Situated Creative Practices for the Pluriverse (SIT-PLU)
LUCA School of Arts (BE), Floating University (DE), ZEMOS98 (ES), Idensitat (ES), Lungomare (IT), Baltan Laboratories (NL), EINA (ES), Universitat Politècnica de València (ES)
Situated Creative Practices for the Pluriverse (SIT-PLU) is a Creative Europe Cooperation project tackling socio-ecological challenges through cross-disciplinary research and context-specific artistic interventions. Drawing on the Zapatista concept of the pluriverse—"a world where many worlds fit"—the project embraces diverse ways of knowing and living, foregrounding buen vivir (social well-being), communal interdependence, and the relationships between human and more-than-human entities.
- ABOUT SIT PLU
- SIT-RES 2026 OPEN CALL
- SACRIFICE ZONE - SIT-RES 2026 OPEN CALL (IDENSITAT)
- SELECTED PROJECT - SIT RES 2026
SIT-PLU stems from acknowledging that we cannot address contemporary crises using the same categories that originated them. Arts and culture can be significant triggers for contributing to new perspectives emerging and taking hold, but, for doing so, a particular approach should be explored: one in which creative practitioners (and researchers) take on ‘situated’ approaches.
SIT-PLU website: https://sitplu.substack.com/
The project includes a program of residencies (SIT-RES) happening in 2026 and 2027, where artists and creative practitioners selected through this open call will be invited to engage with a specific context (social, geographical, historical) for one year and develop new forms of creative intervention/cultural mediation.
SELECTED PROJECT - SIT RES 2026
Looming Waters by Tian Guoxin and Hannah O’Flynn
For the project the artists will undertake a one year artistic research on the multiple textile histories of the Besòs river and its surrounding neighbourhoods.
Catalunya began its industrialisation in the 1830s, led by a textile industry fuelled by the new implementation of the steam engine. These new factories were sustained through huge amounts of imported Asturian and British coal, American cotton and the African slave labour that farmed it, as well as big waves of national migrant labour. This booming new textile industry was to transform the Catalan landscape, with industrial colonies appearing along its rivers and the exponential growth of its cities. Social structures were also transformed, with the formation of a new working class and industrial bourgeoisie, as well as the consequent configuration of worker and feminist movements.
The rivers feeding these factories’ steam engines carried down the impacts of their mass manufacturing, becoming a chemical trail of the industrial project. The historical absence of water treatment, the factories’ high demand for water and the new urban formations along the rivers made of the rivers vessels of coal fumes, bleach, synthetic dyes and mordants (chromium, copper, and iron salts), detergents, oils and solvents. As textile factories historically concentrated along the banks of rivers, so did the urban areas where workers resided. Therefore, the pollution this industry generated impacted the working class in greater measure.
Like many other rivers across Catalunya, the Besòs river would also have textile industrial colonies develop on its banks. Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Badalona and Sant Adrià del Besòs, on the eastern bank of the Besòs, would become one of these textile production centres at its eastern bank, was to become one of these textile production centres, with the opening of factories such as San Baró and Can Xiquet, as well as a dye factory, la CIBA. In 1974, one of the biggest textile factories, Casadesport, fired one of its workers, triggering a famous women’s strike, where textile workers fighting for their labour rights striked for a month, resulting in the firing of half of the factory’s employees. After the 1973 oil shock a lot of the textile factories closed, but the industry did not disappear, rather, it became vastly irregular, with people producing from home or from small workshops.
In the 1990s, there was a wave of Chinese migration to Barcelona, the majority coming from Zhejiang province. A lot of the textile manufacturing machinery of the slowly retiring irregular textile workers in Sta. Coloma, Badalona and St. Adrià was bought up by the newly arrived migrants, who set up workshops where they produced clothing for Spanish brands such as Inditex, Desigual or Cortefiel, between others. The reason for this phenomenon is that the initial investment to start a textile business with second hand machinery was much cheaper than doing so in the hospitality sector. As Chinese textile workshops grew in number in the area, the neighbourhoods around the Besòs became the home of the Chinese community, who concentrated not only in Sta. Coloma and Badalona but also in St. Andreu and Sagrera. Towards the end of the decade of the 2000s, he progressive enrichment of the Chinese community, as well as international competition and constant lowering of prices, would lead to the number of textile workshops shrinking. Even after the partial dissolution of much of this textile industry, the whole Fondo area has remained an epicentre of the Chinese community of the Barcelona metropolitan area.
In 1999 the municipalities of Barcelona, Sta. Coloma de Gramenet, St. Adrià de Besòs, and Montcada i Reixac proposed a greening plan for the Besòs river banks, which was to be inaugurated in 2004 as the Parc Fluvial del Besòs.The project aimed at the ecological improvement of the historically polluted river as well as the bettering of the life quality of the neighbouring inhabitants. The flip side of the improvement of living conditions along the river was that the prices of housing in the worker’s neighbourhoods along the Besòs became higher: 7% a year in St. Andreu, and 3-4% a year in Sta. Coloma since its opening, with an interruption after the 2008 crisis.
These two distinct aspects of the river's history are deeply interconnected through stories of industrial pollution: the formation of workers' communities along its banks; the disproportionate impact of pollution on these neighbourhoods; the role of ecological urban planning in both attempting to improve living conditions and triggering gentrification that renders life unaffordable for these communities; or the alignment of such ecological initiatives with the shutdown of local industrial production, whose relocation abroad also externalises the pollution it generates.
For this project Tian and O’Flynn will create a series of intersecting chapters of the different textile histories that weave through the waters of the river Besòs: a first chapter on the Chinese community that worked in the textile industry in the Fondo area between 1995 and 2010, a second on the former workers of the textile industry in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Badalona and St. Adrià who had migrated from other parts of the state, and a third on the intersections of water pollution, biodiversity, ecological planning and gentrification. The Project is to take shape of a film and an exhibition.
Bio
Tian Guoxin is an artist born in Sichuan, China, and lives and works in Berlin. Her multidisciplinary practice includes multimedia installation, sculpture, and video. In it, she focuses on infrastructural critique, particularly the violence of resource extraction. She is an associate artist at with the rubbles of old palaces, Berlin. She recently exhibited at the n.t.w. Beijing; KW, Berlin; with the rubbles of old palaces, Berlin; Galerie Der Künstler*Innen, Munich; and Kunsthalle Baden Baden.
Hannah O'Flynn is an artist, filmmaker, researcher, and curator from Barcelona. Her work investigates the processes of normalisation of structures of oppression and the banalisation of structural violence. In her practice she focuses her research on single everyday objects or practices and attempts to situate them as a way of mapping histories of extraction, cultural norms of oppression, global networks of capitalist and imperialist relations, and the continued practices of resistance against such systems. She is an associate artist and curator at with the rubbles of old palaces, Berlin. She has exhibited at the Noorderlicht Biennale, Groningen; with the rubbles of old palaces, Berlin; BPA//Room, Berlin; and Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing.
SIT-PLU is a medium-scale Creative Europe cooperation project involving the following partners: LUCA School of Arts (BE), Floating University (DE), ZEMOS98 (ES), Idensitat (ES), Lungomare (IT), Baltan Laboratories (NL), EINA (ES), Universitat Politècnica de València (ES). SIT-PLU is co-funded by the European Union and Generalitat de Catalunya.