project collectively.- Identify a family form the neighborhood of Lavapies to carry out the idea.- Open up a participation process.- Identify and invite different interlocutors linked to the project.- Research on how the habitat helps us face memory.- Carry out interviews with each of the people identified as significant.- Reflect on family life in Lavapies.- Order the obtained information.- Elaborate and conceptualize the proposal.- Design the architectural project.- Debate about the proposal with the family and other previously interviewed interlocutors.- Design the executive project.- Build and open the designed space.- Evaluate the experience.- Create a web site and a documentary about the project.- Spread the project.- Experiment for a period of 3 months with the prototype.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10intb3621

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. PROTOTIPO DE ESPACIO PARA GESTIONAR LAS EMOCIONES EN EL HOSPITAL, 2005-06

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. PROTOTIPO DE ESPACIO PARA GESTIONAR LAS EMOCIONES EN EL HOSPITAL, 2005-06

 

PROTOTIPO DE ESPACIO PARA GESTIONAR LAS EMOCIONES EN EL HOSPITAL, 2005-06Espai d’Art de Castelló y Hospital Provincial de Castelló, España

De Josep-Maria Martín con Alain Fidanza, Rafael Belda, Ana D, Prades, Nacho Vega, Maurice Caldera, Olga Maroto, Pilar Peris, Ana Torres, Amalio Palacios, Eduardo Fernández, Carmen Castillo, Jaime Lloret, Mari Carmen Mellado, Mari Carmen Llanos, Mateo Asensi, Begoña Fabra, Nabil El Jada

* SEE TE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3397

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. ¿DE PARTE DE QUIÉN? CALL FREE: Locutorio Móvil, 2003

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. ¿DE PARTE DE QUIÉN? CALL FREE: Locutorio Móvil, 2003

¿DE PARTE DE QUIÉN? CALL FREE: Locutorio Móvil, 2003Banquete_: Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona España

De Josep-Maria Martín con María Lucía Castrillón, Montserrat Mas, Santi Balmes, Juan Abreu, Juan Villoro, Ignacio Vidal-Folch, Miquel de Palol

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3396

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. CASA DE LA NEGOCIACIÓN, 2003-2004

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. CASA DE LA NEGOCIACIÓN, 2003-2004

CASA DE LA NEGOCIACIÓN, 2003-2004Kunsthalle de Fribourg, Fribourg, Suiza

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3395

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. PROTOTIPO PARA LA BUENA EMIGRACIÓN, 2005

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. PROTOTIPO PARA LA BUENA EMIGRACIÓN, 2005

PROTOTIPO PARA LA BUENA EMIGRACIÓN, 2005Centro de Formación e Información sobre la fronteraCasa Ymca Tijuana (México), InSite_05, Tijuana (México), San Diego (USA)

* SEE THE ATTACHED PDF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10aama3394

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. THE DIGESTIVE HOUSE, 2007

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. THE DIGESTIVE HOUSE, 2007

THE DIGESTIVE HOUSE, 2007 Memory and habitat: habitat prototype in Onex.BAC, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain. Onex y Ginebra, Suiza

 

PRECEDENTS

Josep-Maria Martin was invited to participate in the collective exhibition “Habitat/Variations”, in order to rethink the concept of habitat and different ways of living. To develop the project, the Genevan architect Raphaél Nussbaumer suggested a collaboration to reflect together on the spaces in which we live.

The project focused on the city of Onex, a bedroom community in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. It was built in the sixties, a period in which different solutions were suggested to solve the housing problem. In those days a lot of apartment blocks and collective spaces were built, which no longer answer today’s needs of size and comfort as well as the diversity of the new family structures.

These neighborhoods contain a highly diverse population, ethnically as well as culturally.

The majority of its inhabitants come from countries all over the world, which have had to move for socioeconomic reasons or as political refugees that are running from a war and bring tragic experiences, which are added to the common difficulties of adjusting to a new country.

 

FOUNDATIONS OF THE PROPOSAL

To question the space were we live in and establish an analogy between the digestive system and the home, as an organism that digests personal and collective memory. It is a way to focus on the relationship between spaces that people live in and how it can help individuals manage and face history, personal and collective memory with the cognitive realm of life and the welfare of people. We intend to find answers to the relation habitat-memory:

- How can our own history, our contribution, coexist with the history we find in reality?- Do we experience the legacy of a place’s memory?- What do we contribute to the memory of a certain place?- How do we face our personal and collective memory?- What influence does the habitat have on the individual, the family, community…?- How does space help us digest the events of our lives?- What is a family’s quality of life?- How do family members contribute to it?- How does it affect personal and professional relationships?- How do we face cultural displacement?- How do we live with people belonging to other cultures and backgrounds?- How do we coexist with the memory of war?

