HUCHA DE DESEOS. WE ARE THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: ACT!
LOCATION: MADRID, LA LATINA,
OUTPUT: 12TH NOVEMBER 2009 UNTIL 27TH FEBRUARY 2010: PARTICIPATORY PUBLIC ART PIECE IN LA LATINA,
1ST – 26TH FEBRUARY 2010: CHARCOAL WRITING ON PASEO DE RECOLETOS
27TH FEBRUARY 2010: OPEN SPACE DECISION EVENT IN EL CIRCULO DE BELLAS ARTES
SINCE MARCH 2010: REALISATION OF 2 WISHES BY ASOCIACIÓN AMIGOS DE LA CORNISA-LAS VESTILLAS AND ZOOHAUS
PROCESS PARTNERS: SUSANNE BOSCH DID THE PROJECT PROPOSAL (WWW.SUSANNEBOSCH.DE) FOR MADRID ABIERTO 2010 (WWW.MADRIDABIERTO.COM), CHOSEN BY CECILIA ANDERSSON / CURATOR (WWW.WERKPROJECTS.ORG) IN COLLABORATION WITH ZOOHAUS (WWW.ZOOHAUS.NET), CÍRCULO DE BELLAS ARTES (WWW.CIRCULOBELLASARTES.COM), AULA URBANA / MARÍA MOLINA LÓPEZ CON SAGRADO CORAZÓN DE JESÚS Y CENTROS DE DÍA NUMANCIA AND PALOMA, IGNACIO TEJEDOR LÓPEZ / VIRGINIA LAZARO VILLA / MARIO LEAL / ELENA BUENO (PROJECT ASSISTANTS) AND THE WHOLE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF LA LATINA. IT WAS PARTIALLY FUNDED BY THE ARTS COUNCIL NORTHERN IRELAND & BRITISH COUNCIL. THE TWO WISHES WERE FULLFILLED BY ASOCIACIÓN AMIGOS DE LA CORNISA-LAS VESTILLAS AND ZOOHAUS.
PROJECT WEB: WWW.HUCHADEDESEOS.WORDPRESS.COM

The public art project Hucha de Deseos started on 12th November 2009 and created over the period of three and a half months a lively dialogue among neighbours of La Latina in what they would like to change and better in their common public space. The project collected left-over and unused money in form of old Pesetas in La Latina and throughout Spain.

512 wishes and proposals were collected (via audio recordings, interviews, postcards, posters, media) via a public multi-media collection site designed and built by the designer collective zoohaus. They can be read on www.huchadedeseos.wordpress.com. On 27th February 2010, 55 neighbours of La Latina met for a day in el Circulo de Bellas Artes.

Together they decided what would happen with the 512 collected wishes in and for La Latina and with the around 85,000 Pesetas, exchanged into € 513.70. This one day Open Space event led to the selection of two proposals.

The multiple named wish of more green space in La Latina was realised through planting eight plum trees in the Cornisa Park on the 14th March 2010. The Asociación Amigos de la Cornisa-Las Vestillas took care of the realisation of this wish in a collaborative action. The second wish, putting a letterbox on Plaza Puerta de Moros – the previous location of the object – with which all local associations can stay in contact, exchange ideas and inform each other of events, is in the process of being realized. The plan is to put all incoming info on a blog so that the local network will be strengthened. zoohaus agreed to realize this wish.

From 1st – 26th February 2010, the 512 wishes were written a daily action of three hours’ duration, with white chalk on the pavement of el Paseo de Recoletos.

The educational program (Aula Urbana), created by María Molina López, engaged two groups of middle school students from the Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in La Latina in the project for over 4 months. The stu­dents became active participants in the collection of wishes, interviewing their neighbours and in the deci­sion process. Maria and Susanne also engaged with el­derly people from the daycare centres Numancia and Paloma in the neigbourhood to find out more about the history of the site and their take on it today.

EXCERPTS FROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN CECILIA ANDERSSON AND SUSANNE BOSCH IN MARCH 2010

S: Was your starting point for the curatorial concept of Madrid Abierto the question of what is needed and missing in Madrid?

C: Definitely. And also by talking to other people I know in the art in Madrid. There was a big concern that things were becoming very conservative and closed down. During dinners I organised I could see people being happy to meet other people locally. Theidea was to work that ‘togetherness’ on a bigger scale within Madrid Abierto. The notion of opening things up a bit. This is how I set out to think about what I could do within Madrid Abierto.

