Situated Creative Practices for the Pluriverse (SIT-PLU)
Artistic residency what-are-stones, Maria Nalbantova
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.
LUCA School of Arts (BE), Floating University (DE), ZEMOS98 (ES), Idensitat (ES), Lungomare (IT), Baltan Laboratories (NL), EINA (ES), Universitat Politècnica de València (ES)
- RESIDENCY CONTEXT
- SIT-RES 2026 OPEN CALL
- SACRIFICE ZONE - SIT-RES 2027 OPEN CALL (IDENSITAT)
- SELECTED PROJECT - SIT RES 2027
The Idensitat residency in Barcelona is situated investigation for producing and experimenting within the intersection between art and social space; a temporary artistic residency, with an artist/collective as creator/s and researcher/s examining the proposed theme of the Sacrifice Zone in the local context of the Besòs river in Barcelona metropolitan area. For the purpose of this residency, the Sacrifice Zone is understood as an area with a massive concentration of chemical, metallurgical, or extractive industries, which create conditions conducive to economic development but at the expense of the quality of life of the zone’s inhabitants, and its environmental balance.In this context, we believe that artistic practice may help to encourage analysis and interrogation of the process of transition of these spaces, processes which may crystallise and cause the appearance of an intermediate space, often ephemeral, but which may give rise to the questioning, the modification, or the flexibilisation of rigid structures.
SELECTED PROJECT - SIT RES 2027
what-are-stones, Maria Nalbantova
"what-are-stones" is a mixed-media project that explores the Besòs river as a shared living body connecting human and more-than-human agencies, focusing upon the relationship between the local communities and the river's ongoing recovery, after decades in which the Besòs was among the most polluted rivers in Europe. The project will develop through field research and conversations with people who live alongside the river, with the neighbourhood associations, local archives, and community centres that hold the memory of these districts, and with the ecologists and water authorities who work with the river today. The collected materials, the stories, found objects, and material gathered along the river, will take form through the idea that stones act as long-term ecological recorders, keeping traces of memory and change. The artwork will be presented as a pop-up exhibition of stone-like sculptural objects, and will conclude with a limited edition art book holding the archive of the research.
Bio
Maria Nalbantova (b. 1990, Sofia) is a visual artist based between Sofia and Salzburg, working with mixed-media installations which include sculpture, DIY biomaterials, found objects, video, sound and drawing. Her practice engages in long-term dialogue with specific places and their historical, socio-political, and ecological transformations. She explores human and more-than-human relationships, interweaving interdisciplinary and field research, oral histories, archives, and imagination, focusing upon coexistence, care, and responsibility. Her work centres upon water, rivers, marshes, and the entangled lives that gather around them. Most recently she has been working for four years within the WaterLANDS EU Horizon project at the Dragoman Marsh in Bulgaria. She is one of the artists representing Bulgaria at the 61st Venice Biennale, and has taken part in the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, Manifesta 14 in Prishtina, the feralAIR programme at Schmiede in Hallein, and the Residency Unlimited in New York, as winner of the 2020 BAZA Award.
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.