PROPOSAL

- Propose the intervention of an architect to develop the project collectively.- Identify a family form the neighborhood of Lavapies to carry out the idea.- Open up a participation process.- Identify and invite different interlocutors linked to the project.- Research on how the habitat helps us face memory.- Carry out interviews with each of the people identified as significant.- Reflect on family living in a suburb of Geneva.- Order the obtained information.- Elaborate and conceptualize the proposal.- Design the architectural project.- Debate about the proposal with the family and other previously interviewed interlocutors.- Design the executive project.- Build and open the designed space.- Evaluate the experience.- Build a real-scale model of the apartment in the Bac, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain of Geneva.- Make a video documentary about the project.- Spread the project.- Search for funding.- Experiment for 3 months with the prototype.

PROCESS

- Begin collaboration with the architect. Raphaél Nussbaumer.- Choose the neighborhood of Onex to develop the project.- Identify the main interlocutor of the Sr. Mercolli neighborhood Service director for Youth and Community Action of Onex.- Open up a participation process carrying out interviews.    - Mr Kurteshi, Caretaker of Onex’s blue tower.    - Mr Mercolli, Service director for Youth and Community Action of Onex.    - Mr Bürgisser, Director of the Housing Office of Geneva’s Canton.    - Mr Pythoud, Architect.    - Mrs Parisod, eco-biologist.    - Mr Armenian, gastroenterologist.    - Mr Ries, Dietician.    - Mrs Quinodoz, Radiologist.

- Research and reflect on the importance of habitat to help “digest memory”.- Interview and suggest the Kurteshi family an intervention in their house of blue tower Avenue du Gros-Chêne 43 in the city of Onex, as beneficiary of the project.- Needs in the habitat identified by Mr Kurteshi.     - Recover the relation between nature and earth.         - Improve the relationship among neighbors and other residents in the city.         - Widen the playing areas for their children and their neighbors’.         - Need to create relational and community areas.

- Josep-Maria Martin’s remarks:    - Multicultural composition of the neighborhood.    - Kosovo-Albanian origin of Mr Kurteshi.    - A design related to his origins and war (memory).    - Being caretaker of the building in which he lived.    - Double role: caretaker and tenant.    - Reluctance to improve his house.    - Recreation of his original Kosovo-Albanian habitat.    - In the neighborhood there is a difficulty in creating areas of transition between public and private space.

- Order the information obtained on the subject.- Present and debate on the proposals to the family and interlocutors of the project.    - Proposals:       - Build a balcony in the West façade.        - Build a garden on the communities’ terrace roof.       - Build a cabin, in the flowerbeds surrounding the building, for the children to play.

    - Findings of the debate:        - Need to create a community area signaling the transition between private and public space.        - Develop a collective area on the terrace roof of the building: garden, vegetable garden, cabin to play, barbeque, etc.        - Mr Kurteshi, caretaker of the building, committed himself to manage the use of this new area.

- Carry out the executive project modifying, integrating and enriching the initial proposal of the Digestive House Prototype.- Elaborate, in collaboration with Mr Kurteshi, the rules of use.- Search for funding.- Carry out the administrative management needed to develop the project.- Build a prototype.     - Spread the project.         - Exhibit the Digestive House project in Geneva’s Bac.         - Create a real-scale model of the Kurteshi family’s apartment.         - Show the plans and photographs.         - Produce a documentary film.- Press release.- Publication.

IMPACT

The Foundation, owner of the building, showed their interest, approval and support in the project by providing the necessary resources needed to carry it out. The intention was to take most of the experience and spread it to other neighboring buildings.The prototype wasn’t finally installed in the terrace roof, for external reasons.Geneva’s fire department didn’t give permission, due to a change in regulation (produced during the project’s development) related to the building’s emergency exits.Onex’s City Hall and Mr Bürgisser, Director of the Housing Office of Geneva’s Canton, keeps working in order for the project to become a reality.The Digestive House enabled them to visualize the need to improve the neighbors’ communications in Onex and, also, the need to treat the transitional areas between private and public spaces.

