inter————accions

The first weekly work sessions focus on sharing the interests of students to find a meeting point and think and organize the course.

The main issues that are proposed are linked to “Lo Urbano” as a theoretical / ideological framework and of positioning on what we understand by city, related also to the “theory of chaos”, the city as an organism, the space of dissent and anarchist urbanism. The big issues that arise are:

Urban control mechanisms: Town planning, legislative, data control, media, police institutions, education, relocation, and gentrification.

Disobedience strategies: direct action, empowerment, occupation, self-construction, self-detention, and destruction.

Urbanism from the perspective of gender, class and race: Queer theory.

City Brand: City as a text, monumentalism, “Nationalism, tourism, communication and signage channels, thematization and banalisation, habitability, and publicity.

Opportunity spaces: Spaces of contact, interstices, relational space, empty spaces, 3rd landscape, sociology, reprogramming, and urban acupuncture.

Workshop with Lilian Amaral

Starting with these big issues, the course begins its set up, deciding the invite for its first workshop to be given to Lilian Amaral, a Brazilian artist who takes us to explore Hospitalet de Llobregat through language and verb. By recording several moments with photography and audio, we explore forms of dissidence from thinking about an action that defines us individually and how, at the same time, it allows us to participate in collective action.

Workshop with La Fundició

A second workshop that was organized, also at the Hospitalet de Llobregat, is with the LaFundició collective. From various examples, various actions developed by the group are thought and discussed. Through the debate, guidelines and concepts are established to take into account when making a participatory workshop with the local community. Taking as an example, some of the projects presented by LaFundició, there are established protocols and objectives for the workshop that the students of Inter-Accions prepare for the same city around the Cultural District that from the City Council is beginning to settle in the city of L’Hospitalet.

After the workshop with LaFundició, he decided to work exclusively on Hospitalet and, in particular, the controversy that the Cultural District generates between its inhabitants and the cultural entities involved. In this sense, the research is divided between the group class and an analysis of several aspects of the phenomenon beginnings:

Visual Campaign: analysis of all the visual production that was created to inform about the H-On event (name of the campaign that the new Cultural District announces). The search is carried out from the advertising material to the corporate image of companies or consortiums behind the L’H-On event.

Participation: critical analysis mechanisms used to carry out the “participatory process” of the event. Research about real operations towards citizens in decision making on the reforms planned in the event.

One of the intense moments in the investigation is after the attendance at the Sectorial Table of Culture “On the Future Cultural District”, from which Gerard Voltà and David Alejandro García, generated this document from the minutes.

Based on the analysis of the H-On Campaign and the participatory process carried out in relation to the Cultural District, two actions are proposed in the street, exploring the protocols thought through the workshop with La Fundación:

L’H-On: Aixequem el cap

“Starting from the campaign created by L’Hospitalet de Llobregat Town Hall “L’H-On” we propose to generate another representation of the people of the districts of L’Hospitalet. We do not seek to produce it from our individualities / subjectivities, but from collective experience. For this reason, we propose to carry out a workshop, in accordance with the visual campaign (posters), where the people of the neighborhood can reinterpret and intervene on the images that the city council produces (about themselves), to sell / spread the campaign.

We consider that these images merely reproduce a white and middle-class imaginary, which has nothing to do with the reality of the city and the different people who live in it. On the other hand, the questions / affirmations that are imposed through the “Did you know …” statement merely raise the politics of capitalist market economies that have been imposed on Barcelona and Hospitalet for many years, and they do nothing but exclude large sectors of the population through gentrification techniques: the destruction of architectures, for the implantation of new buildings that take as a priority the companies and whose purpose it is to expel people with less resources from the places they live. ”

WORKSHOP OF URBANISM IN LA MARINA DE L’HOSPITALET DE LLOBREGAT

“As a result of the decisions made by the Hospitalet de Llobregat Administration next to the various sectorial tables in the framework of “L’H-On” or the third major transformation of the city of L’Hospitalet, we see a communication fissure between the vast majority of citizens and those closest to the militancy, sympathy or interest of the governing party.

