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EMERGENCY STRUCTURES.
Workshop + Residency + Projects exhibition
ÁNGELA BONADIES
with Edgar Dos Santos, José Aristizábal, María Teresa Guzmán, Aymara Arreaza R, David Franklin y Loreto Varela

EMERGENCY STRUCTURES is a collective research project which revolves around an urban space which, up until the present, has represented the extreme and advanced evolutionary changes which are ongoing throughout the city: the Port of Barcelona. Emergency Structures is part of the ARTIZEN European Initiative project, co- funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. *Photo by Ángela Bonadies*

EMERGENCY STRUCTURES PHASE 1

Phase 1 WORKSHOP ÁNGELA BONADIES
16-17-18 July 2015 / Arts Santa Monica.

The project originated from artist Angela Bonadies's workshop of the same name during the summer of 2015, in which the port was explored using a cross-disciplinary perspective, taking as its starting point the methodology which the artist developed in several projects in Venezuela. The goal was to rehearse and to discuss, within the context of Barcelona, ​​research strategies within artistic practices which aim to analyse and to impact upon a specific social or territorial context. The workshop centred upon the Port of Barcelona area, ​​taken as an emergency structure within the urban setting, crossed by various forms of urban transport and, at the same time, part of a maritime seafront connected to three districts in which, in recent years, various tensions have surfaced between locals and visitors. This first phase of the project was developed in collaboration with the Arts Santa Monica in 2015.

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EMERGENCY STRUCTURES PHASE 2
During the year 2016, in collaboration with Homesession, Emergency Structures will continue the processes initiated during the previous year, involving several activities:
Date: 15/6/16, from 3 pm. Venue: Homesession c/creu dels molers 15, local Barcelona, 08004

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Workshop led by Ruta de Autor as part of the Polaritats educational programme by Homesession, in collaboration with the “Art. Professió i docència” pedagogical innovation group at the University of Barcelona. During the session, Ruta de Autor will share their working methodology among a group of participants, embarking with them upon a dynamic research theme, the “Golondrines”, historic leisure boats situated in the shipyards of Barcelona. The workshop focuses upon sensitising participants to pay attention to the environment, to interrogate the present, to reveal stories and to mobilise them in order to learn all about transportation. The workshop will be held in three parts. The first will encourage participants to consider how itineraries are created, also encouraging curiosity, encouraging participants in learning how to trace information and follow clues, and how to be open to serendipity. In the second part, results and search materials related to the port and the Golondrines will be discussed in common, with a view to creating an archive on the subject. In the final part, the activity of walking from Poble Sec to the Golondrines will be performed, in order to experience the activity using the most basic physical transport, as well as a collective interior transportation.
Ruta de Autor is a team, formed by Aymara Arreaza R and Lorena Bou, which uses an interdisciplinary approach to discovering the layers of which the urban space and other geographies are composed. They create various cartographies which re-purpose forgotten histories and nexuses between past and present. For Ruta de Autor, none of this makes sense without the experience of transit, without the journey on foot, the stage upon which perception and the discoveries made during the journey may truly be observed and appreciated.
www.rutadeautor.com

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Artist Ángela Bonadies's research and creative residency
Date: 11 June - 11 July 2016 
Venue: Homesession. C/creu dels molers 15, local, Barcelona, 08004

The project will comprise research, production and activities in public space, related to the gasometer located in Barceloneta. The artist is interested in developing a project in the Port of Barcelona, ​​focusing on the structure of the gasometer (La Barceloneta) as a residual space which has been recovered as an informal space for sporting activities. Although it is situated near the tourist zone, it remains somehow protected for community use. This space allows for a reference to artist Allan Sekula's work in Barcelona (Methane for all), completed as part of the Arxiu Universal exhibition at MACBA, a narrative which moves from public space (gasometer) to private space (museum-archive), creating a parallel with the problem of the port: the privatisation of which has denied the public full enjoyment of the space, restricting its use to the community, while converting the structure into a paradigmatic emergency structure, a kind of private independent state within the city. This connection allows the artist to discuss the paradoxes of circulation: the circulation of people, of spaces, of works of art, of information, among others.


Public presentation of the projects resulting from the Emergency Structures workshop
Date: from 9 to 30 of July, at 20:30h 
Venue: Homesession. C/creu dels molers 15, local, Barcelona, 08004

Results of the process which commenced with the initial workshop phase of the Estructuras de Excepción project, and continued during the second half of 2015, when workshop participants collectively developed their proposals in two working groups, focusing their research in two spaces along Barcelona's seafront : the IMAX 3D Cinema and its surroundings; and the Marina del Puerto Viejo, and its relationship with the history of Barceloneta's history.

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PARTICIPANTS: Edgar Dos Santos, José Aristizábal, María Teresa Guzmán, Aymara Arreaza R, David Franklin and Loreto Varela.

Homession and Idensitat presented an exhibition of works resulting from Estructuras de Excepción, a workshop led by Angela Bonadies. Estructuras de Excepción is an artistic project connected to a process of research around the Port of Barcelona, a mutant space which represents an extreme agglutination of all the changes and evolutions suffered in Barcelona as a whole. Estructuras de Excepción is the result of various collaborative confluences. The exhibition is a joint effort between Homesession and Idensitat, as part of Xarxaprod. The working process originated in Angela Bonadies' workshop in July 2015, as part of the project TRANSLOCATIONS, Temporary Experiences, Artistic Practices and Local Contexts, a collaboration between Idensitat and Arts Santa Mònica. The exhibited work is the result of the involvement, persistence and collaboration of Edgar Dos Santos, Jose Aristizabal, Maria Teresa Guzman, Aymara Arreaza R, David Franklin and Loreto Varela.