 

 **  OPEN THE ATTACHED PDF TO SEE THE COMPLETE DOCUMENT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10prmc3392, 09-10prmc3618

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (related work)

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (related work)

THE DIGESTIVE HOUSE, 2007 Memory and habitat: habitat prototype in Onex.BAC, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain. Onex y Ginebra, Suiza

 

PRECEDENTS

Josep-Maria Martin was invited to participate in the collective exhibition “Habitat/Variations”, in order to rethink the concept of habitat and different ways of living. To develop the project, the Genevan architect Raphaél Nussbaumer suggested a collaboration to reflect together on the spaces in which we live.

The project focused on the city of Onex, a bedroom community in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. It was built in the sixties, a period in which different solutions were suggested to solve the housing problem. In those days a lot of apartment blocks and collective spaces were built, which no longer answer today’s needs of size and comfort as well as the diversity of the new family structures.

These neighborhoods contain a highly diverse population, ethnically as well as culturally.

The majority of its inhabitants come from countries all over the world, which have had to move for socioeconomic reasons or as political refugees that are running from a war and bring tragic experiences, which are added to the common difficulties of adjusting to a new country.

 

FOUNDATIONS OF THE PROPOSAL

To question the space were we live in and establish an analogy between the digestive system and the home, as an organism that digests personal and collective memory. It is a way to focus on the relationship between spaces that people live in and how it can help individuals manage and face history, personal and collective memory with the cognitive realm of life and the welfare of people. We intend to find answers to the relation habitat-memory:

- How can our own history, our contribution, coexist with the history we find in reality?- Do we experience the legacy of a place’s memory?- What do we contribute to the memory of a certain place?- How do we face our personal and collective memory?- What influence does the habitat have on the individual, the family, community…?- How does space help us digest the events of our lives?- What is a family’s quality of life?- How do family members contribute to it?- How does it affect personal and professional relationships?- How do we face cultural displacement?- How do we live with people belonging to other cultures and backgrounds?- How do we coexist with the memory of war?

PROPOSAL

- Propose the intervention of an architect to develop the project collectively.- Identify a family form the neighborhood of Lavapies to carry out the idea.- Open up a participation process.- Identify and invite different interlocutors linked to the project.- Research on how the habitat helps us face memory.- Carry out interviews with each of the people identified as significant.- Reflect on family living in a suburb of Geneva.- Order the obtained information.- Elaborate and conceptualize the proposal.- Design the architectural project.- Debate about the proposal with the family and other previously interviewed interlocutors.- Design the executive project.- Build and open the designed space.- Evaluate the experience.- Build a real-scale model of the apartment in the Bac, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain of Geneva.- Make a video documentary about the project.- Spread the project.- Search for funding.- Experiment for 3 months with the prototype.

PROCESS

- Begin collaboration with the architect. Raphaél Nussbaumer.- Choose the neighborhood of Onex to develop the project.- Identify the main interlocutor of the Sr. Mercolli neighborhood Service director for Youth and Community Action of Onex.- Open up a participation process carrying out interviews.    - Mr Kurteshi, Caretaker of Onex’s blue tower.    - Mr Mercolli, Service director for Youth and Community Action of Onex.    - Mr Bürgisser, Director of the Housing Office of Geneva’s Canton.    - Mr Pythoud, Architect.    - Mrs Parisod, eco-biologist.    - Mr Armenian, gastroenterologist.    - Mr Ries, Dietician.    - Mrs Quinodoz, Radiologist.

- Research and reflect on the importance of habitat to help “digest memory”.- Interview and suggest the Kurteshi family an intervention in their house of blue tower Avenue du Gros-Chêne 43 in the city of Onex, as beneficiary of the project.- Needs in the habitat identified by Mr Kurteshi.     - Recover the relation between nature and earth.         - Improve the relationship among neighbors and other residents in the city.         - Widen the playing areas for their children and their neighbors’.         - Need to create relational and community areas.

- Josep-Maria Martin’s remarks:    - Multicultural composition of the neighborhood.    - Kosovo-Albanian origin of Mr Kurteshi.    - A design related to his origins and war (memory).    - Being caretaker of the building in which he lived.    - Double role: caretaker and tenant.    - Reluctance to improve his house.    - Recreation of his original Kosovo-Albanian habitat.    - In the neighborhood there is a difficulty in creating areas of transition between public and private space.

