About the institutions involved, the contexts and locations
Baltan Laboratories (NL) will work with Landpark Assisië in Biezenmortel, a residential environment for approximately 250 people with intellectual disabilities;
Lungomare (IT) will engage with the riverscapes in Bolzano;
Idensitat (ES) will explore the theme of sacrifice zones, focusing upon neighbourhoods in the metropolitan area near the mouth of the Besos river;
ZEMOS98 (ES) will collaborate with the MediNat community, a diverse group of citizens debating the consequences of installing massive renewable energy parks in the north of Spain.
SIT-RES at Landpark Assisië, Tilburg (NL)
Developing and Practicing New Ways for the Commons
Baltan Laboratories is a cultural indisciplinary lab based in Eindhoven. We focus on societal issues through a relational approach, creating spaces to rehearse living otherwise. Baltan activities relate mainly to (talent/concept) development, learning trajectories, and research residencies, through which we explore the relationships between humans, non-humans and technology in the context of societal challenges. The lab embraces experimentation, encouraging curiosity and welcoming uncertainty, free from predefined outcomes or disciplinary constraints. For the first year of the project Situated Creative Practices for the Pluriverse, we collaborate with Studio Assisië.
Studio Assisië deploys the creative and imaginative power of arts as an engine for an alternative society that preludes our shared future. A commoners’ society in which everyone can participate. A strong and resilient ecosystem in balance with our environment. Studio Assisië invites contemporary artists and creative practitioners of all disciplines to Landpark Assisië: a natural site (67 ha) that is home to a mixed community, including people with complex mental disabilities and their caretakers. Landpark Assisië offers artists the ideal, uncomfortable, real context to co-create a shared future.
The Context of the Residency Program | The SIT-PLU residency will be part of the broader Common Ground program, in which Studio Assisië invites artists to work on themes that are formulated by the local community and stakeholders. Together, they discuss challenges, opportunities, wishes and visions for Assisië and its surroundings, before the residence. Studio Assisië is developing a methodology for this process that is somewhat alike the working of a citizens’ council or the methodology of The New Patrons or Nouveaux Commanditaires. Amongst these Common Ground Commissioners are residents, visitors, caretakers, governments, nature and water authorities, businesses and NGOs.
SIT-RES at Lungomare (IT)
Riverscapes and their ecological interconnections
Lungomare designs, curates and produces cultural projects and collaborations at the intersections of the public, virtual, printed, urban and exhibition space. Lungomare works in transdisciplinary and multiple constellations, is a discursive platform for experimenting with and producing alternative forms of artistic, cultural and activistic practice and negotiates socio-political issues. It is also a place for convivial encounters on the outskirts of Bolzano-Bozen in the middle of the Alps.
Lungomare is situated in Bolzano, South Tyrol, near the Italian-Austrian border, in a territory shaped by social, linguistic, political, and geographical boundary crossings. Bolzano lies at the foot of the Alps, where the urban experience of a human-shaped nature converses with the dynamic life cycle of the mountains. Here, rivers begin their journey as wild torrents, and by the time they enter the city, they have been partially domesticated. In this complex environment, multiple worlds coexist. Bolzano is shaped by its layered history and contemporary challenges embodying a multiplicity of perspectives. Through artistic and cultural practice, Lungomare critically engages with the territory exploring new ways of understanding and shaping the world. Its projects and activities reveal diverse perspectives on this landscape through art and spatial practice, fostering a shared reflection on the relationship between humans and nature, cities and wetlands.
The Context of the Residency Program | The artistic residencies at Lungomare will focus on Liquid Territories and Learning Sites within FLUX – River Interventions and Explorations, a Lungomare project initiated in 2022 to reimagine riverscapes in Bolzano. The selected artist / urban practitioner or collective will work on site-specific interventions addressing the rivers’ ecological, cultural, and social dimensions. The artistic work and urban practice challenges existing perceptions of rivers and their potential as sites for connection, learning, and re-naturalization. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and participatory processes, the residencies explore the multifaceted relationships between humans, water, and the ecosystems that characterize these liquid territories, envisioning new futures for sustainable and inclusive coexistence.
SIT-RES at Idensitat, Barcelona (ES)
Sacrifice Zone
Idensitat is an arts project investigating ways of impacting upon the public sphere through creative proposals related to place and territory in their spatial, temporal and social dimensions. IDENSITAT incorporates other projects, actions or interventions, expanding into a number of different places and contexts. It promotes creative strategies combining research, production, cultural management, education and communication. Idensitat operates as a system based upon collaborative dynamics, interweaving practices from the arts with those from other disciplines, and developing mechanisms for connecting these to social space.
The operative context for this project is the area comprising neighbour-hoods near the mouth of the Besòs river in Barcelona. The neighbourhoods of Trinitat Vella, Bon Pastor, Baró de Viver, La Sagrera, and Sant Andreu are located on the edge of the city in an area with many road and railway links to the metropolitan region (formed by Barcelona, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Adrià de Besòs and Montcada i Reixac). These neighbour-hoods are densely populated and have broadened their relationship to the river since its reclamation as a natural space, becoming one of the main green spaces within the metropolitan region.
The Context of the Residency Program | A Sacrifice Zone is 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 its inhabitants, and its environmental balance. Idensitat is interested in examining the transition between a degraded space and its renovation, and the role that art can play in this fragile change of condition. We consider that in this transition, artistic practice may catalyse and accelerate the transformation between these two conditions, crystallising and causing the appearance of an intermediate space, moving between one state and another, and generating a variation which in many cases is ephemeral and even momentary, but which is capable of questioning or modifying, rigid structures, or of making these structures flexible.
SIT-RES at ZEMOS98 (ES)
Future Energies
ZEMOS98 is a cooperative that has been dedicated to cultural production and social research for over twenty years. We are committed to social change through the design of mediation processes that foster a culture of participation and promote a critical citizenship capable of questioning dominant narratives. ZEMOS98 has been deeply engaged in cultural mediation practices beyond the institution, intervening in various projects and processes to build temporary conditions that promote co-creation, collective intelligence, and democratic processes.
ZEMOS98 uses methodologies that ensure equality and diversity in participation, and that aim to explore other forms of knowledge and learning beyond traditional academic language. ZEMOS98 is known for its work across a triad of civic engagement, media literacy, and new media art.
In Northern Spain, particularly in the Cantabrian mountain range of León, strong social and environmental resistance is growing against the current model of large-scale wind farm development. Many of these projects are planned in protected areas of high ecological value and represent a new wave of extractivism disguised as a green transition. Far from being a move toward sustainability, these mega-projects are led by large corporations that disregard both environmental balance and the needs of rural communities.
The Context of the Residency Program | Future Energies is a research and production residency located in the Cantabrian-Leonese mountain range (Northern Spain). Through the cultural mediation of ZEMOS98, it invites an artist or artistic collective to develop a work exploring the intersections of art, social research and environmental activism, engaging with communities fighting for an energy transition that is fair, socially distributed, and respectful of the biodiversity of their territories.
During the residency, ZEMOS98 proposes as a starting point the continuation and expansion of the Commonspoly: Future Energies board game prototype. The game brings to the table the debate around a model that allows large energy corporations to install solar panels and wind turbines indiscriminately in rural areas, where the eco-social impact will be negative. The residency is conceived as a space for co-creation, rethinking, expanding and testing the cooperative board game as a tool for critical thinking and debate around the energy models that shape and will continue to shape our territories in the years to come.