PRESS NOTE. Sin Estado (Stateless) Group show: Santiago Cirugeda, Democracia, Todo por la Praxis

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1 PRESS NOTE Sin Estado (Stateless) Group show: Santiago Cirugeda, Democracia, Todo por la Praxis Dates: January 22 nd March 13 th, 2009 Opening: January 22 nd at 7.30 p.m. ADN Galería, c/enric Granados 49, Barcelona Sin Estado is a project born from the collaboration of Santiago Cirugeda, Democracia and Todo por la Praxis, proposing a multidisciplinary intervention from the art and the architecture realm in the context of the illegal settlement in La Cañada Real (Madrid), at the moment put under a process of evacuation and demolition. From the Seventies this establishment has been growing up and its social configuration has become more complex, lodging more than two thousand houses and almost forty thousand inhabitants, with no few antagonisms: Spaniards cohabit with foreigners, the illegal drug traffic with the real estate businesses, shanty houses with villas and hotels in front of country houses. Sin Estado offers a double reading from his name: the use of public funds destined to the art which have been turned aside to interventions of social character, in a space like La Cañada Real in which the same administration refuses itself to carry out any public service; as well as Sin Estado alludes to this territory deregulated and marginal as far as the legal and administrative structures.

2 The project Sin Estado proposes La Cañada Real to be subject of study and work in progress, paying attention to the development of this space outside the limits of the administrative control. Also the aim is to put in context the specific projects of La Cañada Real comparing it to other similar situations, like the construction of a civic centre in the gypsy town of Penamoa (in A Coruña) carried out by Santiago Cirugeda, or the shooting of the demolition of the shanty town Salobral (Madrid) by Democracia. Sin Estado tries to think from a practical point of view about potentialities and contradictions of the artistic work in the social sphere, approaching La Cañada Real from different perspectives of action: from the cartography to the negotiation with the social movements seated there for granting infrastructures or services of communitarian use; from the generation of territory visualization processes to a reflection on the contradictions of the own process. ADN exhibits the project following the different vectors of the work, in order to respect the different kind of interventions realized: the creation of a logo reproduced on a flag reflects

3 the wish of giving a corporative image to the project. In the Cañada Real area, the logo has been used on a real-estate poster and several flags have been put in some roundabouts, demonstrating the intention of territorializing the project. In ADN a flag is hanged up at the entry of the exhibition room and the logo is reproduced on the bottom wall. The logo and the flag act as introduction to the project s subject, resumed throughout a video collection of all the TV press services dedicated to the interventions in the Cañada Real, where inhabitants have been interviewed too, and through the realization of posters and postcards portraying the same inhabitants of the district and some panoramic views of the landscape. The Cañada Real has also been charted to identify collective and social structures of the district. The cartography of Cañada Real comes with a sample of town planning reports and socialeconomic studies. From the social and territorial analysis of the area, rises the necessity of negotiation with social movements to give facilities to the district. Thanks to the project Sin Estado the sports field now has stands and the area benefits of a legal consultancy for evicted in a removable and itinerant structure. ADN shows the scale models and the photographic documentation of the construction of these urban interventions. Conceived as well as a social-media campaign, the corporative image of the project get stronger with the production of merchandising, as t-shirts, caps and stuffs for drug consuming branded Sin Estado. Project Sin Estado is contextualized in a programme of other similar urban interventions, carried by Democracia and Cirugeda, as respectively in the Salobral district in Madrid and in the village Penamoa in A Coruña. The exhibition also includes documentation about these projects: scale models and photography of the realization, to testify a shared wish of creating a web of actions toward the rehabilitation and renovation of marginal districts in our cities.

4 Santiago Cirugeda Santiago Cirugeda is an artist, an architect and social agitator. He has been developing subversive projects in the urban reality during the last 14 years, through an intensive method of work based on observation and analysis of the city. He defines himself as alegal, when trying to take advantage of the legal voids for benefiting the community. With a special commitment and social sensitivity, he stimulates self-management and selfconstruction from the own communities in which he operates. He has been awarded with various prizes, as the Premio Iniciarte for Artistic Creation in Andalucía and the Ojo Crítico Prize of Plastic Arts, for his capacity to relate his creative work to the urban social reality, for "approaching the architecture to the street ". In 2009 he is finalist in the Contemporary Architecture of European Union Prize Mies van der Rohe. His website Recetas Urbanas is the compendium of the interventions that Cirugeda has developed as a social agitator, trying to find in the own citizenship the tools to get over and to make clear the local bureaucracies about the housing or accommodation problem. His main preoccupations are ephemeral architecture, recycling and development of strategies of occupation and urban intervention. Among his more recent and forceful projects: in 2000 La casa de Pepe Pepe s House (Alquiler de Azoteas/ Terrace roof Rental Situación Urbana 07) proposed the construction of an illegal housing on the roof in the historical city centre of Sevilla, followed by a self-report to the Urbanization Management, causing a discussion about the housing price and how temporary buildings in roofs could help in solving this problem; in 2005 with the controversial Chicken Antimediático (Situación Urbana 12) Cirugeda projected and realized in the Poble Nou district (Barcelona) a new kind of modular housing which could be assembled collectively and which could be grouped in residential cores; in 2007 the City Council of A Coruña committed Cirugeda the rehabilitation and renovation of the shanty village As Rañas, consisting of 19 houses for 75 inhabitants, all of them relatives: "The Gabarri". In 2008 he follows his collaboration with the City Council of A Coruña to the realization of temporary modules in the gipsy village of Penamoa. Santiago Cirugeda designs these cohabitation modules, where inhabitants receive courses on social integration and working training. The modules are basically two installations of 250mt2 each, located next to the water tanks of this town, with the idea that they work as social centres. According to the predicted plan, the same project will be realized in the neighbourhoods of the district El Campanario.