- Order the information obtained on the subject.- Present and debate on the proposals to the family and interlocutors of the project.    - Proposals:       - Build a balcony in the West façade.        - Build a garden on the communities’ terrace roof.       - Build a cabin, in the flowerbeds surrounding the building, for the children to play.

    - Findings of the debate:        - Need to create a community area signaling the transition between private and public space.        - Develop a collective area on the terrace roof of the building: garden, vegetable garden, cabin to play, barbeque, etc.        - Mr Kurteshi, caretaker of the building, committed himself to manage the use of this new area.

- Carry out the executive project modifying, integrating and enriching the initial proposal of the Digestive House Prototype.- Elaborate, in collaboration with Mr Kurteshi, the rules of use.- Search for funding.- Carry out the administrative management needed to develop the project.- Build a prototype.     - Spread the project.         - Exhibit the Digestive House project in Geneva’s Bac.         - Create a real-scale model of the Kurteshi family’s apartment.         - Show the plans and photographs.         - Produce a documentary film.- Press release.- Publication.

IMPACT

The Foundation, owner of the building, showed their interest, approval and support in the project by providing the necessary resources needed to carry it out. The intention was to take most of the experience and spread it to other neighboring buildings.The prototype wasn’t finally installed in the terrace roof, for external reasons.Geneva’s fire department didn’t give permission, due to a change in regulation (produced during the project’s development) related to the building’s emergency exits.Onex’s City Hall and Mr Bürgisser, Director of the Housing Office of Geneva’s Canton, keeps working in order for the project to become a reality.The Digestive House enabled them to visualize the need to improve the neighbors’ communications in Onex and, also, the need to treat the transitional areas between private and public spaces.

 

 **  OPEN THE ATTACHED PDF TO SEE THE COMPLETE DOCUMENT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10prmc3392, 09-10prmc3618

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (interview with Susana Cremades)

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (interview with Susana Cremades)

 

  

An interview by Jorge Díez with Susana Cremades, journalist and editor, she has also worked as labour advisor and social mediator. She is a neighbour of Lavapiés and has allowed Josep María Martin to gain access to the realities behind the neighbourhood’s ‘pisos patera’.

Did you know Madrid Abierto before participating as one of the ‘key’ elements in Josep María Martín’s project? Something that I would like to thank you for, as well as Ana Velasco, the ‘key behind the key’. We also appreciate your willingness to give us this interview.

I knew about Madrid Abierto while reading an article that was published in ‘Revista de Museología’, in which I worked as graphic designer, but I had already seen some of the interventions in calle Alcalá and Casa de América, and I had always thought it was something curious.

And in general, what is your relation to art? Because I see that you have reproductions of great artists of the XX century. Apart from that curiosity that you are talking about, what do you think of current art?

I read about it, check out projects, but I am still not quite aware of where it is going. I have been told that nowadays it is much more connected to social matters, but art…, I don’t know. When I go to an art exhibit I want to learn something, and I enjoy with pieces such as this reproduction of Las señoritas de Aviñón by Picasso, that my two year old son also likes very much. If I had to choose something in particular, I would prefer expressionism. Back to the more social oriented type of art, I think it has to do, overall, with the decisions that these artists make on these issues. But where is art to be found? In the person who is an artist or in the final product? Because there are other people that develop projects with the community, which, sometimes, are difficult to distinguish from what certain artists are doing.

Why do you think that a phenomenon such as ARCO takes place, an event that draws big audiences which are particularly youthful, although there is ample skepticism regarding the value of current art?

I don’t know the reason why people want to see current art, I am sure that some of them want to enjoy, but me, being especially clumsy at drawing or when developing any kind of plastic skill, I like to find out what impression other skilled people in this area can provoke in me. That means, that enjoyment, and the possibility of being moved by any artistic expression, were it a painting, a movie or music, is the essence of my interest, just as well as other people who want to get in touch with art, but being aware that there are also many others that do it for status or because it is a must, an attitude imposed by trends or as a result of marketing, which is probably what is happening with ARCO.

In this sense, as a journalist, as a professional, what do you think of the relationship between the media and culture in general, and art in particular?

