Texts

2005. Jorge Díez / Ramon Parramon. INTRODUCTION

 SPECIFIC TEXT PUBLISHED IN THE MADRID ABIERTO NEWSPAPER 2005

  

Madrid Abierto 2005

Madrid Abierto exists because, in an increasingly evident manner, art is expanding towards much more complex areas of action, brought about by experimentation in and research into the sphere of the public and its relation with the city.  Art is a transversal practice with capacity to relate things, evidence others and promote new ones, with the possibility to actively participate in the shared task of transforming or influencing the social reality. Art loses its essence when approached as an independent discipline. In fact, art needs persons with a social and political way of understanding and activating cultural practices, and with regard to a great many existing realities, to become an activity more deeply involved in the social and political fabric, assuming an active role. A word that defines this active role is “generator”. To generate is to activate something by relating situations specific to the place and to the circumstantial elements of time and fitting it into the existing infrastructures and mechanisms to be able to produce it. But generating also involves questioning and putting in crisis pre-established and agreed devises in the institutionalised cultural dynamics. Generating is evidencing conflicts and breaking fictitious situations that seek consensus.

In this respect, it is worth highlighting the important role played by Madrid Abierto, whose objective is to activate creative practices in a specific territory by relating specificities of the place and of the moment in which they are realised. Activating and generating work processes stretched in time, motivating immersion in the place and interacting in a piece of the public space with an effect on the social sphere. Madrid Abierto is a programme based on this premise of impacting the public sphere using different spaces of the city of Madrid as stages, setting out new formats and using existing channels or infrastructures through a field of action that involves people, both in its process and in the search for other publics.

Through the international call for applications, Madrid Abierto has selected a series of projects with a bearing on the above -mentioned aspects. Of the 439 projects presented, the jury, comprised of Jorge Díez, director of Madrid Abierto, Rosina Gómez Baeza, director of ARCO, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Secretary General of Fondazione Adriano Olivetti and Ramon Parramon, curator of Madrid Abierto, has proposed the following projects: Familias Encontadas by Fernando Baena for Círculo de Bellas Artes. El Museo Peatonal by María Alós and Nicolás Dumit Estévez. Soy Madrid by Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio. Espacio Móvilby the collective La Compañía de Caracas (Ángela Bonadines and Maggy Navarro). Taxi Madrid by Anne Lorenz and Rebekka Reich. Zona Vigilada by Henry Eric Hernández.EL RÍO, las cosas que pasan  by Raimond Chaves. Project for Paseo del Prado by Oscar Lloveras. Project for Paseo de la Castellana by the collective Tercerunquinto (Julio Castro, Gabriel Cázares and Rolando Flores). Mirador Nómada by José Dávila for Casa de América. Both the latter projects were selected from the projects proposed by Carlos Ashida through the collaboration agreement with Mexico. In addition, the projects Simulacro Simétrico by Key Portilla , Maki Portilla , Tadanori Yamaguchi and Ali Ganjavian  and Valla de Seguridad by Gonzalo Sáenz de Santamaría and Berta Orellana, were selected although for technical reasons they cannot be realised in this edition.

In this second edition, Madrid Abierto has had an increased participation of projects, consolidating it as a pertinent programme that fills a gap in this kind of practices and  acquiring a commitment from the institutions involved to give continuity to experimental methods that act in the public space. This second edition of Madrid Abierto puts emphasis on approaching artistic activity not as a parasitical or resistance practice but rather as an activation practice. Not as a totally autonomous practice, but an interaction practice with other agents able to contribute to the dynamics of specific spheres of the social complexity, the complexity of human relationships and the networks involved in collective interests. In fact, it is understanding that in addition to emphasising and evidencing, it is possible to transform, participate and activate.

 

Jorge Díez / Ramon Parramon

 

 

 

 

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