Two hundred proposals land in Sondika following D+consonni’s initial announcement.

Introduction

At the end of 2008, the art production company from Bilbao, consonni, and the Catalan art project, densitat, launched the ID+consonni competition as a joint venture, thus broadening the territory for densitat and offering consonni another formula for working with artists.

IDENSITAT (www.idensitat.net) is an artistic project devoted to investigating ways of impacting on public space using creative proposals relating to place and territory from a physical and social dimension. Idensitat took off in 1999 in the small Catalan municipality of Calaf as a project that developed interventions within public space, devised by creators from different disciplines. Idensitat has progressed by creating a network of collaborators in different places (Calaf, Manresa, Mataró, El Priorat, and Barcelona) and seeking out methodologies for the interaction of creation projects with differently nuanced social, cultural and political contexts.

consonni (www.consonni.org) is a producer of art projects based in Bilbao. Since 1997, it has been inviting artists to develop projects which do not take the form of an art object displayed in an exhibition space, with a reflexive and experimental intention. Matthieu Laurette, Hinrich Sachs, Andrea Fraser, Sergio Prego, Ibon Aranberri, Itziar Okariz, Saioa Olmo, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum etc. are developing works with consonni which borrow tools from the contemporary world to produce art projects in a wide variety of formats including a television programme, an auction of Basque typography, guided tours of an abandoned amusement park and a march of zombies to subvert, criticise or simply analyse the society that surrounds them.

This cooperation willing between two organizations, and with the collaboration of Sondika town council, led to the creation of ID+consonni, an international public invitation for a competition which closed on 13 February. Its aim was to find an art project for the town. Candidates were invited to work on Sondika’s supposed loss of identity as a consequence of the building of Bilbao airport which is currently operating in the nearby town of Loiu. This aspect was underlined by the council itself.

Participation

A total of 203 proposals from a variety of countries were received:

Germany, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Chile, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Slovenia, Spain, USA, Finland, France, Netherlands, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Macedonia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Romania, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Interdisciplinarity is not only apparent in the diversity of the proposals, which focus on diverse subjects (relating to identity, the urban context, symbols, society, the public sphere, the air, sound, daily life…) with extremely different objectives and tools (citizen participation, urban intervention, academic research, identification with fiction, the reconstruction of symbols and identities, the
metaphor as an action formula, artistic experimentation, artivism…), which are approached from the combination and co-implication of different disciplines and sectors (cinema, sculpture, painting, theatre, music, dance, performance, ephemeral architecture, urbanism, photograph, sport, etc.), but is also present in the training and professional experience of those taking part (the fine arts,architecture, engineering, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, sport, culture management, museology, design, creativity, drama, etc.). This ensures the richness of reflection and of the actual implementation of the proposals.

Nevertheless, in addition to this diversity, there is also remarkable similarity. There are quite a few proposals from different countries and disciplines which develop very similar action and thinking formulas. Trends which are worthy of particular mention are proposals developed in collaboration, some of which propose sonorous art as a metaphor of memory and/or research on public space and its
intangible identity, while several propose the prior public projection of audiovisual recordings, and others present work dynamics to develop participative work rather than a set proposal, and quite a few chose contemporary dance as an interaction formula, with almost all of them sharing an interest in developing a preliminary research stage and getting to know the place of intervention as a first step in
the work process.

Jury

A professional and interdisciplinary jury, made up of artist Ibon Aranberri, architect Zaida Muxí, artist and Idensitat director Ramón Parramón, as well as sociologist and director of consonni María Mur Dean, needed to deliberate deeply. The decision was difficult to take due to the massive response to the invitation. Moreover, the decision had to take into account a number of variables: express current trends in contemporary artistic production, develop formulas for real participation among citizens, stress the proposed theme and generate reflection and debate on artistic practice in public space.

Sondika town council gave its support to the jury’s decision. They had proposed one overall winner to develop the project over 2009 and five special mentions which implied the chance to intervene in public space in Sondika from a variety of perspectives and tools. These five proposals will not be developed but will be made public through consonni and Idensitat’s websites and other communication devices which are to be approved by the artists, such as a future publication.