The truth is I am a little bit critical with the media, in spite of being a journalist myself although not active at the moment, because I think that right now the media is leaving aside its duty to inform, of encouraging a critical point of view. And most of all the public media, that should defend the basic pillars of information, and is basically focused on the wars of audiences, therefore the supposedly public interest is not materialized in facilitating the access to the complex reality of much of the proposals of contemporary art that deal with the issues of the city, urban landscape, immigration or any kind of social issue. And when any form of public media tries to do it, the truth is that because it barely has any audience, they don’t have the resources to do their job properly. For example, it is a topic that everybody likes La 2, although, in reality, hardly anybody watches it. In fact, there is great unanimity regarding the duties of the media, although some like it and others don’t, but there is also great unanimity regarding the fact that they do not accomplish their aim.

However, in the realm of culture something different takes place to what happens in the media, it maybe has to do with the general idea people have of culture, but, at least apparently, they don’t follow the same editorial guide lines or economic interests, focusing on more liberal type of information or depicting culture as a show.

Culture is very “in”, if you are interested in it you are supposed to be great, but in the media, when dealing with information, culture and sports belong to the last journalists on the line, except in those cases in which the great specialist deals with culture in a supplement or a weekly special, conceived as something that belongs to the elite.

And getting back to the current artistic practices that don’t deal with the production of artistic objects, but with processes, approaching social issues, and taking for granted that they produce some type of result that may be inscribed in the artistic field, do you think that they share some common features or that there is a diversity of approaches and attitudes among artists themselves, in the same level as in activities conventionally understood as common to the realm of art?

From the view point of art, as well as from any other perspective that deals with social issues, I think it is positive, although artists seem to place themselves on another level. Anyway I am speaking without knowledge, for at this point I have only established a direct contact with Josep-María Martín, who has said in several occasions that he, as an artist, reaches a lot more places, or more important places, than many other people can get to. For example, the possibility of meeting the president of a country can propitiate small changes in reality, and I believe that that is something very positive.

But this access to people in power can be seen in another way; that the artist keeps playing the role of someone that goes with power, that entertains and gives prestige to those who rule in politics, economy, etc, and at the same time obtains his prestige and influence as chosen by such power. And although certain artists in no way pursue such aim, but try to instigate these changes on reality, to what extent is that transforming potential of art overestimated? How can the artist handle complex realities and surpass the realm of art, being at once a sociologist, anthropologist, geographer and social worker?

Sometimes I don’t know if that really happens or if in many occasions it’s another form of manifestation of the artist’s ego, only exceeded by that of renown architects, but every case should be taken care of. There’s not a common pattern, we must analyze if an artist in particular is approaching a reality that, in many cases, is the expression of the art of living or surviving in awful conditions, or he is simply trying to reassure his previous conception of that particular reality that nothing has to do with art, and is alien to such an extent that it is very difficult to understand and share in a very brief and short approach as the one that generally takes place in the development of many projects. I am not an artist but I really doubt that, due to being one, you can know and comprehend a different and complex reality. In any case I think it is an interesting and positive approach, beyond specific results.

How do you think this approach of artists towards social realities is perceived?

By the other part it is always perceived as a way of taking advantage. It is very difficult to attain equality in a relationship when the starting point is different. In the tension of the creative process that is seeking to obtain an artistic result, whichever it may be, the artist sometimes forgets he is dealing with people that have no understanding of his interests and that may perceive that they are not receiving anything specific from him, even more when dealing with people who don’t share our codes because they don’t belong to what we wrongfully call the first world. And also the opposite way around, any comment that these people may say can be understood as unlawful. The possibility that they might take advantage of a situation that is oriented towards an artistic goal may create distrust. It’s like those pirates that are so in vogue nowadays; we are horrified by these Somali pirates, but, aren’t we pirates in their sea, their land and people? Their assaults, the rescues, seem to us to be from another time and carry a violence that we detest, but, what does the first world do in that part of Africa? In Ethiopia teff is cultivated, it is a cereal with which injera is made, an elastic type of bread that is the basic food of its population. A Dutch company has found out that it has weight-reducing properties for an overfed first world and has patented several substances derived from it thanks to an agreement with the Ethiopian Government. Consequently there has been a wild rise in the price of teff, that is depriving the country from its basic product, and which is going to contribute to the death of six million people due to hunger, not being able to gain access to the only food that they have. Has any artist thought about such an important issue that affects so many people?

