fallow: rethinking the ways of practising the institution

Anthropologist Anna Tsing says that "living in a time of planetary catastrophe begins like this, with a practice both humble and difficult: noticing the worlds around us."

The fallow offers solace to an exhausted, burned and exploited planet. To leave fallow is to give time and space for the land to rest, to avoid overproduction, to become fertile again in the cycles to come. Through the regeneration of the soil, the conditions for life to take place are restored: the biodiverse power of the ecosystems of which we are part.

La Escocesa's program proposes a process of institutional regeneration through which (re)think not only of the multiple structures that support the institution, but also the processes that take place so that these structures can survive. Based on the agricultural technique of fallow, the institution withdraws and pauses to be able to cultivate (itself) again. During this time, we want to attend to the processes of care and transformation necessary to respond to the current eco-social collapse of which we are a part.

Our main programme strands are:

• Research Projects, undertaken through annual grants.
• International Projects through which we establish relationships with institutions from abroad.
• Studio Visits through which professionals from the art world visit the residents in their workshops.
• REBOST is a strand of the programme managed autonomously and collectively by the members of La Escocesa, who decide the activities they want to organise in relation to the interests and needs of the group.
• The Intersectional Protocol is a process that structures and makes visible the values and ethics of La Escocesa, whilst generating a guide document for the use and operation of the centre for all users. It will also be shared free of charge with similar organisations and collectives for consultation and implementation.
• Institutional Psychotherapy is a strand of research at La Escocesa that is currently materialised through an internal process of therapeutic group work carried out by the people who work in the team.
• Toma de Tierra (Grounding) thinks about interdependence and institutional sustainability through permaculture, based on its principles and ethics for the implementation of a critical, ecofeminist and horizontal management.

Our programme has been outlined across several months of  active listening and collective work with La Escocesa’s team and community. Noticing the institution and its singularities, through dialogue with those who practise it every day, has allowed us to think about our present and future.

Achieving coherence between discourse and practice is an essential approach in the way we function. Ideas have to be put into practice, and that is why our methodologies are conceived as part of the programming itself, and this, in turn, generates new methodologies and shapes the ways we do things. We aim to become a porous structure, within which the discursive, representational and their management constantly feed off each other.