Selection

Selected proposal

“Jueves Milagro” de Xelo Bosch y Cyrille Larpenteur

Special mentions

“De Sondika” by Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz Ezpeleta, Diego Carbajo Padilla and Nader Koochaki Etxeberria
“Open Office For the Public Imagination” by Adnan Yildiz in collaboration with Can Altay and Nomad
“Soundika- a site specific audio tour of Sondika” by DinahBird and Jean Philippe Renoult
“Cabañas de la memoria” by Eva Garrido and Yera Moreno
“Recipe Benches” by Z+E+M Public Art Collective

The “Jueves Milagro” (Miraculous Thursday) proposal, with a specific approach and work methodology using workshops with different social groups, is likewise sufficiently flexible for its modulation on the basis of the daily experience and common aspirations of the townspeople, as well as of their diverse relations with the non-airport. Reflection on the possibilities and limitations of art (of the miracles of art) in public intervention is likewise part of the proposal, making it a project with the capacity for (self) criticism and self awareness. “De Sondika” develops a transdisciplinary and undisciplined reflection on the airplane as a fetish and flying as narrative, and is one of the proposals that most questions the subject of the invitation. “Open Office For the Public Imagination” proposes the interventions and performances of different artists who will interact with Sondika in the collective development of imagination, using art’s own specificity. “Soundika” is representative of one of the competition’s greatest trends where sound has taken centre stage, offering a route where stories are suspended and shared. “Cabañas de la memoria” (memory cabins) places the emphasis on collective memory’s relation with urban space. “Y Recipe Banches” proposes a well developed group work method based on gastronomy, one of Sondika’s signs of identity.

 

Selected Proposal

“Jueves Milagro”

by Xelo Bosch and Cyrille Larpenteur

Using Berlanga’s film “Los jueves, milagro” as a starting point, the " jueves milagro" proposal develops as a metaphor which seeks to recover the more extraordinary and wonderful meaning of the word miracle, retaining the part relating to creativity while totally discarding the term’s Catholic connotations. A metaphor of the artist, of the work and what is expected of him or her is put forward. Irony which manages to make some of the common hopes of the people of Sondika more visible or less invisible.

The ideas for making miracles will be generated by the “Taller de milagros” or miracle workshop. What is special about this workshop is how it combines the use of art resources with basic citizen participation methods. Thus, the creation of dynamics of the exchange of knowledge and skills helps the group to reach its full dimensions. To do so, we will start with town residents’ perception of their urban environment, Sondika, and Sondika’s relation with the presence of the “non-airport”, the repercussions of its location and its subsequent removal, after which they still hear and live with it, and last of all, we will deal with Sondika and its relation with the nearby city of Bilbao.

By playing the “juego del arte” (art game), we will apply collective creativity to the “art of the miracle” and —be it credible or absolutely incredible— some aspects of Sondika’s daily life may be distorted to the point of a miracle, attracting the attention of those who have lost their faith in their own possibilities to transform reality.

Xelo BOSCH Since the " La Fiambrera" group was set up, Xelo Bosch’s work has involved investigating forms of expression inserted in what is real. A form of “illegitimate” art that is developed by intervening in public space, with participative actions where the individual, through shared work, is formed as a “knowledge character”. A parade of models of precarious workers “Prêt–à-Précaire” (Paris), the “Pinta corta y colorea tu ciudad” (paint, cut and colour your city) workshop (Seville’s historical quarter), urban intervention “Monumento en huelga” (Monument on strike) (Alfafar), “Seguimos aquí” (We are still here) in collaboration with the gypsy town of «El encuentro» (Burgos)...

Cyrille LARPENTEUR Currently, a founding member of the UNILCO France (Collective Construction University), Cyrille LARPENTEUR is involved in creating and piloting projects, as well as in research, with works like « Art et activisme, une perspective féministe » (Art and artivism, a feminist perspective) (Master, Paris 8, 2006), Auto-representación (Self-representation) in the Catalogue for the 25th Biennale in Paris (2007).

Special mentions

De Sondika

by Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz Ezpeleta, Diego Carbajo Padilla and Nader Koochaki Etxeberria

This proposal put forward a cross between two disciplines, sociology and art, as a new way to face reality, seeking to overcome each of their limitations. Thus, the proposal is presented as transdisciplinary and, at the same time, undisciplined, as it creates friction between sociology and art and jointly in the reality which they analyse. The idea is to explore two aspects of the contemporary social processes such as relocation (play
between the identification and disidentification of Sondika with Bilbao airport) and the flight experience (the conceptual deconstruction of the airline artefact as a black box). Using the metaphor of the unfolding of Russian matrioshkas, as the boxes are opened, the latent stories contained in them are revealed: the story of the observer or passenger, the story of the pilot, and a real black box, which will stay closed until further notice, the project proposes deep reflection which will turn into an intervention with a library of popular photographs of an airplane trip and a retransmission of a flight in Sondika’s square.

