Could we imagine the monuments of the future constituting themselves in an opposite way to the traditional one, that is, through the historical narration of a mass of individuals, as a constant laboratory, a poetic-political operation materialized through sculptural-social works? The project was configured as an open pavilion that was in operation with a special focus on women workers of Genk, Belgium, with the intention of rescue stories and memories not present in the city's official memorials
Cross-border/international
Belgium
Other
brazil
{Empty}
Genk, Belgium
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-11-16
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: erica Last name: ferrari Gender: Female Nationality: Brazil If relevant, please select your other nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via a. vitale, 8 Town: pellezzano - salerno Postal code: 84080 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+55 11 99144-4844 E-mail:ericaferrar@gmail.com Website:https://ericaferrari.com/
First name: erica Last name: ferrari Gender: Female Nationality: Brazil If relevant, please select your other nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via a. vitale, 8 Town: pellezzano - salerno Postal code: 84080 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+55 11 991444844 E-mail:ericarferrari@gmail.com
URL:https://ericaferrari.com/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/ericaferrari/
The construction of other landmarks of memories, of subjects made unfeasible by official history and excluded from the city's social and economic ordering system, requires other aesthetic forms. Revolutions take place by dissident bodies, by subalterns: the right to memory is the right to public space. From this, we can consider new ways of thinking about the monument, as a social movement that is solidified in physicality. Could we imagine the monuments of the future constituting themselves in an opposite way to the traditional one, that is, through the historical narration of a mass of individuals, as a constant laboratory, a poetic-political operation materialized through sculptural works?
The intention was to explore these potentialities with freedom and dialogue, through collective artistic work and social involvement with a special focus on women workers at the cultural institution, artisans and women assisted by the social organization Gigos, focused on processes of education and sociability of immigrants and descendants. Specific workshops, talks and the observation of the landscape took place at the pavilion, as part of the hole installation. For a month and a half, the pavilion was in operation at C-mine/Jester in the city of Genk, Belgium, in collaboration with Ana Catarina Mousinho. Genk is a post-industrial city and the activity sought to investigate the memories of workers in the different economic and social configurations of the city, both in relation to mineral production in the 20th century and in its establishment as a center of current cultural entertainment. The research was carried out through conversations and the production of plastic works, resulting from the interaction with the landscape, the workers and the experience, aiming at the possibility of creation and other memory marks of invisible agents of the hegemonic historical process.
memory
post-industrial
monument
social practice
woman
The project started from the idea of sustainable occupation of public space through the use of interchangeable structures used by civil construction - the construction scaffolding. As constitutive elements of our urban dynamics, scaffoldings are a symbol of ingenuity in the use of material, being modular and adapting to different needs for access and shelter. Therefore, the project leased the structure for the duration of its execution, not resulting in the purchase of material or waste. The installation of the project in an open field, between historic buildings, residences and the construction site of the new cultural center at C-mine, was intended to be inserted in the discussion on land use, especially in post-industrial cities, with a focus on on the question of contamination, community life and new uses. The materials used in the workshops were also based on sustainable practices, being low-cost and renewable, such as clay. Non-renewable materials were made available for reuse in the C-mine. Having contact and discussing issues of memory and community identity in this scaffolding pavilion in an open field brought together the inherent relationship of the built environment, it's preservation and use as the very core of dialogue with the participants. In this way, the project fulfills the prerogative of not producing more waste and unnecessarily inducing the consumption of materials, being able to be adapted and expanded with minimal damage and favoring environmentally conscious artistic practice.
The main idea of the project was to gather people around the discussion about memory and local identity from the individual and collective stories that constitute the dynamic flow of the city. To this end, the pavilion installed in the open field has become a point of convergence, meeting and working with plastic materials through the workshops. As artists specially invited for the project, with total dedication to its execution, and especially being foreigners, we were able to mobilize different groups, especially women, from different origins and ages. As a city marked by a history of migration and immigration (about 60% of its inhabitants are uneducated or children of immigrants), a strong segregation can be felt in the local routine. As liaison agents, we were able to promote interaction and disseminate common thinking and actions through the workshops. We believe that despite being a small movement, it becomes extremely relevant and we are very happy to see the development of these relationships and joint work. It is the kind of constructive experience that art can provide in its highest desire for equality and the potential for a better future.
The project was a public work. Therefore, its main characteristic was to be accessible to all, free of charge, democratically. Installed in an open field, the pavilion became a meeting point, for conversation, for work, for being in the middle of the landscape. The city sometimes has several spaces for public conviviality, with the enjoyment of its citizens. However, these spaces are often segregated due to social class, ethnicity, neighborhood in which they are located. In the project, we mobilized to establish relationships with various parts of the city's population, moving beyond the physical space of the pavilion, with talks and workshops. The quality of spaces for public use in our cities is one of the key points for rethinking the exclusionary dynamics, whether of memories consolidated as monuments, or in everyday social interaction. It is necessary to take actions that promote awareness of this function.
For a month and a half, we were agents of research and interaction with the population of Genk. The project started from this original function: being together with people, getting to know and proposing a relationship based on the issues addressed. Within our possibilities, we made the most of this work, connecting people from different contexts in the city and promoting a renewed sense of what local memory is. Our hope was to leave a small legacy of this experience and continue to take care of established relationships even from a distance.