For us, there is still a real participatory process, which sets forth the information and opinion of all citizens before creating a series of information, slogans and visual campaigns that use the image of the citizens to feed the idea that what is announced is What interests the city, or even what interests you, which is more degrading from the point of view of the management of a government.

We think of an itinerant and spontaneous activity that from the beginning does not intend to be the answer as well as the beginning of alternatives. We consulted any means of written and digital information, of any type, color and time. We create an exhibition of photographs of spaces in the city grouped by areas of identity, transformation, reflection and denunciation or expression.

In addition, we created a ten-point legend: How difficult it is to move around here! This is empty and unused; I walk around …; More trees! I gather and enjoy myself here; equipment I use; hopefully … The map is the resource that the citizen can manipulate and enrich through the use of the legend, as well as his testimony is noted by our notes outside the map.

We chose four public concurrent spaces: The access ramp to the Tecla Sala Library and the Snake Park in the San José neighborhood (2015.02.28), the Center Market in the downtown District (06.06.03) and the large inner ramp in the district of Bellvitge (03.03.1013). Two Fridays in the afternoon and one Saturday morning. These are some of the testimonials.” (In Catalan)

“The first evidence to carry out the activity was not having enough psychology to address people, as expressed in the number of participants. However, the conduct of the activity underlies a series of practical conclusions.

The exhibition, which aims to be informative with the possibility of extracting pieces to be placed on the map, could not work quite well for one thing or the other. The fundamental cause was the operation of the activity itself, on the street and which sometimes are often perceived as insufficient to enter the dynamics.

With better results the legend occupied, sometimes shy and other uninhibited, the map of the city. Often, some citizens were not aware of the map to explain information that only our notes could register, so it made it necessary to write some testimonials. However, these are decisive in part to generate a series of more phenomenological conclusions than statistics.

Having carried out the activity in terms of spontaneous and itinerant, the need to contact facilities or groups to establish a series of dates and sessions to carry out the activity is confirmed. Unfortunately, it was an option ruled out by time. However, in conclusion we can see the interest in talking about things. “

Lilian Amaral workshop.

Recording of the final debate after the workshop. (in Catalan)
10/22/2014

Workshop with LaFundació in L’Hospitalet.

Final recording talking about the contents of the workshop. (in Catalan)
10/29/2014

Interviews with citizens of L’Hospitalet.

During the workshop that was held at Encants – Mercat dels Ocellets. (in Catalan)
12/14/2014

Things that happen when students of art and architecture meet to discuss about the city

The texts derived from the reflections, meetings, collaborations and discussions that have taken place within the framework of the 2014-2015 edition of Cartografia Artística have been published in a monograph of URBS (Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales).

What they now collect is this monograph number of the URBS magazine entitled “Tourism, thematization of the city and counter-hegemonic urbanism”, by the guest editors Liliana López-Levi, Marta Carrasco and Sergi Selvas, is the result translated in the form of articles written by some of the participants of their experience:

Things that happen when students of art and architecture meet to discuss about the city (Presentation of the section). Marta Carrasco Bonet, Sergi Selvas Gardeñas

Crossing ideas about the future cultural district of L’Hospitalet.
Gerard Voltà Chicón, David Alejandro García Fernández.

Out of frame. There will be no revision if it is not (de) colonial.
Nando Dorrego

Cartography and city.
Isabel Torres

Intervene in the city from cultural mediation.
Mariló Fernández, Francisco Rubio (LaFundició).

The female city and L’H ON. The limits of language.
Manuela Frudà

A social pedagogy for a collective development of the contemporary city.
Marta Carrasco Bonet, Sergi Selvas Gardeñas

Published at: Monographic Volume “Tourism, thematization of the city and counter-hegemonic urbanism”. Sección Blueprints. Págs. 9-12. Vol. 5. Nº 2 revista URBS (Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales). Editors: Liliana López-Levi, Marta Carrasco, Sergi Selvas.

Downloadable files here (in Spanish):
http://www2.ual.es/urbs/index.php/urbs/index