S: ‘Togetherness on a bigger scale’ certainly hap­pened in my project. Although, for me a ‘real’ col­laboration needs more grown and solid relationships. I would say, this was a step towards collaboration via a projects that asked for passionate participation and literally paid services and contributions. In terms of the making of a public participatory project, I am interested who is involved in the making of a project. e.g. my relationship with zoohaus started out of a rec­ommendation to work together. The idea to involve a young, local, but relatively un-experienced team was on one hand brilliant, on the other hand we went through a lot of mistakes together that could have been avoided with more experience and the matter in principle.

C: I think you mainly formed the work and process at the end more than anybody else in this process. Also in the collaboration with the people you worked with in Madrid locally. But obviously I chose your concept because it fitted super-well with my idea of the collab­orative remit. It was a very clear collaborative project.

S: I guess my take on collaboration is - in a pure sense - a concept and work that develops together. Madrid Abierto did not give me the time to develop a piece locally from scratch. How can an idea arrive at a neighborhood that is not proposed by someone who lives there, is one of my questions.

C: I don’t think of your project as ‘external’ nature at all, because you engaged with a lot of people in the neighborhood to make this happen. If you only came across the hucha, that was the object you saw, but the project was much deeper.

S: How do you measure the success of a work like this?

C: I do not have measurements of success, that is the point. This is not why we are doing this, it is not about saying this is a success or not, it also not about sayingit is good or bad, I am not interested in that. But I do think in terms of process it has been really successful. Your project involved so many people into its com­ing alive. It is entirely doing what it was supposed to do and it has taken so many paths. It has taken on so many unanswered questions. It is a complete success for me, I can thrive on these things that lead to new questions. It is not a final piece that comes, lands and is ready as such. I think it is a very dynamic work in that sense and to me that is a success.

S: Maria, living in this neighbourhood, kept on wor­rying: Do the neighbours really come, do they really take part in the decision process?

C: I was really surprised how well attended the Open Space was. But I think it is too narrow to only judge the project on the participation at the Open Space.Neighbours participated already by putting their desire in or recording their wish at the hucha. It can not only be judged by attending the Open Space. It is a fact that the project was installed for 3.5 months and people had the opportunity to engage. During the Open Space, people decided to stay for hours and to sit through these at times rather tedious discus­sions back and forth. But it proved to be a fantastic process. We may or may not like the decisions taken what to do with the collected pesetas. I thought it was impressive.

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AFTER “ROSARIO” WE HEARD THE CHANA GUANA
Text: Zoohaus

The 1999 movie Magnolia starts with a lot of strange events that are apparently a product chance. After the last of these stories, the narrator tells us his own opinion. “And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just something that happened. This cannot be one of those things. This, please, cannot be that. This was not just a matter of chance. No, these strange things happen all the time.”

The day we decided what to do with the pesetas we collected with our “hucha de deseos”, many neighbours of La Latina came to the meeting. After an intense day, an equitable but participated solution equally distributed the money to satisfy two relevant neighbourhood wishes. The first wish was the urgent, realistic and very much discussed need of more trees. But better oriented trees, not to be planted in any arbitrary way, but supporting one of the most important popular causes that are being carried out, some trees destined to reinforce the park of La Cornisa, currently an endangered species. The second wish was never recorded in “Rosario’s” internal memory. It appeared in the debate and consensus, a wish which results from a six month cohabitation of La Latina with the “hucha”. This wish reflected on the availability of a channel for people to be heard, which invited them to participate and decide on how to improve the neighbourhood. Something weird was happening; this new channel had created a hole that transcends the neighbourhood’s framework creating a representative realm. Rosario became a device capable of uniting different realms and the neighbourhood thought this should continue.

Two years later, Rosario’s pesetas were employed to build a door/mailbox for the field of La Cebada, a shared public area which has been recuperated for the people. It is a five thousand square meter plaza congested with citizens that have, somehow, been able to connect two spheres, uniting the gap between those who make decisions and those who are subject to them. The field of La Cebada, citizenship and administration get together in public space to design it and manage it while seeking for new ways.

Two years later, in the square of Los Carros, where the hucha was physically installed, every Saturday since the 15^th of May, neighbours get together to discuss how to improve the neighbourhood, in the so called “Asturias Meeting”.

Many of you might consider this to be a matter of chance, that there is no direct relation between these events and “Rosario”, but to me, this humble narrator, this can’t just be something that happened. This can’t just be one of those things, this, please, can’t be that. In my opinion, this can’t be, this can’t just be a matter of chance.

www.elcampodecebada.org

09-10intc3696, 09-10intc3709