Can we as humans and other living beings learn to live together, in difference? Can we create a future that actually has a future? Join Sophie Krier and Erik Wo...
Asturias, Spain: Tuning into the struggles of a post-industrial region #7 Pascale Gatzen
Pascale Gatzen fell in love with fashion as a child, became a designer and quickly fell out of love with the competitive, capitalistic fashion system. In New York she co-founded the workers cooperative Friends of Light that fabricated custom made woven jackets from local wool. This experience evolved into the Dutch āLinen Projectā an ā also ā cooperative attempt to create a value chain from growing organic flax to making linen products with the harvested and processed fibres.Ā
Collaboration comes with communication. Gatzen got interested in āempathic communicationā and made that the core of an artistic Master she set up in Arnhem, The Netherlands.Ā
A conversation about getting in touch with felt emotions and underlyning needs, āshould thoughtsā, the succesful Mondragon cooperative and the love for making beautiful things that will never fade. Ā
References:
The Linen Project
https://thelinenproject.online/
Friends of Light weaving cooperative:
https://www.friendsoflight.net/
Nice read: Take back Fashion! by Pascale Gatzen for Apria/ArteZ:
https://apria.artez.nl/take-back-fashion/
About non-violent communication (what Pascale calls ācompassionate communicationā):
https://www.cnvc.org/learn-nvc/what-is-nvc
About the Mondragon worker cooperative:
https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/Ā
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50:22
Asturias, Spain: Tuning into the struggles of a post industrial-region #6 Cynthia Hathaway
We decide to have the conversation in a parked car, with an enormous hand made world-of-wool-map on our lap. As if we are on an imaginary roadtrip through Cynthia Hathawayās practise. It fits her way of working: creating fun, momentum and dialogue. Canadian born Hathaway came to the Netherlands in the late 90ies. She calls herself an artistic āsearcherā without the re- attached. Always looking for surprising angles and ways to connect different fields of working and thinking. From miniature trains to giant vegetables, from founding a disco in an academic institute to growing potatoes to embody Gilles Deleuzeās Rhizomatic thinking. Her latest intervention: a wool march. A walk with a herd of 250 sheep, shepherds and dogs straight through the centre of the Dutch textile city Tilburg. To raise awareness for lost connections between humans, animals and landscape.Ā
A talk about the art of not knowing, the dedication of amateurs, the loud Asturian hills, the global versus the local and the ongoing beat of disco music. Yeah.Ā
References:
More about Cynthia Hathaway:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAaNgIPbXvc
More about Wool Alliance for Social Agency:
https://woolallianceforsocialagency.blog/
System D Academy, Sandberg Instituut:
https://sandberg.nl/system-d-academy
The Department of Search (Zero Footprint Campus):
http://www.hathawaydesigns.org/the-department-of-search.htmlĀ
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52:24
Asturias, Spain: Tuning into the struggles of a post-industrial region #5 Chiara Sgaramella
We asked Chiara Sgaramella to join our Asturias edition because her practice as an artistic researcher focusses on the connection between art and agriculture. She was born and raised in the heel of Italyās boot, but currently lives and works in Valencia, Spain. Sgaramella sees art as an integrated part of daily life, as a collective effort. From this perspective she studies the relations between soil, food and culture. We all know paella as a dish, but what do we know about rice production in Spain? When and how did rice arrive as a crop in Europe? Chiara developed a travelling trolley about the subject.Ā
A talk ā that took place in the hazel forest close to PACA ā about eco-feminist art, the Zapatistas, radical interdependency and the impact of scarcity.Ā
Immediately after the group talk (#8) Sgaramella needed leave for Piemonte, Italy, where she took part in a 1 year residency. Chiara worked with abandoned tools, found in a barn. She reproduced these āextensions of farmers handsā in large prints, as an ode to agricultural gestures.Ā
References:
More about Chiara Sgaramella:
https://chiarasgaramella.com/
About the symbolic association between Covadonga (a prechristian place of worship nearĀ Picos de Europa) and the Spanish/catholic identity:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/his.2002.14.1-2.37
Another Possible World, exhibition including works by Zapatista in Museum Reina SofiĆ”:
https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/room/room-00213
More about Chiaraās Oryza rice trolley:
https://chiarasgaramella.com/oryza-collection
āDona arbreā, Fina Miralles, 197oies:
https://www.macba.cat/en/art-artists/artists/miralles-fina/translacions-dona-arbre-documentacio-laccio-realitzada-novembreĀ
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57:05
Asturias, Spain: Tuning into the struggles of a post-industrial region #4 Ana CarreƱo
Ana CarreƱo takes us to public beach in GijĆ³n/Xixon that is sandwiched between two industrial sites. While we look for a spot for our the interview we pass three women on a bench. One of them is singing. She says she used to sing a lot when she was young. Singing is a rural tradition. As a young woman she moved to the city for work and stopped singing.Ā
A job in the mines or the steel industry was an escape from rural poverty. But since the 80ies, when Spain joined the EU, mines were closed and industry declined. Architect and researcher CarreƱo studies the post industrial landscape. What happens when the activitity disappears, but memories and remnants are still present? This spatial confusion ā or heterotopia as Michel Foucault calls it ā comes with challenges and opportunities. CarreƱo grew up here, her grandfather drove the coal train from the mines in Aviles the harbour of Gijon. What kind of future does she picture for this shrinking city? How to deal with degrowth?
We dive into the economic history of the region and talk about the current spatial quality of the city. We look the revitalisation of Bilbao: from industrial community to cultural hub. But not every jobless mineworker can become a barista in a glossy coffeeshop. We also touch upon Anaās own practise as an architect and artist. Does she consider Heterotopia as her habitat?
References:
More on Ana CarreƱo:
https://anacarreno.com/
About āheteropĆasā (plural places):
https://anacarreno.com/Heterotopias
More on regional singing:
https://www.rtpa.es/video:De%20Romandela_551517181598.htmlĀ
Can we as humans and other living beings learn to live together, in difference? Can we create a future that actually has a future? Join Sophie Krier and Erik Wong in their search for alternative perspectives, for radical imaginations, for a world in which many worlds can thrive. A search for something that is already present: the pluriverse is all around us.
Wong and Krier have adopted a perspective put forward by Arturo Escobar in his book Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (Duke University Press, 2018). What are the consequences of these pluriversal notions in daily life?
For their search Wong and Krier visit five locations at the fringes of Europe: Ä°stanbul, Casablanca and Berlin (often seen as gateways to and from Central Asia, North Africa and old Europe) and two rural areas: the Isle of Mull and Asturias (as places for self-sufficient living).
For every edition four makers join Erik and Sophie, two locally based, and two based in the Netherlands. Every conversation and encounter builds on the previous one in an effort to create a vibrant network that connects different places, different types of knowing and ways of living.
Listen in, the door isĀ open.
Netherlands