OOPM / Open Office for Public Imagination

by Adnan Yildiz with Can Altay and Nomad

The project "Open Office For Public Imagination" is a temporarily open office structure for the inhabitants of Sondika. It is composed of a public-space installation and an open-ended process (as a program) considering the contemporary forms of communication and exchange today. It is mainly interested in the relationship between diverse roles of being a citizen and an audience who share the
same natural/cultural habitats.

As a trans-disciplinary collaboration between different professionals, who are interested in the transformation of public imagination, it is aimed to explore the connections between everyday politics and the hidden curriculum of the public space. It proposes to reconsider our creative "labour" in the context of public space and conceptualizes the physicality of time within the given space (as
spacetime) questioning the right of "access".

"Open Office For Public Imagination" will provide a temporary working place for the habitants of area
and open a space for their imagination and participation. Being composed of desks, tables and new forms of structures that enable people to work together, it will be powered by 24 hour Internet connection and host some artistic discussions and production, and public performances. Sondika seems to look like a small place with 5000 inhabitants however the project "Open Office For the Public Imagination" aims to decode how it is connected to the global world reconsidering global and local, space and time, and city and public today&hellip.

The Office Clock coordinates the team, allocates the time and energy and creates the values for production and discussion. The Office Clock: Adnan Yıldız, a Berlin/Istanbul based writer, curator, and editor. Global Crises Management connects the local context to the global agenda in terms of regulating the form of space and time according to the contemporary form of interaction, exchange and value. Global Crises Management: Can Altay, an Istanbul based artist. Laboratory for Imagination provides a physical experience through transforming the collective process into a public intervention, performative action or a pro-active response. Laboratory of Imagination: Nomad, a Berlin based artist.

Soundika - a site specific audio tour of Sondika

by DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult

The landscape contains personal stories, multiple fragments of information that construct our basic sense of self. The landscape is also made up of landmarks, a place, a space, an object, a building, a bar, a street, an event etched in the minds of the inhabitants that characterise the identity of a given place.
Soundika proposes to reexamine how local residents perceive their town by asking them to evoke a local ‘landmark’, be it a place, a moment in time, a view from a window, a bench in a square, which holds particular meaning for them. These reflections will form the basis of a site specific audio tour that rebuilds the landscape through the thoughts, sounds and recollections of the people who live there. Using GPS technology found on mobile devices listeners follow a predetemined route around town. As they near a designated GPS point a sound file is automatically played. Through closed headphones the listener receives another piece of the story, shares a moment of suspended time, is taken for a walk down a forgotten alleyway.
Out of a collage of stories, observations and impressions intertwined with field recordings and music emerges an intimate sonic topography of Sondika,that uncovers the area’s past and present, and exposes its problems and possibilities.

DinahBird and Jean-Philippe Renoult are sound artists based in Paris. They work both together and independantly creating intricate works for radio, installation, and CD publications. Recent commissions include When Silence Sings, a composed soundscape for BBCR3's Between the Ears and Natures Constuites, an audio/video collaboration that documents urban transformation in Northern Paris.

Cabañas de la memoria, Sondika

by Eva Garrido and Yera Moreno

With the aid of this project, we wish to reflect on the processes of construction and articulation of collective memory, stressing the relation that the said memory has with the urban spaces in which we live (in this case with the town of Sondika). By means of the process of juxtaposition of different individual memories, we are interested in analysing the articulation of a collective memory which is neither homogeneous nor hegemonic; in which such social sectors as normally do not have any say in the processes of institutionalisation of collective memory take part.
The project comprised different stages, each of which is represented by a cabin (“memory cabin”, “dialogue cabin” and “production laboratory”), a meeting place and a symbolic space for each of them. With an aim to building “peripheral memories” work will be carried out collectively and the voices and stories of individuals from among Sondika’s inhabitants will be heard in the public space with the aid of sound installations.

Recipe Benches

Instigating Delicious Connections in Sondika

by Z+E+M Public Art Collective

This project submitted by Markuz Wernli Saito, Eva Petric and Zoran Poposki is based on the essential human needs for eating and networking. Within the particular situation and communication structures of Sondika the project recognizes the great artistic potential of old and new food recipes by reconnecting the familiar with the alien, and the private with the public. This collaborative and experience-oriented instigation in the food culture of Sondika doesn't evoke the spectacular event but rather ignites everyday routine and encounters. The experimentation with the "narratives of cooking" becomes the metaphor for the giving and taking as well as the conjoint action. This is accomplished through subtle shifts of perception that borders to the ritualizing of meaning. The sensitive intervention within lived communication structures of the interpersonal sphere and its impalpable changes through construction and surprise unleash a fresh sense of tasty identity and delicious bonding for all participants involved.