“FAKE RIVERS” WORKSHOP
An exploration and production workshop at Riu Sec d'Alacant, with Drassana Arquitectes and Idensitat
October 30th, 31th October - 7th November2020
Presentation of results on November 20th
This workshop combines a hike along the riverbed of the Ríu Sec (or the Dry River, its real name the Riu, or River, Monnegre) with a number of meetings at Las Cigarreras, when participants will together design an installation to be presented on November 20th, at the Hall of Las Cigarreras.
The workshop has a limited capacity that guarantees development in accordance with the safe culture spaces measures, derived from Covid-19. the selection of participants has been carried out between Drassana Arquitectes and Idensitat
Participants: Lina Vega, Patricia Gilabert, Andrea Moreno Orts, Carlos Brotons Yagues, Enric Aragonés, Esmeralda Martínez Salvador, Gaspar Belmonte, Iñaki Cancillo Mora, Ana Flensborg Kotlik, Marco Ranieri, Ester Gisbert-Alfonso Mulero (Drassana arquitectes) and Roser Colomar (Idensitat)
Times and venues:
- October 30 at the Centro Cultural Las Cigarreras, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
- October 31 route along the Riu Sec d’Alacant from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. ( the selected participants will be notified of the starting point).
- November 7th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Centro Cultural Las Cigarreras, a feedback session in which participants will also design the final presentation together
• November 20th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. presentation of an installation at the Centro Cultural Las Cigarreras
Workshop participants will start with the premise that the Riu Monnegre is many rivers. On the one hand, it is the Río Verde, a natural connector between the mountainous interior zone, with higher precipitation, and the arid coastal area. On the other, it is the Ríu Sec, a watercourse laid down by the torrential rains typical of the Levantine climate which, since at least the Middle Ages, have been channelled by diversion dams and weirs to create the artificial river delta of the Huerta de Alicante. And more recently, it is the anthropocentric river, beginning in the taps of the more than sixty thousand homes that purify their runoff greywater and blackwater in the North WWTP sewage plant, which since 2011 has been discharged into the final stretch of the river, where an allotment has been created that has attracted numerous animal and plant species. Starting this year, using newly built infrastructure, yet another river will appear, a new canalisation and a pumping station will allow the purified water to be used for irrigation. All these rivers, the news of their transformations and their systems of management, their stories, fictionalised or connected to local memory, the knowledge they represent and their uses, are largely unfamiliar to the local population.
The workshop will attempt to construct narratives that bring these ecosystems closer to participants, using such subjective tools as a physical interpretation of the terrain in order to represent the fauna and flora of the river, its traditional lore, and how they coexist with the new infrastructures of the anthropocene age.
Therefore, together with Drassana Arquitectes, social collectives for the defence of biodiversity, local residents living near the irrigated allotments, and local members of the general public, pre-booked as workshop participants, with an interest in culture, art, architecture or memory, we wish to study a stretch of the riverbank with the largest possible number of human infrastructures; dams, bridges from a variety of periods, motorways, concrete-making plants, quarries, landfills, construction material companies, agro-industries, interbasin transfer channels, golf courses, housing estates, etc.
On November 20th at 6 p.m. a presentation, open to the general public, will take place at the Centro Cultural Las Cigarreras in Alicante, exhibiting the artistic production developed as part of the residency, as well as the intervention by Drassana and workshop participants. This presentation will be together with the results of Jorge Nuñez two months residency "The Night Flier" also developed in the Rio Seco.
Drassana arquitectes is a study formed by Ester Gisbert Alemany and Alfonso M. Cuadrado Mulero in 2010 that proposes using architecture as a catalyst in the social self-construction of the environment from a contemporary, ecological and participatory perspective: http://arrsa.org/
The workshop, called "Fake Rius", forms part of the activities from the project Transversal Aesthetics - Ecosystems of Fiction, an Idensitat project, with the support of the Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana, and the collaboration of the Centro Cultural Las Cigarreras of Alicante.