As a conclusion and with an eye toward a new stage…
The second phase of Territory(ies), Community(ies), and Artistic Practices has recently concluded—a research and community creation project developed collaboratively among three creative hubs in the city (La Central del Circ, Graner, and Ateneu Popular 9 Barris), but also, and most importantly, among their working teams, creators, local residents, and nearby collectives.
Deepening the relationships with their immediate surroundings, with greater awareness of the space they occupy, has been the cross-cutting theme and starting point of the laboratories that shaped this phase’s program. Being located in a place does not necessarily mean inhabiting it, especially when inhabiting suggests staying in a way that differs from what was originally envisioned.
Undoubtedly, these creative hubs, as cultural spaces, have established varying degrees of deep and lasting connections with the neighborhoods they are situated in and their communities over time. In this context, we understand communities not only as neighborhood associations but also as collectives, groups, or individuals with whom they engage through their artistic nature. However, in this project, the focus shifted to other questions: what is the social purpose of the daily work and practices activated by these hubs? What impact does their work have beyond the walls that contain them? How can relationships be activated that decentralize the hub as the sole promoter of “creative” activities, de-hierarchize roles, and spark new social energy?
The laboratories represent the continuation of an initial phase during which, through a glossary practice, the project delved into the universe of words—how we name things, not to define how they should be, but rather to reflect on how we experience and reconstruct them. This exercise established a working methodology that always starts from open-ended questions rather than fixed formulas, directives, or diagnoses, questions for which there are no predetermined answers. It is the process of exploring the scope and limits of these questions that sustains us and allows us to experiment with alternative ways of relating, remaining, or sharing space.
The three main pillars of the project also served as the stimulus for designing each laboratory’s program, but this time with an emphasis on notions, dynamics, and tools that consider the renewal of communal/neighborhood relationships, an awareness that there is another way to conceive the social bond through creation, and, in particular, the obsolescence of certain practices we consider immutable, such as how we create and work in art, or how art intersects with life.
