Agenda

2009-2010. URBAN BUDDY SCHEME PROGRAMME 2009

INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR
Place: La Casa Encendida
Ronda de Valencia 2
Dates: 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.

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PROGRAMME

Thursday 5 February
6.00-6.15 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.

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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. 


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Director: Jorge Díez
Curator: Cecilia Andersson
Coordination: RMS La Asociación

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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