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MADRID ABIERTO

4 – 28 February 2010
Presentations take place at Casa Encendida, Ronda de Valencia 2, Madrid
4 and 5 February, 6 – 9 pm
Curator: Cecilia Andersson

This is the first edition of Madrid Abierto as a biennial event and the theme for this edition is collaboration. The call for works announced its openness for proposals that spans across disciplines and for artists aiming to situate their work within the social realm of art practice and audience participation. Selected artists met for three days during an initial seminar which took place in Madrid early February 2009. The aim of the seminar was not only for participating artists to introduce themselves and present earlier works but also to allow for other players, familiar with Madrid and its context, to present their activities. Behind it all was the idea to create a network of connections, a network that would help the selected visiting artists, the majority of them based outside of Spain, to connect with local knowledge and with the specific context of Madrid. The works now presented are some of the results of processes and contacts initiated during this seminar.

For cities to thrive, to be communicative and alive and to function as catalysers of public life, it is necessary to stimulate civic participation and community involvement. Given the current framework, where society often fail to negotiate some of the most immediate challenges, how can pooling resources such as the ones found in collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives, develop alternative work methods? How can inertia and nostalgia be substituted by visionary and inspiring tools acting as catalysts for change? In our post-political age, how can artistic practices intervene beyond dominant conventions? How can artists access and address spaces and places when in fact, most citizens takes no interest to participate in communal social networks?

The projects presented in this edition of MADRID ABIERTO carry the strengths to call for an initial awareness of contemporary cultural needs. How such needs may be accommodated in the future requires a longer commitment – projects that stretch over a longer period of time. The projects presented here gives shape to what is still unknown. As such they actively take part in defining the needs for tomorrow.

Madrid

MADRID ABIERTO 2009-10
Urban Buddy Scheme seminar 5 -8 February 2009
La Casa Encendida, Ronda Valencia 2, Madrid
Curator: Cecilia Andersson

This edition of Madrid Abierto will be dedicated to emerging practices that critically engage with the urban environment. Madrid Abierto 2009-10 aim to include a wide variety of practitioners and art forms that establish their strengths in an expanded role, and that work in the social realm of art practice and audience participation. The idea is to produce and exhibit works that connect various disciplines and that opens up for collaborations between, for instance, artists, architects, designers, computer programmers, social scientists, designers and urban planners.
       Madrid is growing in an unprecedented pace. Multi disciplinary initiatives are engaged in processes that formulate new possible relationships with the city and its inhabitants, this while revealing complex layers of information. Activities that aim to envision possible futures, beyond the current construction crisis, continue with impressive strength.
       Madrid Abierto 2009-10 (previously an annual event of interventions in the city, now biennial) will host a seminar at Casa Encendida 5-8 February 2009. This edition of Madrid Abierto sets out to investigate the potentials of collaborative socio-cultural and politically engaged work and how such work may perform as catalysts for change in the city. We will also try to activate processes that integrate new bodies of knowledge into the already existing.
       The aims for these days are basically two. One is to connect the group of selected Madrid Abierto participants with people in Madrid, but also to keep connecting people in Madrid with each other. The resulting networks we aim to establish will hopefully serve as information base, forum for discussion and exchange in preparation for Madrid Abierto projects that are presented in February 2010.
       In an effort to provide the artists visiting from abroad with tools that facilitate exchange with people in Madrid as well as an understanding and engagement with the city, locally based practitioners from various fields has been invited to present their views of Madrid. The seminar also includes a group of additional invited artists with an international profile who presents their context specific works carried out in other parts of the world as springboards for further discussion.

Basurama (ES)
Laurence Bonvin (CH)
Susanne Bosch (UK/GE)
C.A.S.I.T.A (ES)
Lisa Cheung (UK/CN)
Teddy Cruz (US)
Javier Duero (ES)
Exprimentolimon (ES)
Uriel Fogué (ES)
Gelitin (A)
International Festival (SE)
Andres Jaque (ES)
Studio Kawamura Ganjavian (ES)
Iñaki Larrimbe (ES)
Ludotek (ES)
Josep Maria Martin (ES)
Kyong Park (US)
Jean Francois Prost (CA)
Gustavo Romano (AR)
STEALTH (NL/RS)
Apolonija Sustersic + Meike Schalk (GE/NL, SI)
Luis Urculo (ES)
Pablo Valbuena (ES)
Wunderkammer (ES)

Program director: Jorge Diez
Producers: RMS