I don’t know, but I am interested in what you are pointing out about an equal relationship and a possible form of mutually taking advantage.

Of course, taking advantage, which in the case of the Senegalese people of Josep María Martin’s project has, at some point, provoked the thought that “here we go again having the whites taking advantage of us”, because the rejection and racism towards the other part is mutual. I have heard that during this project, and we can’t allow it, because it isn’t true. This project is not an opportunity for someone to benefit economically.

This project takes place in Lavapiés, where these Senegalese people live, why do you think so many artists are interested in this neighbourhood?

The concept of Lavapiés that has been promoted by the media and politicians in power is that of a marginal neighbourhood, full of delinquency. But from some years on, in Lavapiés there’s a type of professionals and people working on culture that have nothing to do with a neighbourhood for the old, for immigrants and people who, as myself, didn’t have any money and bought houses at a very low cost because this part of the city was the cheapest in Madrid, as well as Vallecas. I bought my house some eleven or twelve years ago, also, because I liked Lavapiés and I had always lived close. But these people have bought 90 square meter houses for 90 million of the old pesetas, thanks to rehabilitation plans that have promoted the cleanliness of the neighbourhood. A house like my one, that I bought for 9 million and that doesn’t get to 50 square meters, has been sold for forty. What kind of people buy these houses? Why do people like this neighbourhood so much? Maybe at the time of La Movida a lot of the people who came to his neighbourhood came from a similar social background but had a different social and vital approach. Today, those wearing broken pants that cost 200 euros are coming, being a minority within the Spanish minority of the neighbourhood. Anyhow they are very significant, and in reality they don’t coexist with the rest of the neighbourhood, they don’t know their neighbours nor do they relate to them and, in fact, they are contributing to throw out the traditional neighbours and the new immigrant members without even having thought about it and it is not even their intention. Something different happens with the public administration, that wants to turn the centre of Madrid into a place similar to the centre of other great European cities. This is very clear once we analyze how political activity is organized, how the plenary local sessions take place, how the police intervene or how the neighbourhood is now being filled with cameras. This doesn’t respond to an artistic objective at all but to other objectives, which indirectly have created projects, like the Camarón project by Un barrio feliz, that I think is very creative, although I don’t know if it should be called art, social demonstration, or a different way of building a city.

What do you think of some of the projects that have been made in the neighbourhood like the Offlimits space?

They are different from the project that I was talking about, which emerges from social networks, although the social network of Lavapiés is no longer active. Initiatives like the housing table and others don’t function anymore. The pressure to change and throw out the members of the neighbourhood also has to do with issues such as the drug problem and the lack of political will to solve it. However, other social networks have emerged, like one that helps support immigrants in their adaptation process once they have been thrown out of the Canary Islands. Obviously they are not artistic interventions but social ones, very necessary for the neighbourhood. Their aim is not to create art, but they have an enormous creative potential as a form of developing the neighbourhood and creating another type of city. I wonder if something could be done from the artistic point of view without using the neighbourhood as a medium to reaffirm previous ideas that some artists have of Lavapiés.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10intc2794, 09-10inic2796

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (2009.12 / technical data)

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (2009.12 / technical data)

 CHRONOGRAM FOR THE DIGESTIVE HOUSE EVENT

7pm Attendees start arriving

7:05pmResidents in the overcrowded house for immigrants with other Senegalese people will walk for Valencia street to LCE with banners built my youth from Kayar (Senegal), as a legacy or relay of transferred worries from Senegal.

7:10pmWe try to attract people to watch how the Senegalese arrive with the banners from the inner patio of LCE to the upstairs terrace.

7:15pmThe banners are situated as installation in the terrace (floor or stuck in the window boxes).

7:20pmPlay the documentary.

8:10pmThe documentary ends.

8:20pmAn act of interaction begins between residents in the apartment and attendees.Senegalese dinner and hot tea. Wine?

 

 (December 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10intb3584, 09-10inib2646

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (2009.12 / visual data)

2009-2010. Josep-María Martín.  A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (2009.12 / visual data)

 

     

        

(Fotos: Enrique Pacheco / December 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10inib2647, 09-10intb2648

2009-2010. Josep María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (images)

2009-2010. Josep María Martín. A DIGESTIVE HOUSE FOR LAVAPIÉS (images)

 

           

       

Photos: Alfonso Herranz 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09-10inic2790, 09-10inic2791