Empire of Rats, David Franklin, 2016

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Empire of rats is a publication combining text and photos which, together with three distinct images, formed part of the Cinema 3D = Port 3D research project for Estructuras de Excepción. Taking the abandoned IMAX theatre in Port Vell as a starting point, Empire of Rats expands outwards to explore the phenomenon of modern ruins. The text finds connections and differences between the IMAX and the ruins of today's Japan, ghosts of the reconstruction of Tokyo in the aftermath of World War II. Postwar Modernism, Nazi architecture, science fiction, and the dreams of capitalism are all invoked to examine the position which ruins occupy in modern societies. Returning to Barcelona, ​​it seems that the commercialisation of the Port Vell, and even the nationalism which is presently sweeping Europe, are, in fact, simply other kinds of ruins, while the connection between society and its past, society's present concept of itself, and the kind of future to which society is aspiring, are manipulated and deconstructed. The text is accompanied by a series of photos taken at the Port Vell harbour exploring the rapidly changing landscape. These images enter into a dialogue with a second series of photos, taken from several ruins in Japan, including a US Air Force base and abandoned houses in the mountains around Tokyo. Three mixed-media images, combining drawing and painting, represent unequivocally the absurd environment of Barcelona's commercial port.

Fuera del Imax (Outside Imax), Aymara Arreaza R., 2016

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Imax cinema opened in 1995 and immediately became a kind of island within the harbour. The aim was to give a boost to the area where it was located: to make a great show of modernity, and to offer up a new vista of entertainment within the city. Almost twenty years later, in 2014, the site was closed, but its presence is still significant and its projections have changed: disuse and reflections. The photomontages are, on the one hand, the result of identifying this cinematographic container as a one-off structure situated in the port, and, on the other, the creation of an archive about the Imax and its surroundings. The images show layered transformations experienced by the zone in which the building is located, while also pointing out the existence of an inactive cinema, converted into an active screen of the outside world.

 

Imax 4D, Loreto Varela, 2016

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Opened in 1995, closed in 2014. An icon of post-Olympic Barcelona. One "breakdown", and a lack of spare parts with which to repair it. The analogue system has become obsolete, and the multinational Imax Corporation now uses a digital format, and will not offer an alternative which might be compatible with this building's characteristics. The Imax has become transformed into a unique structure within the new port. The highly controversial postcard representing a political moment and change within the city: its deterioration in such a short space of time, its ephemeral shelf-life, and at the same time, the permanence of its structure. A closed volume, its surroundings irrelevant. In the end, the processes of urban dynamics are opaque or veiled by overexposure, restricted access, as in a film. Is there another possible narrative? The architectural perspective, perspectives based upon the project, the programme, the building and its relationship with the environment. Walking the perimeter. Circling the impenetrable volume, focusing upon where the facade touches the ground, the base, where public and private space meet. Redrawing the plan, imagining the interior. Another reading of the limit, focusing on the object and blurring, exposing or overexposing its surroundings, bringing one image into relief while multiple layers of information are left behind, almost veiled. The intense Mediterranean light ... posters discoloured by overexposure to the sun reveal the passage of time, not through use, but through disuse. The passage of time ... pause, respiration, pulse, rhythm. Image recording as an observational tool, makes the obvious evident, and can lead us to the invisible. Following the "YOU ARE HERE" indication on a map which locates us in space ... the two-dimensional reading which leads us to situate ourselves.

Port Vell Accés Restringit (Port Vell Restricted Access), Edgar Dos Santos, José Aristizábal y María Teresa Guzmán, 2016

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In 1753, the construction of the Barceloneta residential district was begun, to compensate for the demolition of the Ribera district. In the late nineteenth century, the metallurgical industries of “La Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima” were located there, and the neighbours comprised the skilled labour which allowed for the industrial development of the city, and the construction of large structures such as the Born market, and municipal markets such as the Boqueria and San Antoni. The "Nuevo Vulcano", a naval workshop from "Compañia Catalana", also settled in the district. The Olympic Plan of 1992 included the transformation of the Port and the requalification of Barceloneta. The idea of an ​​"open city to the sea" was considered as part of the Plan, including a reorganisation of the littoral to take advantage of the beaches, and to strip away the Port Vell fishermen's sheds and medium-sized storage facilities, to give this space to the citizens, who were following these proposed changes to the port with grave concern. A new harbour was built which drove the coastline further away, forcing families who lived in the port to move to other shores, or to scrap their boats; once again an insurmountable fence, protecting the Port Vell Luxury Marina, prevented access to the sea. What was once a citizens' space less than 20 years ago, is now a parking lot for luxury yachts, with private security. The space which was full of life and community is now void of citizens, and full of tourists passing through. The few fishermen who resisted remain at the Fisherman's Wharf (Moll de Pescadors), the only existing vestigial memory of the maritime and port history of Barceloneta.


In collaboration with:
Homesession, Arts Santa Mònica, HANGAR, Creative Europe / ARTIZEN, PhotoEspaña, Embajada Española en Venezuela,  Universitat de Belles Arts de Barcelona, AVV de l’Òstia.

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