5 For Sin Estado exhibition, Santiago Cirugeda proposes an installation of furniture to show files as town planning reports and social-economics studies; self-made public equipment that consists in stands for the football field in the Cañada Real area. Involving the inhabitants in the construction offers low cost favourable situations of inclusion and social acceptance, as this structure can be built by the own neighbours only in 4 days using mainly recycled materials. Also the show includes some interventions in Civic Centre of Penamoa, as graphic information and scale models.

6 Democracia Democracia is a team work formed in Madrid by Iván Lopez and Pablo España. They approach the artistic practice based on discussion and the confrontation of ideas and forms of action. They are interested in the intervention of the social domain through a direct approach with the real thing. They do not consider the urban arena like a space for the consensus but for the conflict, or to try its staging at least. Some of their more recent works and interventions are: Todos sois culpable salvo yo (All of you are guilty except me) consisting of a reflection around the pain and the victim show of like tools of will of power in the today s culture; Proyecto Ideal (Ideal Project), using historical and recent events to reflect about what has changed politically and socially in 30 years; Victima (Victim), in which a golden sculpture installed in the Basque Parliament represent a victim of terrorism; Demos contra Cracia (Demos against Cracia), consisting in urban action throughout stencil and stickers. In 2007 they realized, among other projects, the video Welfare State (Smash The Ghetto): like a sport event, the video shows the demolition of the shanty village El Salobral (in Madrid) -one of the biggest shanty towns of Europe- while middle-class people, like real supporters, ironically celebrate its disappearance. Other projects as curators are: Creador de Dueños (Owners Creator) as reflection on the symbolic logic of the consumption; No-Futuro (No Future), about the future like euphemism of the word death ; Madrid Abierto 2008 (Open Madrid 2008): proposal of public art promoted by the City Council of Madrid and the Cultural Association Madrid Abierto, consisting of 13 artistic interventions in El Paseo La Castellana, to reflect on the problems of the city through art and where indeed Todo por la Praxis with its Especulator project participates too.

7 For Sin Estado they collaborate to the creation of the logo and the flag; they show photos about the project of El Salobral s vacation in Madrid through the video Welfare State-Smash the Ghetto and through the pictures Tuning Girls, in which they used aesthetics similar to the sexy-girls- calendar but using the marginal villages and demolition machineries as landscape. Also they present a video collection of the TV reports about the intervention in the district of Cañada Real, where it s possible to watch at interviews to the inhabitants of the area during overpowering images of evacuation. Democracia also exhibits souvenirs labelled Sin Estado like caps, t-shirts and objects for drug consumption.

8 Todo por la Praxis Diego Peris and Rafa Turnes established in 1999 Todo por la Praxis and they define themselves as a collective intellectual, an amplifying laboratory of aesthetic projects of cultural resistance. They offer tools for the intervention in the public space in an activist and confrontational way. They move among different tensions: as militant artistic practice and architectonic praxis that links public space with mass; and social communication to create dialectical immaterialized spaces. They investigate how to symbolize a social conflict in an aesthetically effective execution on the public space. They consider that the spaces of resistance are potentially artistic projects that could enable social significance. Among their recent projects: Speculator, where they generated a character to personify the super-villain or iconic speculator of social Capitalism. Empty World: the creation of the virtual office Real Estate Agency of Empty House as well as the development of five tips or "five steps to demolish Capitalism from home". This agency s aim is to put in the market the existing empty houses (more than three million in Spain) through registry and virtual cataloguing. In the exhibition Sin Estado Todo por la Praxis collaborate with the production of the logo and the flag; they did the mapping of the Cañada Real area, making postcards with landscapes and posters with pictures of the inhabitants; they exhibit the documentation about the infrastructure built in the area: a removable and itinerant legal consultancy where

9 a lawyer offers his professional assistance to evicted people. ADN shows the scale model of the legal consultancy, the pictures testifying its construction and the guide used by the lawyer to help the inhabitants. Santiago Cirugeda: Democracia: Todo por la Praxis: For further information and hi-resolution images, please contact: Susanna Corchia tel: