trenza
mediation program for warm meetings with the institution
trenza is a mediation program designed by the Lumbre collective within the framework of Art Space Unlimited, whose intention is to generate an opening call for La Escocesa to be home to communities that do not currently inhabit it.
Fire, warm events, is a collective made up of Tau Luna Acosta, Diana Rangel and Juan David Galindo, which is put together with the intention of putting powers in the center to generate things together. With a slow and insistent work methodology, as a way to confront the overproduction and overprogramming of the neoliberal logic that manages the field of art.
trenza focuses on migrated people from the global south, who are related to the production and work of art and culture and who, for reasons of structural inequality, do not They are not yet part of the city's contemporary art circuit.
Migration is a process of uprooting, not only territorial and emotional, but also professional. Upon arriving at the host territory, we must prioritize economic survival and the administrative bureaucracies linked to immigration documentation. It is common to take time to build emotional and support networks, which is why the professional career that has begun in the country that has been left usually remains on standby. Working in the field of art tends to be especially complicated, since each place has its own implicit dynamics and languages that upon arrival involve translation processes that can be very frustrating.
This mediation project starts from this place that places us as migrant artists and that does not fit into the categories of emerging, young, mid-career artist, since when we migrate it measures the standard of crossing this shared portal that is coming from the global south to settle in a European territory. We trust in meetings as a means to share strategies and in the need to build spaces that meet our situated needs and the size of our desires.
The proposal is organized in three threads: Fire, Earth and Alliances. These threads, separate, but interdependent, aim to be woven within and around the community that inhabits La Escocesa to establish alliances.
Fire
coordinated by Juan David Galindo
Collective learning group on survival strategies within the artistic context in Barcelona. It is based on a critical position on the professional success model while seeking to generate knowledge and practical survival tools. A mapping of the professional context, its agents, codes and means will be carried out.
Land
coordinated by Diana Rangel
In the context of the mental health of migrants and especially migrant artists from the global south, we relate the Earth to the cutting and rebirth of its own roots, the search for water and fertile soil. It seems that the migratory experience is a continuous settling, adapting, adjusting spaces of desire and action to new territories. The Earth line of work and research focuses on exploring how the complexities of identity and the sense of belonging come into play in new territories to generate an exchange of strategies and knowledge, shared ways of doing that can be of comfort and usefulness. to others who have recently arrived or are in the process of settling.
Alliances
coordinated by Tau Luna
The line of Alliances crosses the trenza transversally and proposes generating alliances with groups, projects and people who in the territory have a long journey of work by, with and for the migrant community from the south in Barcelona. Starting from the idea that art workers are political agents within the city and that to open La escocesa to a specific community, it must be part of the cultural and political fabric of the city beyond the specificity of contemporary art.
Methodology
The three lines of mediation are intended as research processes for the development of tools and meetings open to the public and closed for specific groups.
We started the project with internal training on white privilege and racial ethnic consciousness with the researcher Danielle Almeida. Aimed at the team and the entire La Escocesa community, this meeting marks the beginning of TRENZA. We believe that to open the doors we must prepare ourselves to listen and there is no other way to prepare the body for attention than to first look inward. That is why this training was aimed at working and reviewing our structures and privileges to begin to dismantle the framework of structural racism of which we are part.
Furthermore, to begin a mediation process with a community, we consider that a diagnosis must be developed based on listening practice to understand the situation and the needs of the community. Therefore, the first material carried out by trenza is a collection of data on La Escocesa's relationship with migrant artists from the south and vice versa.
For this, they will be carried out surveys and interviews about La Escocesa's relationship with artists from the global south, systematization and data visualization. This work will have the support of the Dones migrants collective of Dones Visuales who work in this line within the field of the audiovisual industry in Catalonia and who are part of the working group for the drafting of the cultural rights law in the process of being drafted in the Ministry of culture.
In this same line, and taking advantage of the work previously carried out within the resource guide for migrants in Barcelona, thanks to which we have had contact with multiple groups linked to mental health care with migrants, we decided to develop a second, smaller mapping, focused only on these groups. This mapping will end in a day on immigration grief in the month of February 2025.
Activities open to the public and calendar:
October
Juntanza antidoce with Regularización YA! and Personaje Personaje
Wednesday, October 9 6:30 to 8:30pm
Conversation table about the current situation of immigration legislation in Spain and Catalonia and about the ILP regularization process now! which is suspended in Congress.
At the same time, children and childhoods are also invited to make a banner to take to the 10/12 Mani, this activity will be carried out by Personaje Personaje.
This space will be part of an agenda of activities along the same lines that will be carried out throughout the week of October 12, in different institutional and self-managed spaces in the city to mobilize action and thinking about what October 12 means in This territory and the relationship that, from this episteme, concrete actions are landed in the peoples of the south from Abya Yala to Palestine.
Fire to the immigration law and abolition of borders! To regularize, to decolonize, to disencumber!
This activity coordinated by Tau Luna Acosta is part of the Trenza line within the Alliances line that It proposes generating alliances with groups, projects and people who in the territory have a long journey of working for, with and for the migrant community from the south in Barcelona. Starting from the idea that art workers are political agents within the city and that to open La escocesa to a specific community, it must be part of the cultural and political fabric of the city beyond the specificity of contemporary art.
November
Creative projects laboratory for migrant artists from the global south: tools for life with María Elisa Gómez
Tuesday 5th, Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th November 2024 from 6pm to 8pm
No one prepares us for the moment when our identity as artists intersects with a new identity as migrants. A collision from which emerges a web of interdependencies, challenges and contradictions for which there is no manual. How to prioritize our artistic practice when we have to survive? How to materialize our projects when we are drowning in a tide of bureaucracy? How can we find alternative ways of survival that allow us to feed our creative practice? How to create mutual support networks and permeate existing networks?
In this three-session workshop-laboratory, the Colombian multidisciplinary visual and creative artist Maria Elisa Gomez shares practical creative project management tools and useful resources to nurture and sustain our artistic practice as migrant artists from the Global South. We will talk about the challenges and difficulties associated with migration and the impact they have on our personal trajectory and artistic practice, and then collectively generate a series of strategies to facilitate this transition process. We will delve into the concept of self-narrative and the creation of avatars to write autobiographical texts and enhance our artistic work and job possibilities. We will explore the importance of structure within the creative process and learn about various methods and systems of organization, planning and project management along with holistic internal management tools so as not to die trying.
Throughout the sessions, participants will have the opportunity to put these tools and resources into practice individually and collectively, ending with an incubator session in which we will work on new or existing projects to develop a work plan, clear up doubts and devise strategies to materialize and enhance our ideas.
Session 1 (05/11/24): Self-narrative and immigration process
Session 2 (06/11/24): Internal and external management structure and tools
Session 3 (07/11/24): Project incubator
Coordination: Tau Luna Acosta
December
Mapping of the cultural professional context in Barcelona
2 and 3 December
Space intended to critically disseminate the cultural system of Barcelona in relation to contemporary art and artistic research: public spaces and resources, production system, residencies, exhibition, organizational chart and hierarchies of the artistic sector of Barcelona. The objective is to know the map of Barcelona and find the best formula to locate a specific artistic project. The sessions are organized into a theoretical part and a practical and personalized part (creation of dossiers and calls). Designed for migrant and gender-dissident people.
Coordinator: Juan David Galindo
February
Conferences on migratory grief
February 2025
Meeting days open to the public with groups that work with mental health with a focus on migratory grief, they will be days to talk, raise awareness and work on the issue.
Coordinated by: Diana Rangel and Tau Luna Acosta
Illustrations by Glendis López
The project is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.