The project involved several initiatives. Firstly, from Jester residency and artistic cultural center, which, through an open public notice, selected the project to be carried out with funding for its production. Located in the historic cultural complex of the C-mine, it had the support of the latter, being installed in an open field close to the historic building. The city hall of Genk also supports the initiative, we had the visit of the mayor and the secretary of culture at the beginning of the work and encouraged him to carry out the action. The project is part of the development of the doctoral project that the proponent is carrying out at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and had real support from the university for the research trip. As a result, the project had a wide support network and reached different spheres of engagement.
a site, a shelter, a work-place – we thought about a space of production, observation and exchange formed by a scaffolding pavilion in the landscape. Constituted by open niches encased in construction plastic in different arrangements, these translucid walls can be used as a repository of current reference material: historical material of Genk, its landscape and workers (the artists, the miners, the construction workers) and daily impressions of social network posts of relevant subjects (political, aesthetic, social). This accumulation of information was one of the basis for creating an work space in the pavilion. Equipped with tables, tools and molding material, in the workspace encouraged the discussion and creation of possible monuments of today, with the intention of rethinking the memories dissipated by historical material and the social networks specially in relations with the workers memories and activities. The idea was to place the pavilion a few meters from the construction site of the new building for the artistic residency (FLACC), creating a dialogue between the labor of the workers building the architecture and the artists constructing the sculptures. How we can think sculptural practice through the critical translation of reality using our own body and our thoughts to make it? The intention was to explore these potentialities with freedom and dialogue, through collective artistic work and social involvement with other workers: indirect, through the observation from the pavilion to the architectural construction site, and direct, with the rescue of stories and memories not present in the city's official memorials. For this, we involved the knowledge of visual arts, architecture and social skills to promote the interaction and the consciousness between the different agents of the city.
“They are rebuilding the past, every crack is being erased. Life in the mine was not good at all”: the observation of Stef, a Belgian who was born in the region and continues his life there, brings out the gravity of certain reconstitutions of industrial ruin as a cultural enterprise - a practice that seems to want to soften the pain of the past to look at the future from a completely resignified perspective, configuring itself as a neutral zone between the destruction of workers' memories and the building of a memorial. Working as artists at C-mIne, one of the decommissioned mines, converted into a cultural center and museum, we asked ourselves how this dual process dealing with memorial preservation and economic boost has modified the natural and social landscape in ways that are at once so seemingly beneficial and soft. Almost like a natural evolution of the system, it brings the internationalization of practices and the appreciation of local history, introducing refined scenography and specific works of art into the then rough extractive factory installations. We are part of this process, we are gentrification and we are temporary working immigrants; we are the 'lucky' workers, those who get work; and we are the dream workers of the future, paid to research and make art. Eyes that haven't seen sunlight for years for days on end, bodies that couldn't resist the illnesses of overcrowded ships, minds that yearned for the comfort of speaking again, freely, of building the future not through pain, but through thought, through acceptance - at the expense of how many lives are we here today? The main results and impacts of the project are linked to this perspective. The relationships, the conversations and the experience with the participants of the workshops, the dozens of people we met, the workers of the cultural center and the city are the possible point of questioning and insertion in the political process of constitution of the future.
The project was extraordinary due to the freedom of making it, the time spent on interaction and research, the commitment to the various constitutive aspects, the environmental concern, the social and prospective interaction within the dynamics of the city. It is an experimental project that brings together different areas of interest and knowledge to enable critical thinking and the artistic insertion of the most diverse agents.
The project was based on institutional support and the use of the public artistic apparatus to carry out research and direct action in the physical and social space of the city. Taking the established bureaucratic structure, we carried out an experimental project based on people and relationships as a means for artistic thought and practice.
The project is constituted in such a way that it can be replicated in other urban contexts of different global cities. From the idea of rethinking public memories, especially in post-industrial cities, which contain a large influx of migrants and immigrants, such as our own city of origin – São Paulo in Brazil, the study and action is possible from a support local structure and time for its development.
“At the end of the last century, a Christian theologian thus described the situation in which we find ourselves today: 'Wherever you travel, the landscape is recognizable: everywhere in the world is crammed with cooling towers and parking lots, with agricultural industries and megacities'. But now that development is reaching its final stage - Earth was not the right planet for this kind of construction - the growth projects are rapidly turning into ruins and waste, among which we have to learn to live. ” (NIGHT COUNCIL, 2019, p. 21)
Ruins and waste: beyond the built space, how is this characterization reflected in the lives of workers in these industrial centuries? In the memorial issue, the deindustrialization of cities brought unique phenomena: the despair of the suppression of jobs, the frustration of the project of 'a better life' and the desire to create landmarks of memory of the suffered and communal existence of the working class in the factories. What we actually observe in the urban reconversion in the most disparate cities is that the difference between gentrification occurring, with the expulsion of the local population due to the rise in economic standards, or an improvement in the standard of quality of life in fact for the inhabitants of the region it's very tenuous. They are specific project decisions and, mainly, policies that make one case or another occur. Community action strongly influences the resolutions to be signed. The greater the union and collective determination, the greater the pressure, negotiation and sharing of decisions with public and private authorities. It is the organized struggle from below, critical thinking and persistence over time that keeps the crack in the wall of history open, according to the Zapatista lesson. The heritage of the world is indeed us. How does the memorial action corroborate with us? How does it corroborate with those excluded from the city's ordering system? The project aims in action on these issues
